Re: 12 and 16-bit oscilloscopes


Chris Carlen wrote:

Hi:

Picotech seems to be the only supplier of these in low cost <$1500 flavors.

But they are discontinuing their 16-bit version which had 96dB dynamic
range:

http://www.picotech.com/applications/resolution.html

And there USB based 12-bit versions have 72dB rather than the 80dB of
the parallel port versions. I expect they will dump the parallel ports
eventually.

This is a shame. The 16-bit unit is killer for low frequency/audio
amplifier testing and general spectrum analysis. The FFT functions on
8-bit fast DSOs from Tek and Agilent are of limited usefulness due to
meager 70dB range (with averaging).

I wonder if picotech ever fixed the glaring bugs in their software?

My boss bought a ADC-216 when we needed an 50KHz spectrum analyser.
I'd seen picotech equipment before and reccommended buying a spectrum
analyser off ebay instead. When the picotech unit arrived I connected
it in parallel with a conventional scope and tried it out.

I found several serious software bugs. I can't remember them all now.
It has an AC voltmeter function, the spec page claims 1% accuracy. It
worked ok up to about 10KHz and above that the reading were completly
wrong. The hardware is just a fast ADC so the PC software did the task
of adding up the area of the voltage versus time graph.

A picotech support person reproduced the problems I found and promised
to send a new version of the software. Months later after a few
reminders they finally emailed me some software, the same buggy
software I'd already been supplied with the unit.

Bob

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: 12 and 16-bit oscilloscopes
    ... Picotech seems to be the only supplier of these in low cost <$1500 ... But they are discontinuing their 16-bit version which had 96dB dynamic ... the parallel port versions. ... I wonder if picotech ever fixed the glaring bugs in their software? ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: 12 and 16-bit oscilloscopes
    ... Picotech seems to be the only supplier of these in low cost <$1500 flavors. ... But they are discontinuing their 16-bit version which had 96dB dynamic ... the parallel port versions. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
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