Test and Measurement Forum

Is it possible to use Picoscope 5204 as a pulse height analyzer? The functionality I am after is that of an old "qvt" nim module from Lecroy. This module would integrate the incoming pulse (in Q mode) and then accumulate the data into "bins" so one could analyze the pulse height or integrate pulse (Q) of the incoming signals.

Real-time pulse height analysis would be fantastic, but having the capability of analyziing each pulse offline is sufficient.

Here is some more information about what I need to do. The signal source is a photomultiplier tube. The pulse rise time is a few nsec and the pulse with is 100s of nsec. The rate of pulses from the PMT will be tied to an external source (particle accelerator) which operates from 60Hz and 1kHz. The voltage (into 50 Ohms) is between 1mV and 1V.

The integrated area of the PMT pulse is proportional to the energy deposited in scintillating material (NaI) that produces a light pulse from the PMT. In order to measure the energy distribution of particles, the distribution of the integrated pulse height needs to be measured.

Reading your manual for the 5204 suggests that in streaming mode, one could write out each pulse to the hard drive for post analysis. I am curious to know if someone has already used the 5204 (or similar picoscope) to do something like this. And if some one has written software to do this in real-time.

Hello Guest,

Pulse area analysis is not a feature of PicoScope, howver, you may wish to consider using Repeat trigger mode and saving your waveform as .txt or .csv, and then importing to a spreadsheet programme for mathematical processising.

Regards
John