Products > Test Equipment
Picoscope- yay or nay?
David Aurora:
--- Quote from: RoGeorge on May 07, 2022, 06:54:11 am ---I don't know about Picoscope, but if the beta software for Mac is the only problem, then install Ubuntu, or openSUSE, or maybe Windows, whatever you prefer, as a virtual machine (created with VirtualBox, or maybe with WMware, both free and both doing the same thing, don't know which one would be better for Mac).
Then, install and run the Picoscope software inside the Linux virtual machine you have just created.
Another advantage for using a virtual machine is that you can isolate the VM from Internet, so no risk for broken software caused by unwanted updates. Virtual machines can also be moved or duplicated on a different computer even with a different OS, offers snapshots for the case you want to mess with the VM OS, etc.
VMs are the best choice for something that is needed to just run, today or in 10 years from now, without messing with updates and without messing your current Mac install. Unless you run them, VMs are just files. When you run a VM, you have simultaneously your Mac and the VM running in the same time, as you would have two totally different PCs connected at the same display. And you can make as many VMs as you need.
You can try virtual machine before ordering the hardware, and see if it feats your needs.
--- End quote ---
I literally said in my post that I did that, it doesn't work in Windows on an M1 Mac, full stop :-//
David Aurora:
--- Quote from: adam4521 on May 07, 2022, 07:27:47 am ---I recently bought a used picoscope, mainly for extra protocol decoding and portability, and screen share scenarios, but also because the one on sale happened to be an MSO version. I think the v7 software when it is finished will work better across platform — I think they’ve built using .net, the Linux package downloaded some mono libraries and seems to work the same as the windows version. I find it comparatively clunky on the regular oscilloscope controls, but the ability to drag around the trigger position on the screen and zoom with the mouse wheel or drawing a box is actually quite nice. Also found nice options to choose linear or log axes on the FFT, and ‘window’ the protocol decode with the cursors (or rulers as picoscope call it). I discovered it was convenient to load up a test serial stream into the AWG, just by pasting 1s and 0s into the editor that I copied from the output of a python generator program.
In all, I agree there are pros and cons, not best for general purpose scope but ‘it can do stuff’.
Picoscope V7 can’t do XY mode yet. But for this to work at all well I imagine the scope has to be in ‘streaming mode’, which means comparatively slow sample speeds (mine maxes at 8.9MSa/s — edit, that’s for one channel, it will be slower for two). Can it keep the display going while streaming? Sounds difficult, maybe that’s why it’s not working yet!
Clever idea to use XY oscilloscope to overcome the broken display. But won’t you need to use an oscilloscope with ‘Z’ axis for blanking? Might be job for analogue oscilloscope.
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Nope. I've successfully gotten perfectly clear traces off a few analog scopes here as well as my ancient Siglent DSO. I figured if the Siglent can do it the Pico should be able to (and it probably can, it just doesn't have a working version for current Macs)
David Aurora:
--- Quote from: jasonRF on May 07, 2022, 02:56:46 pm ---
--- Quote from: David Aurora on May 07, 2022, 03:37:33 am ---Set it up on another machine (an Intel Mac Mini running boot camp).
Can confirm this thing is hot garbage. Ugh. The clunkiness is straight out of 2003.
Like, OK, sure, you could probably probe an Arduino blink program and see a pulse, cool. Dunno what else you could do with this without wanting to stab someone though.
--- End quote ---
It seems that a picoscope is the wrong tool for you.
Are you able to return it? If not, it shouldn’t be too hard to sell it and recoup most of your investment.
Jason
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Yeah, to their credit I've been speaking to them via email and apparently they have a solid returns policy. And given a stable release of 7 is 6+ months away, it feels kind of pointless keeping it sitting in the box that long.
David Aurora:
--- Quote from: bdunham7 on May 07, 2022, 03:22:08 pm ---
--- Quote from: David Aurora on May 07, 2022, 05:23:43 am ---Literally all I wanted to do was plug it into a modern computer and look at signals in XY mode, I didn't think that was a huge ask ;D
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"I've never done it before and I don't know how, but it should be easy, right?"
Having done this (extracted and viewed vector video signals from devices with broken CRTs) I can tell you that it is never quite that simple and the results are 'good enough' at best.
Doing it with an analog CRT scope, you need X,Y and Z inputs, otherwise you'll have garbage all over the screen. For whatever reason, the best instrument I've found for this is a Tek 22xx series scope, using a second scope with an output to monitor and scale the Z input.
Doing it with any DSO is an order of magnitude harder. First off, if you don't have a Z input, your results will be terrible at best--and Z inputs are not common. And then when you have mixed vector displays--traces combined with character generators, getting the optimum record length is, well, impossible. Too long and your display update rate is useless. Too short and you lose part of the display during the blind time. And as far as I've ever been able to determine, there's no sweet spot in the middle. Ugh.
Don't blame your Picoscope. There's lots of happy Picoscope users out there, but I guarantee you they aren't doing vector graphics on an M1 MacBook. A netbook with Wndows XP SP3 is more like it.
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Nope, not even close buddy. Pulling clean traces off a curve tracer is a piece of cake, I do it all the time with a standalone curve tracer I already had as well as various octopus testers I've had/made over the years. The issue isn't that it isn't displaying correctly or something, the issue is that XY mode is greyed out on Macs, and the Windows version doesn't work on modern Macs in apps like Parallels. None of this stuff is mentioned on their compatibility page, so unless you do a deep dive before purchase you find out the hard way.
David Aurora:
--- Quote from: pigrew on May 08, 2022, 12:35:47 am ---The PicoScope 6 GUI works pretty well for me on Windows, so yay. That said, their software API (PicoSDK) feels like it's straight out of the 90s and was a fair pain to use.
The scopes are great for portable debugging (e.g., automotive tech), and to some extent automated testing. However, I still like the physical knobs of a bench oscilloscope.
The only other comparable product I've used is the Digilent Analog Discovery 2. The PicoScope has better hardware, but the AD2's GUI is more comfortable to use.
--- End quote ---
Yeah I'm real tempted to try the AD2 instead, it seems a whole lot more professional overall
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