Pico Technical Support and Discussion Forum

hi

for the moment i have a very-very-very simple job to measure with a PC.
it is a 5V-frequency ranging from about 1Hz to 1Mhz with not much precision needed.

but i need the results to be written in an excel sheet or to be converted with a few simple algorithms and listed somewhere.

do i need a pico device? isn't there a way to hook my signal directly to the serial or parallelport and catch it with some software?

if not, what is the simplest tool i need?

thanks

Livio
Switzerland

Hi making frequency measurements is not a problem, you can do this with both our PicoScope software and our PicoLog software. Making frequency measurements and storing them on a spreadsheet can only really be done with our PicoLog software.

Now the issue here is that you will not be able to cover the whole span of frequencies in one go, 1Hz to 1MHz is much too large of a range really.

You can measure these frequencies using PicoLog its just that you will need to have different settings for different ranges.

In terms of hardware I would recommend any of our oscilloscopes (excluding the 4000,5000 and 9000 series as they do not support PicoLog)

Kind regards

thanks Ziko

in the lab i have both hard- and software to do so.
everything from pico.
no problem.

but i need a solution
a) being mobile
b) simplest to use, also for non technicians

just as simple as switching on a DMM and reading the autoranging display.

but i must convert the results first (take the log of the ratio of the 2 frequencies, some mathematics)

in the good old days of DOS and power-basic i wrote a programm that can read and write from and to the parallel-port.
(only i have forgotten how to ... and have no access to find that basic-programm again)

i am totally aware that pico cannot make any sales with giving me some usefull instructions, but i am a customer already, see above....

thanks again
Livio

On the guided tour of Picolog, I noticed you may choose "frequency" in the "edit demo measurement" menu. Is this valid only for Picoscope hardware, or is there any way to do it on an ADC 20?

Somewhere, it is said that frequency may be measured with ADC-11, but the instruction only says "To measure frequency, set the 'Scan time' to capture at least three cycles of the waveform being measured". Unfortunately, this is not enough for my understanding.

Anybody who knows how to measure frequency 0-100 Hz, preferrably with ADC-20, but with ADC 11 as second option?

You cannot do frequency measurements on the ADC20, you can however do this on the ADC11.

Kind regards

Hi Livio,

The only thing I can think of really is if you had multiple settings files and loading the files for the different frequency ranges. You would need to alter the scan time and sampling interval to give you your frequency ranges

Kind regards