Test and Measurement Forum

Hello,

i tried your demo version of PicoScope 6. In this special case, i tried to acquire a signal (sine wave) with 5 ms/div. As oscilloscope i tried the 5203 and the 5204.
I noticed that i was only able to get 781256 values in PicoScope with the 5203. With the 5204 i got 4 times more. OK, the 5204 has a buffer 4 times larger, but the 5203 has even a 32-megasample buffer.
In further tries i found out, that i was only able to get a maximum of 1000000 values out of the 5203 and 4000000 values out of the 5204.

Acoording to other articels i read here, i have some questions:

1. Is there a limitation of max. 1000000 values in PicoScope
2. Is it a failure in the Demo-Mode that the 5204 can sample 4000000 values (if not, why isn't it possible with the 5203).
3. Is there a possibility to get advantage of the big sample buffer without self written software (if i can get only 1000000 samples, a buffer of 1 MB will be sufficient, 31 MB will be wasted ).

Regards, Andreas.

The default operation for the onboard memory is a segmented circular buffer where you can have up to 1000 waveforms.

You can set the number of buffers in Tools->Preferences->General->Maximum Waveforms

To get access to the full buffer for a single capture you need to set your trigger mode to single. It is a dropdown listbox in the toolbar at the bottom of the window.

Another thing that can limit the number of samples is the maximum sampling rate of the hardware. Consider the 5204 with 1GS/s and 128MS.

50us/div -> 500us across screen -> with 1GS/s -> max 500000 samples

To use as much of the memory as possible use a time base slower than
10ms/div -> 100ms across screen -> with 1GS/s -> 100M samples

If you are using two channels your maximum sampling rate goes down to 500MS/s but the memory is also divided wich will give you a maximum of 50M samples per channel as 10ms/div

Hello Erik,

thanks for your answer. Meanwhile we get a 5203 from our local dealer for testing and i can get much more points than in demo mode (demo mode is a little bit deceptive in regard of the capability of the scope ).

Regards, Andreas.