RoadTest: Cool Tools: Multicomp Pro PC USB Oscilloscope
Author: embeddedguy
Creation date:
Evaluation Type: Test Equipment
Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True
What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?: Any USB or PC based oscilloscope
What were the biggest problems encountered?: Normal testing procedure was easy. But to generate complex signals to test with the scope was a bit trivial.
Detailed Review:
At first, I would like to say thanks to Element14 for providing me the product to do the roadtest. I received the packet with all the necessary parts. The packet was with Oscilliscope, CD for installation, 2 Probes and manuals. (See Pictures.)
The Multicomp Pro PC USB Oscilloscope is an Oscilloscope. Oscilloscopes are used to analyse signals. They have various application e.g. Signal analysis, peak detection, rice time, max.min, Values of signal. They are found in most laboratories. Normally, in the lab they are not PC based like this one but has screen to analyse different signals. There are various parameters to look while selecting an oscilloscope.
The first step to be able to use this scope is to install the necessary device driver. There is windows software with GUI is available with driver in a separate folder. First you have to plug in the scope to one of the USB of your PC. The device will appear first in device manager in /Other devices section with unknown device. Then install the driver from the computer by right clicking the scope and selecting right driver by browsing for it. The scope will appear in USB section once the driver is installed successfully. (More details are in user guide with pictures). Now, as soon as you open the GUI software you will see a black window with two signals for two channels.
To first test weather the scope software and driver is installed correctly and hardware works okey, I created a simple arduino code to generate a square-wave for 1 second ON-OFF interval. The .gif below shows 1 second square wave on the channel 1. By selecting proper devisions on the channel it was obvious that this simple program output works well on oscilloscope.
void setup() {
// put your setup code here, to run once:
pinMode(30, OUTPUT);
}
void loop() {
// put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
digitalWrite(30,HIGH);
delay(1);
digitalWrite(30,LOW);
delay(1);
}
The next part was to check 40Khz signal on the oscilloscope. 40Khz signal is used quite often in ultrasound transducers. The following picture shows the measure window with various checklist of available functions which comes with this scope.There are so many variable as you can see. Once you tick specific variable you will see the value in the display in bottom of the window. I have in total 4 variables in the display.
The scope also has possibility to plot FFT signal. FFT converts time domain signal to frequency domain. It is a better choice in some cases when specific signal's frequency component need to be analysed. It plots frequancy on the X-aaxis and amplitude on the Y-axis. The scope takes sample of time domain values and converts them to frequency domain. It mathematically calculates the values from time domain to frequency domain.
I had 40Khz square wave. The images below shows the FFT of square wave. In the signal there is a peak at f(40Khz), 3f(120Khz) and 5f(200Khz).
Top Comments
embeddedguy Thanks for mentioning the FFT ability of the oscilloscope. It reminded me that I wanted to try that function.
The scope basically takes samples of time domain signal and calculates the FFT mathamatically.
What you can see in the .gif is that it has a peak at 40KHz and also other smaller peaks at 3f and 5f as shown…