Re: USB-scopes, anyone?

[Richard Farnsworth <rif@aps.anl.gov>]

At my previous light source we had cheap rack mounted, 'no front panel' Scopes, although they were Ethernet based. A vaguely decent API was provided for Windows and Linux too.  
The problems we had were that they could not co-exist on a network with broadcast traffic - they were intended for standalone bench use. In order to make them work at all, we had to have special VLAN segments just for the CRAPscopes or BITCRAPscopes as I recall the physicists calling them (Real name suppressed for libel reasons). 

They weren't that good as scopes either from all accounts. They are a lot cheaper for good reasons - I recommend you bench check the true bandwidth and sampling specifications before writing a lot of code.

Sorry this doesn't help directly, but here be dragons. P.M. me for more information

Cheers
Richard


----- Original Message -----
From: "Benjamin Franksen" <benjamin.franksen@helmholtz-berlin.de>
To: tech-talk@aps.anl.gov
Sent: Thursday, February 3, 2011 6:32:30 AM
Subject: USB-scopes, anyone?

We are interested in evaluating USB-scopes (rack-mounted, no front panel)
for continuous signal measurements, as these are a lot cheaper than regular
scopes (with display and front panel controls). However, it is unclear
whether remote access to such scopes necessarily means using proprietary
(vendor supplied) software under Windows. Ideally, we would like to have an
asyn driver for USB (or some more specific protocol over USB), and then use
stream device support on top of that. Failing that, we would have to explore
other possibilities, like running an IOC on a Windows machine with a special
device support that talks with some (proprietary) vendor library.

Has anyone already done something like that? If yes, which
manufacturers/devices are you using? Has anyone experience with programming
USB? Could the protocol be reverse engineered?

Cheers
Ben

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-- 
Richard Farnsworth
Controls Group leader
Phone 2-7710