Linux Software & Drivers for Oscilloscopes and Data Loggers

PicoScope 7 for Linux brings many of the features of our powerful oscilloscope software to a large number of platforms. Our Drivers and APIs can also be used, with bindings available for C and other higher-level languages.

Linux screenshot
Linux screenshot
Linux screenshot
Linux screenshot

Supported platforms

Pico officially supports Ubuntu and openSUSE Leap. However, a growing community of users apply our software on a wider variety of Linux distributions. Help for doing so may be available from the community via our forums. Our Linux drivers and APIs are available for Raspberry Pi OS although testing on with platform is limited.

Windows, Linux and macOS versions of the software are being simultaneously developed, with feature parity across all three. We suggest you use our support forum to discuss using Pico products with Linux.

PicoScope 7 Stable for Linux is now released, with Early Access releases still available.

PicoScope 7 Stable

Installation

PicoScope is distributed via our online repositories. For operating system-specific instructions, please choose your distribution.

  1. Import public key (only once, no need to repeat)
    sudo bash -c 'wget -O- https://labs.picotech.com/Release.gpg.key | gpg --dearmor > /usr/share/keyrings/picotech-archive-keyring.gpg'
  2. Configure your system repository
    sudo bash -c 'echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/picotech-archive-keyring.gpg] https://labs.picotech.com/picoscope7/debian/ picoscope main" >/etc/apt/sources.list.d/picoscope7.list'
  3. Update package manager cache
    sudo apt-get update
  4. Install PicoScope
    sudo apt-get install picoscope
  1. Import public key (only once, no need to repeat)
    sudo rpmkeys --import http://labs.picotech.com/repomd.xml.key
  2. Add repository to the updater
    sudo zypper addrepo https://labs.picotech.com/picoscope7/rpm/ picoscope
  3. If it results in an error saying it already exists, delete the file as in the following command and redo previous step:
    sudo rm /etc/zypp/repos.d/picoscope.repo
  4. Update package manager cache
    sudo zypper refresh
  5. Install PicoScope
    sudo zypper install picoscope
  6. If you run into packager conflicts, please ensure that installations of picoscope (6|7) GTK is removed from your system. You can achieve it by this command:
    sudo rpm -e picoscope libpl1000 libps2000 libps2000a libps3000 libps3000a libps4000 libps4000a libps5000 libps5000a libps6000 libusbdrdaq libpicoipp libpicocv

PicoScope 7 Early Access

Installation

PicoScope is distributed via our online repositories. For operating system-specific instructions, please choose your distribution.

    Import public key (only once, no need to repeat)
    sudo bash -c 'wget -O- https://labs.picotech.com/Release.gpg.key | gpg --dearmor > /usr/share/keyrings/picotech-archive-keyring.gpg'
  1. Configure your system repository
    sudo bash -c 'echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/picotech-archive-keyring.gpg] https://labs.picotech.com/rc/picoscope7/debian/ picoscope main" >/etc/apt/sources.list.d/picoscope7.list'
  2. Update package manager cache
    sudo apt-get update
  3. Install PicoScope
    sudo apt-get install picoscope
  1. Import public key (only once, no need to repeat)
    sudo rpmkeys --import http://labs.picotech.com/repomd.xml.key
  2. Add repository to the updater
    sudo zypper addrepo https://labs.picotech.com/rc/picoscope7/rpm/ picoscope
  3. If it results in an error saying it already exists, delete the file as in the following command and redo previous step:
    sudo rm /etc/zypp/repos.d/picoscope.repo
  4. Update package manager cache
    sudo zypper refresh
  5. Install PicoScope
    sudo zypper install picoscope
  6. If you run into packager conflicts, please ensure that installations of picoscope (6|7) GTK is removed from your system. You can achieve it by this command:
    sudo rpm -e picoscope libpl1000 libps2000 libps2000a libps3000 libps3000a libps4000 libps4000a libps5000 libps5000a libps6000 libusbdrdaq libpicoipp libpicocv

Linux drivers and API

Installing PicoScope 7 Early Access will automatically install the drivers for all PicoScope products. If you do not wish to use PicoScope, then you may install only the software relevant to your device. Choose your Operating System and Device at the bottom of the page for further instructions.

Example programs exhibiting the use of a large number of the API functions can be found on GitHub. Examples and bindings are available for many languages, including C, Python, MATLAB and Java.

Documentation for our APIs can be found in the form of Programmer's Guides in the Library. Further support is available via our Linux Driver forums.

Locating the driver package files

  1. Open a terminal window
  2. Navigate to the the /opt/picoscope directory:
  3. cd /opt/picoscope
  4. The following directories will be available:
    • /include – C/C++ header files for the libraries (in a sub-directory according to the library name) and wrapper libraries
    • /lib – shared object (so) library files to link against
    • /share/doc/ – a set of directories corresponding to the various drivers, each containing a usbtest application e.g. /share/doc/libps6000 for the PicoScope 6000 Series Oscilloscopes
    • /bin (if you have installed the PicoScope software) – launch script for the PicoScope 6 software

Installing drivers only

To install drivers for a particular device please choose your Operating System and Device below. If you have not already done so, you must first follow steps 1–3 of the PicoScope 7 installation process above to add our repository to your updater and import our public key.

 

libpswrappers package

If you wish to use the PicoScope libraries with languages that do not support C-style callback functions (such as MathWorks MATLAB and National Instruments LabVIEW), you can install our wrapper libraries by also installing the libpswrappers package.

If you have not already done so, you must first follow steps 1–3 of the PicoScope 6 installation process above to add our repository to your updater and import our public key. Also install the necessary driver for your device (see previous section for instructions). Then install the libpswrappers package:

sudo [updater] install libpswrappers

Replace [updater] with the correct tool for your operating system (Ubuntu -> apt-get, OpenSUSE -> zypper).

Drivers for Raspberry Pi

Raspberry PI drivers temporarily not available. For any queries please contact support@picotech.com.