Pico Technology

Here is your monthly Test and Measurement update.

1.  EnviroMon is EPD Award Finalist

EnviroMon, the environmental monitoring network, has been selected as a finalist in Electronic Product Design magazine’s E-Legacy Awards 2008. A panel of experts placed EnviroMon on the shortlist of six products competing for the Environmental Design Award, sponsored by Farnell. The winner of the category will be decided by a public vote and announced at the award presentation on the 11th of September.

If you have used EnviroMon, or seen it demonstrated, you will know that it has the potential to enable energy savings in all sorts of locations including factories, offices, public buildings and private homes. Although there are six very good products in the Environmental Design category, EnviroMon is the only one that can be used in such a wide range of applications by anyone from beginners to professionals. If you agree with us, please visit the EPD award website and vote for EnviroMon!

• Find out more about the EnviroMon data logging system
• Read our Energy Efficiency blog to find out how we are using EnviroMon to save energy in our own building
• Read on to find out about our new EnviroMon Reporter scheme.

2.  Become an EnviroMon Reporter!

If the previous item has piqued your interest in EnviroMon, why not tell us about your own ideas for using the system, either at work or at home? We have four EnviroMon systems to be lent out, free of charge, to the readers who send us the most interesting plans. The systems will be based on our Current Monitoring Kit which is suitable for monitoring single-phase or three-phase mains power and, optionally, temperature. In return, we shall ask you to send us a short report on your experience with EnviroMon for publication on our website.

To apply to become an EnviroMon Reporter, just email us at enviromon@picotech.com with your EnviroMon idea. If your application is successful, we shall contact you for further information.

3.  Design an Experiment and Win a Data Logger!

If you’re using Pico products in education, you probably know about the collection of experiments and educational materials on our website. We are always looking for ways to expand this information, and we would be very interested to hear from you if you have designed an experiment that uses a Pico product. We shall send a free Ultracompact PC Oscilloscope to all contributors whose ideas we publish on our website.

Please contact our Pico education specialist Paul Allen.

4.  New: PicoScope 9201 PC Sampling Scope Presentation

Just in time for this month’s newsletter, we have finished preparing a comprehensive presentation on the PicoScope 9201 12 GHz PC Sampling Oscilloscope in a format that you can download. This will answer many of your questions on the finer points of the scope’s specifications, going into the details of the advanced statistics, display modes, mask tests and other features.

• More information on the PicoScope 9201 Sampling Oscilloscope

5.  PicoScope 5000 Series Driver for Linux Updated

Release R1.3.6.5 of the PicoScope 5000 Series Linux driver is now on our website. With this driver you can operate the 1 GS/s PicoScope 5000 Series scopes from any Linux PC with a USB 2.0 interface. In this version there are improvements to rapid block capture and the arbitrary signal generator. As always, it’s free of charge and you don’t need to register.

Download the PicoScope 5000 Series Linux driver

6.  EnviroMon Case Study: Birmingham Women’s Hospital

Our latest EnviroMon case study is from the Assisted Conception Unit at Birmingham Women’s Hospital. This unit is part of the hospital’s integrated fertility services and provides the most advanced laboratory facilities in the Midlands. The ACU requires temperatures within the cryogenic units and freezers to remain constant to ensure the highest possible success rate for assisted conception.

The article shows how a typical EnviroMon system is set up, and explains how the EnviroMon solution supplied by Pico Technology met the hospital’s needs.

Read the EnviroMon case study (1.2 MB PDF)

7.  Questions and Answers

Here is a selection of the questions that have cropped up recently on our support forum.

Q. My installation of PicoScope 6 runs very slowly. What could be wrong?

A. In this case, it turned out that the customer’s computer had a USB 1.1 port. PicoScope 6 cannot deliver fast oscilloscope performance using a USB 1.1 port, which is limited to 12 Mbit/s, and may even hang if a large amount of data is transferred. Upgrading to USB 2.0 fixed the customer’s problem. (Many of our slower products, such as our PC Data Loggers, work perfectly well with a USB 1.1 port. See the “System Requirements” section in your product’s User Guide for details.)

Q. When I use the zoom tools in PicoScope 6, the vertical axis sometimes shifts when I don’t want it to. How can I stop this?

A. PicoScope 6 makes it easy to zoom in with the marquee zoom tool (the button that looks like a magnifying glass with a rectangle drawn behind the lens). Sometimes, though, it can be tricky to zoom in on a waveform detail without disturbing the vertical axis. To make it easier, we added a keyboard shortcut – the Ctrl key – to make the marquee zoom tool act on the horizontal axis only. The Ctrl key also works on the other zoom tools. You can find out more about PicoScope 6’s keyboard shortcuts in the PicoScope 6 User’s Guide (2.8 MB PDF).

8.  Training Courses

In response to customer demand, we are now offering regular training courses on data logging and EnviroMon for UK Pico users. The courses will be suitable for beginners and advanced users alike and can be tailored to individual requirements.

We shall begin by holding courses at the new Pico headquarters, but on-site courses will be available by request. To ensure that your enquiry gets dealt with promptly, please email courses@picotech.com to register your interest.

9.  Forthcoming Exhibitions

Full details of upcoming exhibitions and training dates can be found on the exhibitions page.

10.  Employment Opportunities

Due to our continuing growth, we have vacancies for the following positions:

• Development Engineer - Analogue Hardware
• Development Engineer - Hardware
• Development Engineer - Windows Desktop Application Software

Find more details of these positions and complete an online application form

We look forward to hearing from you if you want to be part of a growing company at the leading edge of test equipment design.

11.  Latest Software Releases

As soon as we release new software, it is made available for FREE download from our website. To check which version you are using, start the software (PicoScope, PicoLog or EnviroMon) and select HELP | ABOUT.

The current releases are:

• PicoScope 5: R5.20.1
• PicoScope 6: R6.0.15
• PicoLog: R5.20.1
• EnviroMon: R5.20.0

To download the latest software please visit the software downloads page

(Note: the above web page also contains a link to our ‘release notes’ page which describes recent changes and additions to the software.)

12.  About this Newsletter

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13.  Contact Details

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