PicoScope® 3000 Series PC oscilloscopes and MSOs Power, portability and performance 2 or 4 analog channels MSO models with 16 digital channels Up to 200 MHz analog bandwidth Up to 512 MS capture memory 1 GS/s real-time sampling 100 000 waveforms per second Built-in arbitrary waveform generator USB 3.0 connected and powered Automatic measurements • Mask limit testing Advanced triggers • Math channels Spectrum analyzer • Serial decoding Free technical support and updates PicoScope, PicoLog and PicoSDK software included 5-year warranty www.picotech.com Introduction The PicoScope 3000 Series PC oscilloscopes are small, light and portable, while offering the high-performance specifications required by engineers in the lab or on the move. These oscilloscopes offer 2 or 4 analog channels, plus an additional 16 digital channels on the mixed-signal (MSO) models. The flexible, high-quality display options enable you to view and analyze each signal in fine detail. All models come with a built-in function generator and arbitrary waveform generator (AWG). Operating together with the PicoScope 6 software, these devices offer an ideal, cost-effective package for many applications, including embedded systems design, research, test, education, service, and repair. PicoScope 3000 Series High bandwidth, high sampling rate, deep memory Despite their compact size and low cost, there is no compromise on performance, with input bandwidths up to 200 MHz. This bandwidth is matched by a real-time sampling rate of up to 1 GS/s, enabling detailed display of high frequencies. For repetitive signals, the maximum effective sampling rate can be boosted to 10 GS/s using equivalent time sampling (ETS) mode. With a sampling rate of at least five times the input bandwidth, PicoScope 3000 Series oscilloscopes are well equipped to capture high-frequency signal detail. Many other oscilloscopes have high maximum sampling rates, but without deep memory they cannot sustain these rates on long timebases. The PicoScope 3000 Series offers up to 512 million samples capture memory, enabling the PicoScope 3406D MSO to sample at 1 GS/s all the way down to 50 ms/div (500 ms total capture time). Managing all this data calls for some powerful tools. There’s a set of zoom buttons, plus an overview window that lets you zoom and reposition the display by simply dragging with the mouse or touchscreen. Zoom factors of several million are possible. Other tools such as the waveform buffer navigator, mask limit testing, serial decoding, DeepMeasure and hardware acceleration work with the deep memory, making the PicoScope 3000 series some of the most capable oscilloscopes on the market. PicoScope 3000 Series Application examples Testing on the move The PicoScope 3000 Series oscilloscopes slip easily into a laptop bag, so you don’t need to carry bulky benchtop instruments to perform on-site troubleshooting. Being powered via a USB connection, you can simply plug your PicoScope into your laptop and use it for measuring wherever you are. The PC connection also makes saving and sharing your data quick and easy: in a matter of seconds you can save your scope traces to review later, or attach the complete data file to an email for analysis by other engineers away from the test site. As PicoScope 6 is free to download by anyone, colleagues can use the full capabilities of the software, such as serial decoding and spectrum analysis, without needing an oscilloscope themselves. Embedded debugging You can test and debug a complete signal-processing chain using a PicoScope 3406D MSO. Use the built-in arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) to inject single-shot or continuous analog signals. The response of your system can then be observed in both the analog domain, using the four 200 MHz input channels, and in the digital domain with 16 digital inputs at up to 100 MHz. Follow the analog signal through the system while simultaneously using the built-in serial decoding function to view the output of an I2C or SPI ADC. If your system drives a DAC in response to the analog input changing, you can decode the I2C or SPI communication to that as well as its analog output. This can all be performed simultaneously using the 16 digital and 4 analog channels. Using the deep 512 MS capture memory, you can capture the complete response of your system without sacrificing the sampling rate, and zoom in on the captured data to find glitches and other points of interest. PicoScope 3000 Series PicoScope features Advanced display PicoScope 6 software dedicates the majority of the display area to the waveform, ensuring that the maximum amount of data is visible at all times. The size of the display is only limited by the size of your computer’s monitor, so even with a laptop, the viewing area is much bigger, with much higher resolution, than that of a benchtop scope. With such a large display area available, you can create a customizable split-screen display and view multiple channels or different views