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Product category: Board-Level Instruments
News Release from: Pico Technology | Subject: PicoScope 5000 series
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 22 June 2007

Interface software aids PC scope
integration

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Application programming interface allows users to write their own software for PicoScope 5000 series PC oscilloscopes.

PC oscilloscopes specialist Pico Technology has developed a new application programming interface that allows users to write their own software for its PicoScope 5000 series instruments The PicoScope 5000 series are Pico's top-performing scopes, with the world's fastest real-time sampling rate, for a USB PC scope, of 1Gsample/s

This, together with a probe-tip bandwidth of 250MHz, makes them ideal for use with high-speed analogue and digital signals.

The scope's huge memory buffer - either 32 or 128Msample depending on the version - ensures that the high sampling rate can be used on a wide range of timebases without losing detail.

The new application programming interface lets users go beyond the features of the PicoScope 6 software to build their own high-speed data acquisition applications based on the PicoScope 5000 scopes.

Using the high-speed streaming mode built in to the driver, users can log data at up to 6Msample/s directly to disk, or they can use block mode to capture data within the scope at the full 1Gsample/s rate.

The software also allows users to control the scope's built-in arbitrary waveform generator and set up advanced triggering modes such as pulsewidth and interval triggers.

The API functions are exported in standard C format, which is recognised by most programming languages including C, C++, Visual Basic, Delphi and LabView.

Programming examples are provided for all these languages, and the whole package can be downloaded free of charge from the Pico website as part of the PicoScope 6 software.

Alan Tong, Managing Director of Pico Technology, says: "Our PicoScope 5000 series scopes are already leading the PC oscilloscope market, but we want to take them further".

"By releasing this API, we are giving our customers the ability to build their own custom software based on our products".

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