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A High-Performance Open Source Oscilloscope: development log & future ideas
tatel:
This situation is very sad but fully understandable. I want to thank both tom66 and rhb for all they have done and for the contribution they are making now.
However, it's clear to me that a project of this magnitude must be financed in some way. Perhaps through successive bounties as a series of goals are achieved.
I don't have the necessary knowledge, not even close. But without a doubt, there must be gifted people out there, capable of demonstrating they have achieved one of those goals.
If the objective were to develop an open hardware and free software device, regardless of commercial interests, I would commit myself to contribute €100 personally. I'm sorry it couldn't be more. There may be other people who think like me.
Of course there will be many who consider this crazy. If you are a living "I give only negative feedback" t-shirt, please don't bother to provide that feedback here. Of course the obstacles are enormous, not only financial and technical, but also organizational and human.
On the other hand, if there is only one place in the world where an initiative like this can be successful, without a doubt it's this forum ... moreover it is impossible to do worse than Hantek with its latest development :box:
Perhaps we should think about moving this thread to a more appropriate section of the forum ... or perhaps it's better let the dead rest in peace.
tom66:
My estimate was it would require, at billable hours, around £100,000 worth of work done on it to get it to a finished state where it could be reasonably pushed to the real world.
Realistically, this is only going to happen if the project were to be on a platform like Kickstarter or the like, and I really don't feel comfortable with pushing it onto a platform like that unless it was a 'nearly-finished' platform. A secondary issue means re-spinning a board now is rather difficult given the worldwide shortages of semiconductors. I would have to completely redesign many parts out of it, because you cannot buy them from anywhere with any confidence that they are real parts.
I don't consider this a "dead" project just one in hibernation until the time and circumstances are right.
nctnico:
Actually I have been toying with the idea to start a Kickstarter for an open source DSO long before this thread started. But tom66 is right, this is probably going to take a lot of money. I estimate it will take between 50k and 100k euro. I simply can't afford to do such a project for free entirely.
However, I'd take a different route and follow the architecture of the Lecroy Wavepro 7k I have. I will also go for very simple acquisition hardware (basically an FPGA with memory and some trigger facilities) and do all processing on the CPU/GPU (hoprfully using some of the code tom66 has made). FPGA development is extremely time consuming and the result is usually rather inflexible.
I have base hardware designs, boards & software environments for both NXP iMX8 and NVidia Jetson TX2 which could serve as a development platform and as a basis for the final design. Both have support for all kinds of TFT screens and PCI express brought out on a high speed connector so it is possible to hookup an FPGA board which has PCI express. At this point I wouldn't worry about component shortage. By the time the design is mature the shortage is very likely to be over / less severe. I'd probably start on the iMX8 because this is the lowest cost option.
At the software side I probably implement some simple waveform rendering and a plugin system for using Python scripts and (probably) Sigrok. From there the community can start extending the functionality.
rhb:
--- Quote from: tom66 on June 15, 2021, 10:25:49 pm ---My estimate was it would require, at billable hours, around £100,000 worth of work done on it to get it to a finished state where it could be reasonably pushed to the real world.
[snip]
I don't consider this a "dead" project just one in hibernation until the time and circumstances are right.
--- End quote ---
I completely agree with Tom on this.
Tom did all the work. All I did was throw a bit of money in the air to see what would happen. I'm *very* happy with the result even though we are still a long way from an OS DSO. In many respects, I still think hacking a Zynq based COTS DSO is the best option.
The things that *must* be done in an FPGA are fairly limited. IIRC my conclusion was filtering and triggering were the only things which had to be done in the FPGA. The rest is much more leisurely because the human eye can't see changes faster than 120 Hz.
I think it worth noting that the nanoVNA languished for several years before it suddenly exploded on the world stage. I'm hopeful that will be the case with this project.
Have Fun!
Reg
nctnico:
--- Quote from: rhb on June 17, 2021, 12:45:54 am ---I completely agree with Tom on this.
Tom did all the work. All I did was throw a bit of money in the air to see what would happen. I'm *very* happy with the result even though we are still a long way from an OS DSO. In many respects, I still think hacking a Zynq based COTS DSO is the best option.
--- End quote ---
The problem with that is that extendability and processing abilities are quite low. When cycling to a customer this morning I got another idea: it could be worthwhile to add an edge TPU coprocessor like the Google Coral module to the platform (for example in an NVME slot). I think it would allow to do all kinds of signal processing tasks at very high speeds.
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