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This forum post is intended to provide a brief introduction to a new feature prior to full instructions being added to the manual. If you have any questions or comments about its use (including just wanting to thank the developers for adding the feature ) then please post below.
PicoScope has for many years had duty cycle available as a measurement, but now using maths channels you can also plot the change of duty cycle over time. To use the new feature follow these steps:
1. From the Tools drop-down menu select Maths Channels then click Create.
2. From the equation editor click Advanced and then click the duty button followed by the letter of the channel you want to use (in the below example it's channel A) and click Next.
If you are happy with the default colours and name, click Next.
If you are happy with the default range (0 to 100%), click Next.
3. You have now added Duty cycle as a new measurement and it will be available in the library for future use. Click on the check box to enable it, then click OK.
duty cycle graphing UI 2.jpg (33 KiB) Viewed 21879 times
4. The example below shows a square wave of constant frequency changing in duty cycle from about 5% to about 90%:
Great to see that PicoScope is defending its position as the worlds best scope, by adding new features to a great program! Thank you, the developers, for adding this and many other features
I have one question regarding the duty cycle: Don't you need a time-constant, or a window-length within which the duty cycle is calculated? ... and strictly speaking you also need a limit between 'high' and 'low' state.?
This is exactly what I was looking for. But I cannot get a good reading. I can read it okay when using a fluke 87V but when I try with the picoscope I am all over the place. With Fluke I have to use AC duty cycle setting and it works correctly.
I just looked at your data file and its difficult to see what edges you want to measure duty cycle between. When you zoom in you have positive spikes of about 200mV followed by negative of up to -1V (see below).