Advice for selecting Scope for high speed data acquisiton

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farasat.munir
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Advice for selecting Scope for high speed data acquisiton

Post by farasat.munir »

Hi,
I need to capture data that is sampled at about 6-8 MHz/sec. The additional constraint is to capture this data gap free from at least 4 seconds to upto 10 seconds.
What would be the most appropriate picoscope that can do this.Specially using the picoscope SDK.

I currently have the picoscope 3206 which only has 1Msample of internal memory Block. So this cant give me gap free data for more than 300msec at the data rate I desire.
I am thinking of buying a new scope to replace this.
Would the new picoscope 3206 A/B be able to do that because they have higher internal memory blocks (and using the rapid trigger mode) ?
I am interested in 4000 or 5000 series oscilloscopes because they have 12 -16 bits of resolution..but they have smaller internal memory buffer so would they suffice for my needs? I am not sure. Could anyone guide me on this please?

Thanks

Hitesh

Re: Advice for selecting Scope for high speed data acquisito

Post by Hitesh »

Hi Farasat,

It should be possible to capture the data with a PicoScope 3206B either using a block mode capture with a trigger to obtain the data as a single shot capture or using streaming mode capture with a trigger.

In block mode capture the data is transferred to the PC once captured. Referring to our website, 'Continuous streaming mode is a sampling mode in which the oscilloscope samples data and returns it to the computer in an unbroken stream. This mode allows the capture of data sets whose size is not limited by the size of the scope’s memory buffer, at sampling rates up to a few million samples per second.'

If you are capturing for 4 to 10 seconds you can use either block or streaming mode. Rapid block capture is only for when you need to capture multiple waveforms and there will be a delay in the re-arm of the trigger of around 2 microseconds.

The PicoScope 4000 series models are 12-bit scopes (with the exception of the 16-bit PicoScope 4262), so data could be captured using streaming mode.

Which programming language are you looking to use?

Regards,

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