PicoScope 7 Software
Available on Windows, Mac and Linux
I am still baffled with Picolog 6
I am still baffled with Picolog 6
I am an infrequent user of Dr Daq. I have returned to it in order to measure temperature changes in my house. I was pleased to see that I could download Picolog 6 and it recognized my Dr Daq. I have tried to use the latest version, but have failed miserably, and I do not believe that this is entirely my fault. These are my problems:
1.The self-help guide to the use of Picolog that I saw on the web was from 2014 and was totally unsuitable for a beginner. Is there a new guide? The video is too short and a printable version is desperately needed because of the following strange features in the Picolog software.
2. When the first screen display is shown, most software packages have an 'About' tab, where one can read the version number and other information. The startup screen for Picolog has a tab labelled i , but this is for detailed specification of capture inputs. And there is no HELP tab.
3. It took me 15 minutes of experiment to find that the first step has to be to enlarge the image of the Dr Daq and then click on 'TEMP' to define the type of measurement that is to be made. Only then does the channel number tab work properly: I kept putting in that I wanted only one channel as my first step, which had the effect of causing an upwardly-pointing caret to point downwards, but my selection of channel 1 was erased as soon as I clicked anything else. One sentence in some notes, saying ' choose TEMP or SOUND or another measurement first would have saved me a lot of messing about.
4. When you have selected TEMP and ONE channel you cannot start. You have to click on TEMP again and also SAVE CHANGES, which seems a peculiar instruction at this stage.
5. I was totally unable to avoid a Y axis that was far too highly magnified. I could not discover how to get a graph plotted between zero Centigrade and 50, for example. The autoscaling of the Y axis took place,whether selected in the bottom toolbar or not, so I always got a wild scatter of plotted points ranging over a few hundredths of a degree ( after the period of waiting while the system was 'waiting for data'.
6. There is no STOP button. How can one stop and save a recording when you have seen enough?
7. I created a folder on my desktop and successfully saved a file to it, but subsequent saves were not in the same location and may not have occurred at all. There seems to be something strange about saving to different locations, which needs, like all the above points , some written explanation.
I sent in to this forum some notes to help others, but Picolog 6 seems to have changed completely since 2018, so those notes did not work any more. At the very least, there should be an explanation of the symbols now used on the tabs: a thing like a three-armed candestick does not immediately suggest a simulation of hardware, and it is not obvious why items such as ZOOM UP and ZOOM DOWN should be in a pull-down menu under PAN ( which is a different operation). Has the art of writing instructions in plain english been lost entirely? Or is it just that illogical software and rapid flailing with fingers is now becoming universal, so verifying the operation in plain language is no longer thought to be needed?
1.The self-help guide to the use of Picolog that I saw on the web was from 2014 and was totally unsuitable for a beginner. Is there a new guide? The video is too short and a printable version is desperately needed because of the following strange features in the Picolog software.
2. When the first screen display is shown, most software packages have an 'About' tab, where one can read the version number and other information. The startup screen for Picolog has a tab labelled i , but this is for detailed specification of capture inputs. And there is no HELP tab.
3. It took me 15 minutes of experiment to find that the first step has to be to enlarge the image of the Dr Daq and then click on 'TEMP' to define the type of measurement that is to be made. Only then does the channel number tab work properly: I kept putting in that I wanted only one channel as my first step, which had the effect of causing an upwardly-pointing caret to point downwards, but my selection of channel 1 was erased as soon as I clicked anything else. One sentence in some notes, saying ' choose TEMP or SOUND or another measurement first would have saved me a lot of messing about.
4. When you have selected TEMP and ONE channel you cannot start. You have to click on TEMP again and also SAVE CHANGES, which seems a peculiar instruction at this stage.
5. I was totally unable to avoid a Y axis that was far too highly magnified. I could not discover how to get a graph plotted between zero Centigrade and 50, for example. The autoscaling of the Y axis took place,whether selected in the bottom toolbar or not, so I always got a wild scatter of plotted points ranging over a few hundredths of a degree ( after the period of waiting while the system was 'waiting for data'.
6. There is no STOP button. How can one stop and save a recording when you have seen enough?
7. I created a folder on my desktop and successfully saved a file to it, but subsequent saves were not in the same location and may not have occurred at all. There seems to be something strange about saving to different locations, which needs, like all the above points , some written explanation.
I sent in to this forum some notes to help others, but Picolog 6 seems to have changed completely since 2018, so those notes did not work any more. At the very least, there should be an explanation of the symbols now used on the tabs: a thing like a three-armed candestick does not immediately suggest a simulation of hardware, and it is not obvious why items such as ZOOM UP and ZOOM DOWN should be in a pull-down menu under PAN ( which is a different operation). Has the art of writing instructions in plain english been lost entirely? Or is it just that illogical software and rapid flailing with fingers is now becoming universal, so verifying the operation in plain language is no longer thought to be needed?