Reading Max Sample Rate from a PicoScope

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spflanze
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Reading Max Sample Rate from a PicoScope

Post by spflanze »

I have a PicoScope 3205D. The application I am working on is written in LabVIEW.

I desire to read back from a PicoScope device these items:
1) How many channels have been enabled, and which of are enabled.

2) The maximum sample rate any of the 3000 series that happen to be connected are capable of.

I have not found a function that can read back which channels are enabled. Is there one? It would be convenient if I could, so the program does not have to keep track.

After reading section: "3.6 Timebases" in the manual at:
https://www.picotech.com/download/manua ... -guide.pdf
I came to the conclusion that all I had to do was give the function "ps3000aGetTimebase2()" in section 4.17 a timebase value of 0, and the "timebaseIntervalNanoseconds" parameter would be set to the shortest possible interval the model of PicoScope that is connected is capable of. But my conclusion is erroneous because a value of 0 returns an error that this time base number is not valid.

So I came to the conclusion it would not accept that timebase number because I had two channels enabled, and that the API function would not accept a number for a sample rate it is not capable of due the number of channels that are enabled. I put the call to ps3000aGetTimebase2() in a for loop frame, I put the frame's index on the timebase input, and set the for loop frame to terminate when that call returns no error. The lowest timebase number that returns no error is 1 which is consistent with two enabled channels, and this gets a timebaseIntervalNanoseconds value of 2ns, or 500MHz. But the 3205D's maximum sample rate is 200MHz, and that is with 1 channel enabled. So my method fails.

Is there a way to read back from whatever PicoScope 3000 series is connected the maximum sample rate it is capable of? Or will my application need a database to look this up by model number?

hexamer
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Re: Reading Max Sample Rate from a PicoScope

Post by hexamer »

spflanze wrote:
Sat Oct 15, 2022 4:06 am
But the 3205D's maximum sample rate is 200MHz, and that is with 1 channel enabled. So my method fails.
That is not correct. Per the spec's I see published online, the 3205D has a maximum sampling rate of 1GS/s with 1 channel and 500 MS/s with two channels, so your method seems to be working just fine.
spflanze wrote:
Sat Oct 15, 2022 4:06 am
Is there a way to read back from whatever PicoScope 3000 series is connected the maximum sample rate it is capable of? Or will my application need a database to look this up by model number?
I don't know of any such API, but your method above should work to achieve this.

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