“MSO models offer engineers the ability to simultaneously capture and analyse both analogue and digital signals, perfect for mixed-signal designs such as microcontroller or FPGA-based systems,” according to the company.
Minimum detectable pulse width on the digital channels is 5ns, and maximum input frequency is 100MHz (200Mbit/s) – while maximum sampling on a single analogue channel is up to 5Gsample/s.
If the digital channels are enabled with up to two analogue channels, they run at 1.25Gsample/s, dropping to 625Msample/s if three or four analogue channels are enabled – this is in analogue 8bit mode, and some rates reduce if the analogue channels are switched to 10bit mode.
The 200kΩ (± 2%) 8pF (±2pF) input channels are brought out to a 10 x 2way 2.54mm pitch connector, and are treated as two separate 8bit ports, each with its own selectable logic threshold levels – the choice is TTL, CMOS, ECL, PECL or user-defined across ±5V.
Threshold accuracy is better than ±350mV, including less than ±250mV hysteresis.
Input dynamic range is between 500mV peak-to-peak and ±20V – with input protection rated to ±50V dc or ac peak, at up to 100kHz.
Slew rates down to 10V/µs are acceptable and digital channel-to-channel skew is typically 2ns.
For continuous streaming into a host PC using the company’s PicoScope 7 GUI software, a USB 3.0 link can carry up to one 8bit port of digital data at up to ~50Msample/s (~10Msample/s USB 2.0) – custom interfaces created using the company’s SDK can reach ~300Msample/s, it claims.
Without additional payment, PicoScope software includes decoding for 10BASE-T1S, 1-Wire, ARINC 429, BroadRReach, CAN, CAN FD, CAN J1939, CAN XL, DALI, DCC, Manchester, differential Manchester,DMX512, Ethernet 10BASE- T, 100BASE-TX, RS232/UART, Extended UART, FlexRay, I2C, I2S, I3C Basic v1.0, LIN, MIL-STD-1553, MODBUS ASCII and RTU, NMEA-0183, parallel bus, PMBus, PS/2, PSI5 (Sensor), quadrature, SBS Data, SENT fast, slow and SPC, SMBus, SPI-MISO/MOSI, SPI-SDIO, USB 1.0 and 1.1, and Wind Sensor protocol data.
Alongside the 500MHz version, 3417E MSO is a similar 350MHz mixed-signal instrument, whose digital channels have the same performance.
Find the 500MHz 3418E MSO and 350MHz 3417E MSO on this web page, along with their analogue-only cousins.
