The OpenScope is a pretty sweet tool! Our office now has a full-featured oscilloscope, which takes up a tiny amount of space, and allows me to easily take video or screenshots of the signals I'm capturing.
This scope actually has a solid getting-started guide, which takes you all the way to generating a waveform on the board and simultaneously reading it. But I couldn't easily find an example taking a sample from a separate physical source, so here it is!
Quick video version; text below:
Install all the things!Just follow the instructions here – my guess is that the page will be updated if anything changes, while this tutorial will remain pretty much static:
- Download the Digilent Agent software (Mac, Windows, Linux) and install it.
- Open it so it's running. This app allows the Waveforms Live website to take readings from your USB port.
- Plug the OpenScope into your computer, using a Micro to "regular" USB (USB A) cable.
- Open waveformslive.com in your browser; you don't need an account or anything, which is nice.
- Follow the instructions to add the scope as a new device, using "Agent" as the type. You may need to update the firmware, and you'll definitely need to calibrate the device, for which you'll need a couple of male-male jumper wires. But this part is quite well-documented within the Waveforms Live interface itself. You don't need to save the calibration information; in fact, it's saved onto the device itself – so if you connect it to a new computer, you won't need to go through all that again.
- Scrolling down, you'll find you need to connect it to WiFi. This is also fairly painless. I used the default settings, and everything went fine.
- Done!
Now, click on your newly created device, and you can go through the tutorials and stuff (bottom-right buttons in Waveforms Live), or go straight to...
Take a reading- Plug your source into a black wire (GND) and the solid orange wire (AI2+/OSC2 (2+), also known as an analog input). – In my case, I used a fun little electric piano PCB, and hooked up the buzzer's contacts to the scope.
- Make the signal go! (E.g., turn on the piano and hit a key)
- Click "Single" (at the top of the right sidebar) to capture a slice of time.
- Wooo! Pretty waveforms! I was surprised that these didn't look like pure sine, square, or sawtooth waves, but rather a couple frequencies mixed together. Real interesting!
My computer occasionally has issues seeing USB devices; I believe it's because I am on a MacBook Pro that has only USB-C / USB3 ports. I am still able to access the OpenScope on an older machine, with USB2 ports, even when the newer Mac is refusing to see it plugged into the port.
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