Taking Best Advantage of Oscilloscopes' Long Memory

Figure 1: Maintaining the maximum sample rate over more
timebase settings is possible with long memory

Two very important considerations when choosing a digital oscilloscope are the length of the acquisition memory and the amount of RAM available for processing of the raw data. Note that acquisition memory and RAM are not the same things, but they are still both important. The amount of acquisition memory often determines the fidelity with which an oscilloscope can record a signal. But that's only the first step; it's the instrument's processing horsepower is the key to finding signal abnormalities and characterizing circuit performance.

Debugging I2C Buses in Embedded Systems

Figure 1: Debugging of I²C on a Teledyne LeCroy
WaveSurfer 3000 oscilloscope

Embedded systems became ubiquitous decades ago and are now found in everything from mobile devices to vehicles to the traffic lights that control their movements. These days, they're typically based on microcontrollers and perform some specific task(s) within a larger system, such as controlling your car's ABS system. They may or may not have any sort of user interface, and can range widely in terms of complexity and functionality.

Oscilloscope Basics: History Mode

Figure 1: Initial setup of WaveSurfer 3000 with a
2-MHz pulse waveform fed into Channel 1

Back in the day, one of the biggest deficiencies of early digital oscilloscopes was their lack of memory depth. A memory of 500 or 1000 points was about as good as it got, and this didn't provide much in the way of detailed waveform capture. Today's instruments are very different animals; for example, Teledyne LeCroy's recently introduced WaveSurfer 3000 oscilloscopes offer up to 10 Mpoints of memory per channel.

Video: WaveSurfer 3000 and the MAUI User Interface

Oscilloscopes are often an engineer's best friend, but that can change depending on how easy or difficult a given instrument is to use. Sure, the oscilloscope's capabilities and technical specs are critical, but if the machine is difficult or non-intuitive to interact with, the user ends up wasting time figuring out what should be simple.