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Using an oscilloscope for data acquisition

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bifferos:
It's pretty hard to figure out which scopes can be used for continuous capture to a PC.  Can anyone suggest a budget scope capable of sustaining, say, 20MS/s in 8-bit accuracy from a single channel?  Are there specific SCPI commands I should be looking for?

thanks!

Someone:
Oscilloscopes are not streaming devices, they're trigger oriented. But some of the USB scopes can do it: https://www.picotech.com/library/oscilloscopes/streaming-mode
SCPI is not going to come close.

bifferos:

--- Quote from: Someone on April 13, 2023, 12:26:55 am ---Oscilloscopes are not streaming devices, they're trigger oriented.

--- End quote ---

I don't see how being trigger oriented precludes the ability to stream.  Surely streaming is just triggering at a fast enough rate?

Also, I don't understand your statement "SCPI is not going to come close", that's just a protocol and doesn't as far as I can see dictate timing or prohibit transfers while data collection is in progress.  Can you explain this a bit more please?

2N3055:

--- Quote from: bifferos on April 13, 2023, 08:12:31 am ---
--- Quote from: Someone on April 13, 2023, 12:26:55 am ---Oscilloscopes are not streaming devices, they're trigger oriented.

--- End quote ---

I don't see how being trigger oriented precludes the ability to stream.  Surely streaming is just triggering at a fast enough rate?

Also, I don't understand your statement "SCPI is not going to come close", that's just a protocol and doesn't as far as I can see dictate timing or prohibit transfers while data collection is in progress.  Can you explain this a bit more please?

--- End quote ---

Streaming is streaming. No triggering, just endless stream of data.

Someone is right, SCPI is too slow for this. Not because in theory it couldn't but because it has huge overhead in implementation and devices just aren't fast over it...

If you need streaming with a scope take look at the Picoscope. But you will need to write your own application and stream over API...

Berni:
It is not going to work with SCPI.

In theory it could but converting 20M values to ASCII just to be sent over the wire is really wasteful for both processing power and bandwidth. Even if it was sufficiently optimized to run on the limited processing power, the interfaces most scopes have are too slow. In ASCII you would need 4 characters per sample so that is 80MB/s. The only common interfaces that can do that are gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0

Common devices that do continuously stream high sample rate ADC samples are SDRs, but they typically don't work down to DC is that is what you are looking for.

Sounds like a PC based scope that has the API support to write your own software like the picoscope is likely the easiest way indeed.

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