BitScope Micro as Logic Analyzer

Hand tools, soldering irons, scopes, multimeters. Talk about em HERE!

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
Locked
User avatar
deonb
 
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2012 7:26 am

BitScope Micro as Logic Analyzer

Post by deonb »

I just received a BitScope Micro from AdaFruit, and although the scope functions are ok, the logic analyzer seems so bad that I'm wondering if either my unit is defective or I'm doing something wrong.

I'm using BitScope Logic 1.2, 64 bit, on Windows 8. PC is a Core i7-3930K with 32gb memory.

Problems:
a) It restricts me at setting logic capture to a max of 10 MSps. The spec on it says it can do 40 Msps.
b) If I set it to 10Msps, I can capture a max of 602 microseconds. Not milliseconds, microseconds...
c) If I instead change it to 1 second capture, it drops my maximum capture rate to 6 Ksps.

I'm thinking it can't possibly be this bad - with a Salaea you can easily capture > 1 million times that.

So I'm wondering if this is what everybody is experiencing with this scope? Or is someone actually getting to the 40 Msps advertised rate, and/or can get a usable sample rate/length?

i.e. Am I just doing something wrong?

User avatar
adafruit_support_mike
 
Posts: 67446
Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:51 pm

Re: BitScope Micro as Logic Analyzer

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

The BitScope Micro has a 6k sample buffer for a single frame, and that's what controls the rate/duration settings.

If you want to sample and display in real time, you're bound by the size of the buffer. You do have the option of streaming the data to disk for analysis after the capture is done.. basically the same trick a Saleae logic analyzer uses. It looks like the streaming rate is capped at 200ksps though.

WRT the maximum sampling rate, I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions.. the documentation talks about the rate being limited by bandwidth and connections, but I can't find anything with concrete numbers. You'll probably need to talk to the folks at BitScope about that.

Locked
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.

Return to “Tools Tools Tools”