Some questions about Picoscope 6

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Audioguy
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Some questions about Picoscope 6

Post by Audioguy »

There are several things I have not been able to find an answer for reading the manual.

1- The voltage meter (like a multimeter) that could be opened by a click in PS 5, is that removed from the new PS 6?

2- X/Y oscillocope, how do I open that in PS 6?

3- Reading the application notes I could see that Picoscope can be used to measure for example an amplifiers frequency response with a sine sweep. Doing so (both with PS 5 and 6) I can not get good results. I get a downward sloping comblike (lots of ripple) curve and only the first couple of octaves is written with a straight line. The only way I could get a relatively smooth curve from 20Hz to 20kHz was to use the lowest FFT setting (256) with 40kHz bandwith and use something like three minutes sweep time but that result obviously has very poor resolution.

How do I need to set the Picoscope in order to get high resolution frequency sweeps?

4- In picoscope 5 I could set the scope trace so that I could see the actual waveform together with a shaded are that represented min and max values, like in the picture at the bottom of this page; http://www.picotech.com/picoscope-oscil ... re.html#xy

Where do I find these settings in PS 6?


5- If I want to change collors (background, trace, grid) in the scope/spectrum view.. how do I do that in PS 6?


6- During installation of PS 6 I chosed standard and not custom. Do I need to install it in "custom mode" in order to get all the features that I am used to from PS 5?

The scope I'm using is PS3224.

Thanks!


/Peter

Audioguy
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Post by Audioguy »

Would it be better to mail questions to Pico instead of bringing them up on the forum?

/Peter

picojohn
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Post by picojohn »

Peter,

For questions requiring a detailed response, email to support@picotech.com might indeed be better.

In answer to your previous questions:

1,2,4 & 5
As frequently discussed elsewhere on this forum, you are correct that those features are not currently included in PS6. It is intended to eventually incorporate the majority of PS5 features into PS6 but, it is not possible for me to define the order of implementation or timescales involved.

PS5 and PS6 can co-exist on your computer, therefore, you may use whichever is more suited to your application but, not at the same time.

3
The application note refers to the ADC-216 which was a purpose built 16-bit audio oscilloscope. Nonetheless, you may still obtain a good flat spectrum using the PS3224.

The attached trace is from a PS3224 set for a spectrum range of 39.06Khz with 8192 bins and 'peak hold'.

The sweep generator is the PS5000 internal generator, set to sweep from 20Hz to 20Khz at 100Hz increments every 1ms.

6
Custom install puts programming examples in the Program folder of your hard drive.

I trust that this is helpul.

Regards
John
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Audioguy
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Post by Audioguy »

Hi!

Thanks for the reply.

I tried the settings you mentioned in Picoscope 6 but I get a series of peaks.. a comblike graph with very poor resolution. What is it that I'm missing? The peaks are at a greater distance than the bins/FFT points suggest. Setting the sweep slower packes the peaks closer but does not result in a straight line.

I've tried log and lin sweeps as well as manually stepped sine. Seems like Picoscope is extremly slow and only when I set sweep time at several minutes or reduce the number of bins greatly I can get a straight line. But then as mentioned earlier the frequency resolution becomes very poor.

/Peter

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Post by picojohn »

Hello Peter,

It is very difficult to know what to suggest other than trying exactly the same sweep generator settings that I used.

Finally, you could email your data and settings files for my attention at support@picotech.com so that I may take a look.

Regards
John

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