New Range of Mixed-Signal PicoScopes

22 September 2014
Category: Oscilloscopes

The new PicoScope 3000D Series Mixed-Signal Oscilloscopes (MSOs) are ideal for engineers working on a diverse range of embedded systems. These compact USB-connected devices form a complete portable test system, with two or four analog channels and sixteen digital channels as well as a built-in arbitrary waveform generator.

“We have completely redesigned the PicoScope 3000 Series MSOs,” explained Managing Director Alan Tong. “The key specifications—sampling rate, buffer size and display update rate—have all been improved, while we’ve retained the benefit of USB-powering that makes PicoScopes so much more convenient and portable than their traditional benchtop equivalents.”

The PicoScope 3000D Series MSOs are available with analog bandwidths from 60 MHz to 200 MHz. Maximum digital input frequency is 100 MHz, equivalent to a data rate of 200 Mb/s (5 ns pulse width) on each channel. All models come with a USB 3.0 interface and are fully compatible with USB 2.0, giving high performance and fast update rates with both port types. Like all PicoScopes, they display waveforms in a resizable window on your PC’s screen, giving you an uncluttered space for multiple high-resolution analog and digital traces. It’s easy to save, share and analyze waveforms, with all of your PC’s networking, storage and processing facilities instantly available. The deep memory buffers of 128 to 512 megasamples, much larger than other scopes costing several times more, allow long captures even at fast real-time sampling rates of up to 1 gigasample per second. Hardware-accelerated data processing maintains smooth and rapid display updates even with very large capture sizes.

The PicoScope 3000D Series offers a comprehensive suite of advanced features as standard, including math channels, automatic measurements with statistics, spectrum analysis and color persistence display mode. Also built in are advanced digital triggering with pulse width, window, dropout, channel logic, digital pattern and other qualifiers, mask limit testing and alarms. Serial decoding supports SPI, I2C, I2S, RS-232/UART, CAN, LIN and FlexRay protocols on up to 20 analog and digital channels, even with a mixture of protocols at the same time. All these features are included in the purchase price, not expensive optional extras as on many competing products. A free SDK is available for developing applications in popular programming languages such as C, Microsoft Visual Basic® and Excel VBA, and National Instruments LabVIEW®, with example code included.

The PicoScope 3000D Series MSOs are available now from Pico distributors worldwide and from www.picotech.com, priced from only £649 ($786 or €1071) for the 2-channel 60 MHz model. This includes all of the features mentioned above, plus analog probes, digital test cable and clips, and a 5-year warranty.