Software upgrade boosts PC instrument performance

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Oct 16, 2002

Pico Technology has developed new software for all three of its flagship PC-based instruments.

Pico Technology has developed new software for all three of its flagship PC-based instruments.

Version 5.08.7 of PicoScope, PicoLog and EnviroMon feature a number of performance boosting upgrades and can be downloaded, as demo or fully functional versions, from the Pico Technology website.

Enhancements include support for the USB-parallel port adapter (PicoScope and PicoLog); support for the EL040 current monitor (EnviroMon); support for posting data on dynamic web pages (EnviroMon); 5Gsample/s equivalent time sampling (PicoScope running on the ADC-212/50 or ADC-212/100); and Linux drivers for all products.

Mike Green, Pico Technology's Managing Director and cofounder states: "We stand by the decision we took when Pico was established that, when purchasing hardware from us, users would not only be supplied with the software free of charge but they would also have access to free software upgrades throughout the life of the product".

The provision of free software upgrades, boosting the performance of hardware products and adding improved measurement capabilities to the 'soft' instruments, protects the users' original investment in the instrumentation.

Traditional bench-top instruments have fixed functionality and depreciate rapidly from the moment they are unpacked.

With PC-based solutions, the enhanced functionality is only a download away.

For example, version 5.08.7 of Pico's software includes the ability to save waveforms as.jpg files in PicoScope, PicoLog and EnviroMon.

This means waveforms can be emailed to colleagues [or posted on a web site] as graphics - the recipient does not need Pico software to view the files.

Green concludes: "PC-based solutions, because they take advantage of the PC's processing power, large colour displays, ability to save to disk, and their access to the Web, are fast becoming more popular than their bench-top counterparts.

Furthermore, the ability to download enhanced functionality is something the average engineer really likes: one day his low-cost PC-based scope is capable of sampling at 100Msample/s, next it's capable of sampling at 5Gsample/s.

How does that make his colleague, who might have just purchased an expensive, fixed-functionality 200Msample/s scope, feel?".