PicoScope oscilloscope software on BeagleBoard / BeagleBone

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Gerry
PICO STAFF
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Joined: Mon Aug 11, 2014 11:14 am

PicoScope oscilloscope software on BeagleBoard / BeagleBone

Post by Gerry »

Great news, PicoScope, now runs on the BeagleBone Black (low cost, high precision, and fully flexible test & measurement on a credit-card size computer!!!). Here are some captures of PicoScope 6 running on the Cortex-based development platform:
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To reduce the processor overhead the software is running in a no-frills mode with only the fundamental features available, but demonstrates that the platform has enough processing capacity to display the waveforms from the hardware scope in real time with seamless screen updates.

More importantly, if the Arm core can accommodate the display overhead then it can also accommodate the manipulation of the drivers, to customize the capture and retrieval of the signals under test. This means that one of the most powerful and popular, small form factor computing platforms, running the power user's choice of OS, can now acquire a vast range of analogue and digital signals with minimal resources using PicoScope.

PicoScope requires a complete installation of the mono libraries, but by default the BeagleBone Black comes with Debian 7 (Wheezy) installed, which is missing some of the required packages from the armhf repository. The Linux distribution needs to be upgraded to Debian 8 (Jessie) in order for the missing packages to be installed. In the following setup the Board was upgraded to Jessie, and the modified version of PicoScope installed:
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(see http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBon ... ccessories for suitable USB hub)

As an alternative, the Linux drivers when utilized directly give access to more features, and the programming manuals for your PicoScope model (on Windows) give you example code as a guide to working with the Linux drivers, and are on the website (http://www.picotech.com/document).

For further information please contact support@picotech.com
Gerry
Technical Specialist

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