14 November 2023
Category:
Wide-ranging additions include Waveform Management, cross-platform Guided Tests in 14 x languages, Heavy-Duty/Off-Highway Guided Tests, and new Measurements, Math Channels and Serial Decoders.
[St Neots, United Kingdom, November 2023] - Pico Technology, a leading provider of diagnostic measurement equipment, has released a substantial update of its PicoScope 7 Automotive software. The new release, denoted version 7.1, powers Pico Technology’s automotive oscilloscopes and provides a powerful set of measurement tools that are widely used for fault diagnosis by workshop and field maintenance technicians in many industries, further enhancing their productivity and effectiveness.
In a major enhancement to its relaunched Waveform Library, Pico Technology has added Waveform Management. With this new feature, users can quickly discover – with one click – all their locally-saved waveforms and then directly edit them within one place in the software. This removes the users’ need to switch between applications and significantly streamlines their waveform management processes. Waveforms with sufficiently complete vehicle and measurement data are automatically tagged as being ready for upload to the user’s free, cloud-based, ‘My Waveforms’ storage. The user can choose to upload these waveforms one at a time or in bulk, with uploads taking place in the background, leaving users free to carry on with their other diagnostic tasks. Once uploaded, users can enjoy the peace of mind and convenience that comes from having their waveforms securely backed up and available for download anywhere, on any PC having a connected automotive PicoScope.
Pico Technology’s Automotive Product Manager, Barnaby Donohew, believes Pico Technology’s Waveform Library can deliver substantial benefits to a wide range of users stating: “The library could be seen as a resource only for technicians. However, technical support personnel, service managers, dealerships, dealer groups, and claims handlers can all use it to store and share important waveforms for their colleagues’ reference. The library facilitates quicker access to reference data for known good signals and commonly occurring faults. There is no other reference waveform library tool out there that delivers these benefits.”
In addition to Waveform Library upgrades, Pico Technology has completely rebuilt its Guided Test application. Whilst retaining its touch-screen friendly navigation, the application is now also available on macOS and Linux platforms, as well as Windows. This expansion ensures technicians using different operating systems can leverage the powerful Guided Tests and maintain effective diagnostic processes, regardless of their preferred platform. To support the global PicoScope community, Pico Technology has increased the number of supported Guided Test languages to fourteen, including Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and US English. Technicians around the world can navigate and utilize the Guided Tests in their native language, promoting efficiency and ease of use. PicoScope is not just used in Automotive workshops, but by maintenance technicians in many sectors, and Pico Technology has added specific Heavy-Duty and Off-Highway tests to its suite of Guided Tests. The initial set of ten tests covers 24 V battery, exhaust gas treatment, J1939 communication, engine, and hydraulic systems and provides essential information to help PicoScope users diagnose faults in the related industry hardware.
"We are thrilled to introduce these major upgrades to our automotive oscilloscope software" said Phil Service, Automotive Business Development Manager at Pico Technology. "By expanding platform compatibility, language support, and the many new features in PicoScope software, we aim to enhance technicians’ ability to diagnose and troubleshoot with ease and precision. The addition of Heavy-Duty and Off-Highway Guided tests further demonstrates our commitment to delivering comprehensive solutions that address the diverse needs of service and maintenance technicians across all sectors."
The stable release includes new Measurements and Math Channels to help users automatically track the behaviours of specific features across waveforms. The newly supported single-channel Measurement features are Top, Base, Amplitude, Positive Overshoot, and Negative Overshoot, whilst the new cross-channel Measurement features are Delay and Phase. The latter cross-channel Measurements may be especially useful for technicians wanting to calculate timing-related differences between measurements on different channels.
As part of Pico Technology’s commitment to increasing its range of free serial decoding tools, PicoScope 7 Automotive version 7.1 includes a decoder for Single Edge Nibble Transmission Short PWM Code (SENT SPC) communications. SENT SPC protocols are widely used in automotive applications and allow a single master microcontroller to manage up to four slave sensors on a single bus, whereas the original SENT protocol specified a one-to-one master-slave relationship. The new decoder allows users to convert and retrieve a continuously variable signal from the otherwise digital signal so that they can validate the transmitted data.
As well as the headline features, the update includes more than 100 small improvements over the last stable update, many of which have been suggested by PicoScope 7 Automotive’s loyal and enthusiastic users.
Waveform Management, Guided Tests (including the Heavy-Duty and Off-Highway tests), and the new measurement evaluation tools are available for immediate use within PicoScope 7 Automotive software version 7.1, downloadable from https://www.picoauto.com/downloads. Users can gain Waveform Management access after registering for a Pico Automotive support forum account and by using their forum login details (with a suitable Automotive PicoScope connected).
For more information about Pico Technology and their automotive oscilloscopes and software, please visit www.picoauto.com or contact +44 (0) 1480 479161.