of the same signal at the same time – the software can even show multiple oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer views at once. Each view has separate zoom, pan and filter settings for ultimate flexibility. You can control the PicoScope 6 software using a mouse, touchscreen or customizable keyboard shortcuts. PicoScope 3000 Series Digital triggering architecture In 1991, Pico Technology pioneered the use of digital triggering using the actual digitized data. Traditionally, digital oscilloscopes have used an analog trigger architecture based on comparators, which can cause time and amplitude errors that cannot always be calibrated out. Additionally, the use of comparators can often limit the trigger sensitivity at high bandwidths and can create a long trigger rearm delay. Pico’s technique of fully digital triggering reduces trigger errors and allows our oscilloscopes to trigger on the smallest signals, even at the full bandwidth, so you can set trigger levels and hysteresis with high precision and resolution. The digital triggering architecture also reduces the rearm delay. Combined with the segmented memory, this enables you to use rapid triggering to capture 10 000 waveforms in 6 ms. Advanced triggers The PicoScope 3000 Series offers an industry-leading set of advanced triggers including pulse width, windowed and dropout. The digital trigger available on MSO models allows you to trigger the scope when any or all of the 16 digital inputs match a user-defined pattern. ouY can specify a condition for each channel individually, or set up a pattern for all channels at once using a hexadecimal or binary value. You can also use the logic trigger to combine the digital trigger with an edge or window trigger on any of the analog inputs, for example to trigger on data values in a clocked parallel bus. PicoScope 3000 Series Spectrum analyzer The spectrum view plots amplitude against frequency and is ideal for finding noise, crosstalk or distortion in signals. PicoScope uses a fast Fourier transform (FFT) spectrum analyzer, which (unlike a traditional swept spectrum analyzer) can display the spectrum of a single, non-repeating waveform. With up to a million points, PicoScope’s FFT has excellent frequency resolution and a low noise floor. With a click of a button, you can display a spectrum plot of the active channels, with a maximum frequency of up to 200 MHz. A comprehensive range of settings gives you control over the number of spectrum bins, window functions, scaling (including log/log) and display mode (instantaneous, average or peak-hold). You can display multiple spectrum views alongside oscilloscope views of the same data. A comprehensive set of automatic frequency-domain measurements can be added to the display, including THD, THD+N, SNR, SINAD and IMD. You can apply mask limit testing to a spectrum and can even use the AWG and spectrum mode together to perform swept scalar network analysis. PicoScope 3000 Series Persistence mode PicoScope’s persistence mode options allow you to see old and new data superimposed, making it easy to spot glitches and dropouts and estimate their relative frequency – useful for displaying and interpreting complex analog signals such as video waveforms and amplitude-modulated signals. Color-coding and intensity-grading show which areas are stable and which are intermittent. Choose between Analog Intensity, Digital Color and Fast display modes or create your own custom setup. An important specification to understand when evaluating oscilloscope performance, especially in persistence mode, is the waveform update rate, which is expressed as waveforms per second. While the sampling rate indicates how frequently the oscilloscope samples the input signal within one waveform or cycle, the waveform capture rate refers to how quickly an oscilloscope acquires waveforms. Oscilloscopes with high waveform capture rates provide better visual insight into signal behavior and dramatically increase the probability that the oscilloscope will quickly capture transient anomalies such as jitter, runt pulses and glitches – that you may not even know exist. The PicoScope 3000 Series’ HAL3 hardware acceleration means that, in fast persistence mode, update rates of up to 100 000 waveforms per second are achievable. PicoScope 3000 Series Arbitrary waveform and function generator All PicoScope 3000 Series oscilloscopes have a built-in function generator and arbitrary waveform generator (AWG). The function generator can produce sine, square, triangle and DC level waveforms, and many more besides, while the AWG allows you to import waveforms from data files or create and modify them using the built-in graphical AWG editor. As well as level, offset and frequency controls, advanced options allow you to sweep over a range of frequencies. Combined with the advanced spectrum mode, with options including peak hold, averaging and linear/log axes, this creates a powerful tool for testing amplifier and filter responses.