Trying to take oscilloscope voltage data

[crossrulz]

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@billko wrote:

My best advice is to find someone who knows LabVIEW well and go over the Oscope manual and try to figure this out.  😞

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Better advice is to find somebody who understands how oscilloscopes work.  From there, programs are fairly simple to do.  You just need to know the step-by-step of how to setup to oscilloscope first.

[sahurley]

The oscilloscope is set-up and working fine, it just can't take data.  You can manually save the output to a flashdrive, but you can't see how the curve changes constantly.

[sahurley]

*Save data, it is taking data.

[RTSLVU]

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@sahurley wrote:

The oscilloscope is set-up and working fine, it just can't take data.  You can manually save the output to a flashdrive, but you can't see how the curve changes constantly.

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Do you want to stream the waveform to your computer and save all that data?

Or do you want to take a single sweep, perform measurments (voltage, freq, etc) on that catpure and save the waverform plus measurment data? 

[sahurley]

I want to stream the waveform onto the computer and save all the data.

[RTSLVU]

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@sahurley wrote:

I want to stream the waveform onto the computer and save all the data.

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Oh my, that is a lot easier said than done, even for experienced LabVIEW programmers.

That's a lot of data delivered at a high rate.

I would suggest you start with the "Producer Consumer" architecture and TDMS streaming.

[sahurley]

Would the other way still give the voltage values versus time?

[RTSLVU]

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@sahurley wrote:

Would the other way still give the voltage values versus time?

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That depends on your scope. I have not used that exact one but I have used LeCroy Waverunners. On these scopes you can set up 8 measurements for the scope to take on a waveform ( Volts P-P, Freq, Risetime, Slew rate, etc) . So what I do is set up the scope to take the measurements I want, do a single sweep and transfer the measurements to a spread sheet and a screen actpure of the waveform to my computer.

Would that work for you?

[sahurley]

Unfortunately, I don't think that'll work for this because I need to have it record how many pulses I'm getting over a course of (around) 8 hours.

[NIquist]

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@sahurley wrote:

I want to stream the waveform onto the computer and save all the data.

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Ahh.  You are trying to use an oscilloscope for a long-term data logger which is not at all what they are designed for.  Your scope only has a limited amount of very fast memory and it is inherently designed to fill that memory based on its own internal triggering system.  Since it is trigger-based it is a very poor choice for collecting and storing data seamlessly and since it has no real-time clock, you will need to do all the coding required to "connect the dots" and figure out how to relate the data to real world time units.  

Check out this Tektronix FAQ for more info on the limits of using a scope this way.:  http://www.tek.com/support/faqs/can-i-use-my-oscilloscope-do-data-logging

Is there some reason you're using a scope for this rather than a DAQ card?