Hello there,
I do embedded SW development, an I usually use a scope to check the output of my system while I am developing.
I have been using a Tektronix 4034 scope, where I let the scope in run (untriggered, continuously running) mode (1sec time divisions, 10 seconds total time) and, whenever I see something interesting / wrong / suspicious in the output, I will pause the acquisition and zoom into the wanted area. It's nearly the only feature I need: lots of memory! The current scope has 10 Mpts memory, 5GS/s a and bandwidth of 250 MHz I think.
The problem is that the scope is not 'mine', it's from another division. I would like to buy something but I won't get the budget to buy anything that's 3000 or 4000€, so I'm looking at something more affordable and more suitable to my use-case.
I don't know how the Picoscopes work. Since they are PC based, I thought that maybe they would be better suited for my needs, as maybe the PC takes over the memory? Let's say I need something where I can see 10s. of data on the screen and then be able to pause the acquisition and zoom-in to see 1ms (so, going from 10 1s/division to 10 100us divisions on a 'regular' scope). A bandwidth of 70 or 100 MHz should fully suffice, maybe even less. What would be you advise?
Oh, voltage wise, it's all very normal. I don't use any high voltage stuff, and my inputs are mostly in the 100 mV to 5 V span. I have both analog and digital data, analog being the one I use more.
Thanks a lot! I hope you can orientate my purchase a bit, as I think that these picoscopes are very interesting. Hope I can use them for my use case!
Patrick