Collaborate Disseminate
Last time, I assembled a Python object representing a Rigol oscilloscope. Manipulating the object communicates with the scope over the network. But my original goal was to build a little …read more Continue reading Scope GUI Made Easier
Tired of squinting at the small numbers on the oscilloscope display, [Alfred] aka [Gaze@] decided to take matters into his own hands and wrote yet another tool to remotely view …read more Continue reading Yet Another Rigol DS1054Z Viewer
Do you know how to harvest data from your bench tools, like plotting bandwidth from your oscilloscope with a computer? It’s actually pretty easy. Many bench tools make this easy using a standard protocol with USB to make the connection.
In the previous installment of this article we talked about the National Instruments VISA (Virtual Instrument Software Archetecture) standard for communicating with your instruments from a computer, and introduced its Python wrapper with a simple demonstration using a Raspberry Pi. We’ll now build on that modest start by describing a more useful application for a Raspberry Pi and a digital …read more
Continue reading Controlling Your Instruments From A Computer: Doing Something Useful
There was a time when instruments sporting a GPIB connector (General Purpose Interface Bus) for computer control on their back panels were expensive and exotic devices, unlikely to be found on the bench of a hardware hacker. Your employer or university would have had them, but you’d have been more likely to own an all-analogue bench that would have been familiar to your parents’ generation.
The affordable instruments in front of you today may not have a physical GPIB port, but the chances are they will have a USB port or even Ethernet over which you can exert the same …read more
Continue reading How to Control Your Instruments From A Computer: It’s Easier Than You Think