Author: James

You can use Pass/Fail measurements for a number of applications. With this scope family you can set it up to stop or continue when there is a failure, you can have the instrument make a beep or take a screen shot when a failure occurs.  You can create masks with varying error budgets around a target signal, and you can even use the record mode to record all the failures as frames. In this way, you could set up a test over night, let it run, and come back and have all the failure states recorded for you.

• Press “Utility” and then press “PassFail”.
• Set “Enable” to ON.
• To change the mask parameters, press “Mask”, and then “Create”, you can then change the Masks X parameters and Y Parameters and even select if you would like to mask effect the full screen or between two cursor points.  Once this is done press “Create”.
• You can turn on the information display by first pressing “Back” and then press “Information” to turn on the display.
• At this point you can then turn on the mask by pressing “Operate” to begin your testing.

The MSO5000, DS7000 and MSO8000 can all use several different types of cursors to measure the signal.  These include manual, Track, XY and Measure.  Manual cursors allow you to set the X and Y relationship of the cursors to manually measure the signal.  Track cursors allow you to move in the X direction and the instrument keeps the cursor on the signal. XY cursors will be grayed out under normal operations but can be activated and used similar to the manual cursors when the instrument is placed into the XY view.  Finally the measure cursor can not be adjusted by the user but show exactly how the instrument is measuring the signal for a given measurement. 

To perform the measurements below I have connected one of the instrument probes to the probe compensation port so that we are able to view a square wave signal.

• Press “Measure”, press “Remove” and then press “Remove All” Delete all of your previously set measurements, then add “Frequency” as the only measurement. It should display on the screen. Then press “Cursor”, then set mode to “Measure” and turn on “Indicator”. It should now look like this:

The cursor is locked to the zero-crossing showing the time between consecutive waves.

• You can also show the “Track” and “Manual” modes of the “Cursor”.
• Use the “Intensity Knob” to move the cursor position.
• In “Manual” mode note that you can use the soft keys or touchscreen to highlight Cursor A, Cursor B or Cursor AB.  This determines which cursors will change with the “Intensity Knob”.  If you haven’t shown the Recording and Playback yet, this is a great time to show the Sinc or Sine wave signals and you can use the cursors on the recorded data.  That is a great way to do post-analysis of signals.

A reference signal can be created and stored on the scope to compare against later on.  It can either be save and recalled later or shown on the display. To save a reference press “Ref” and then press “SaveToRef” this will save a reference of your signal and display it behind the signal.  If you would like to save multiple references you r will need to change the current reference from Ref1 to Ref#.  Additionally the scaling and position of the reference signal can be changed using the touch screen or the intensity knob and labels, change the color and add details can be changed in the more section of the menu. 

Below I have taken a reference signal of the scopes compensation port and moved it up vertically to show the reference signal.  

Search and Navigation is a great feature to easily move around on long complex signals with multiple trigger events.  The Search and Navigation feature can be used when either an edge, pulse, runt, slop, RS232, I2C or SPI signal is being trigger on and can allow you to select a desired trigger point.

For this example I have channel one on the oscilloscope connected to a SPI data line to show the search and navigation features capabilities.

• Once the probe is connected press the “Auto” button, this will cause the instrument to trigger on the edge of the signal.  It will not be using a serial trigger at this time.
• Change the horizontal scaling so that it reads 50 ms.
• Press “Search” then set the “Threshold” with the “Intensity Knob” so that the orange dotted line is in the middle of the signal.
• Press “Back” and then turn the “Search” ON.
• Notice at the top of the display there are now a large number of white triangles and one red triangle these indicate all of the trigger events that the search and navigation function is recognizing.
• Press the “Stop/Run” button and then turn ON the “MarkTable”.  This will cause the Marker Table to appear on the screen.
• You are able to both scroll and then tap on any of the marked events and then the scope will automatically jump to them and they will then be marked in a red arrow.
• For instance, press on the 11^th event and then change your horizontal scaling to be zoom in on the signal.

To update the firmware push the keypad Utility key followed by System at the bottom right corner of the display:



Now push Help:



You now have the option of updating firmware using a USB memory stick by selecting “Local upgrade” or if you are connected to the LAN online upgrade can be selected.

The logic analyzer allows you to view up to 16 digital channels at once along with group them and label them to make your measurements easier to view.

• To activate the logic analyzer, press the “LA” button or the “L” section at the bottom of the display.  Note that the LA channels will allow you some vertical scaling control within the LA menu, but the horizontal scaling is controlled through the horizontal control knobs.
• Once you have entered the logic analyzer menu you can choose which channels you would like to turn on by pressing the “On/Off” section and then with in there you can either turn on or off each bank of eight channel or you can turn on or off specific channels.  Turn “OFF” channels “D15-D8”
• This is also where you can group your channels together by pressing “Group” and then you can select one of the four groups and then you can select which channels you would like to group together.  Group channels D0-D2 together, and then choose another group and group D5-D7 together.
• Then press “Back” and then press “Group On/Off” to turn on both groups.
• Press the “Back” button.
• To change the channel arrangement, press “Arrange”.  Notice how this will change how the channels will be positioned on the display either from D0-D7 or D7-D0.
• To change the vertical scaling of the channel press “Size” and then select “Large as your desired size.  This will then fill the entire display with the eight channels.
• Press “Label” and then turn “Display” ON. You will now see the channel labels being displayed on the left-hand side of the display, and you can also change these labels.  To change the labels press “Select” and choose your channel, then you can select a predefined label from the “Library” or you can create your own custom label by pressing “Label” and then you type one in with the onscreen keyboard.
• Add a “CLK” label to channel “D0” and then label “D7” with your name.

The signal generator allows you to both create standard waveforms but also allows you to easily create some custom waveforms as well as replicate a captured signal on the oscilloscope.

• To activate the logic analyzer, press either “GI” or “GII” on either the front panel of the instrument or at the bottom of the screen.
• To begin with to select your desired waveform press “Wave” and then you can select form several different built in waveforms as well as load arbitrary waveforms that you either created externally or by copying one of the scope analog channels.
• Within the waveform menu you can set the functions frequency, amplitude, offset, starting phase.
• To modulate, burst or sweep the signal, you will need to press “Settings”, then “Type” and then select your desired advanced feature.

• To create the signal below connect “GI” to “Channel 1” on the instrument with a BNC cable.
• Select “Sinc” as your waveform by pressing “Wave” and then “Sinc”.
• Then change the signals frequency to 10 kHz.  You can do this by either pressing on “Frequency” on the touch screen and then using the pop-up number pad or you can use the keys and then use the intensity knob to change the frequency settings.
• Press “AUTO” and you will see an image like the one below.

(The signal generator on the front of the MSO5000 and the DS7000 is a optional accessory, to activate them you will need to install a license.)