100- and 200-MHz handheld DSO/DMMs add color displays

Fluke Corp has introduced its first ScopeMeter test tools with color displays (Picture). Changing from a monochrome LCD to a color one wasn't the simple task that the uninitiated might imagine. Battery life between charges is a key specification of handheld electronic devices, and every EE knows that color displays consume substantially more power than their monochrome brethren. Fluke's inclusion of a color display without reducing the four-hour battery life required the company to design a full-custom IC. Fluke's engineers increased the units' display-update rate by a factor of seven, making the instruments substantially more responsive. Moreover, the two-channel units retain less-than-$3000 prices; the 200-MHz-bandwidth, 2.5G-sample/sec 199C costs $2995, and the 100-MHz-bandwidth, 1G-sample/sec 196C costs $2695. Both of the C models' prices are $400 higher than those of the monochrome equivalents.

With barely perceptible improvements, such as a 20% increase in the number of pixels across the screen, the new units do not change the ScopeMeter tools' familiar user interface, which is as intuitive as is possible without the use of knobs. A feature most users favor is the instruments' sophisticated ability to find, without user help, the optimal display settings, such as sweep speed, sampling rate, sensitivity, and trigger conditions, although users who want to take full control are free to do so.

Fluke has also updated the PC-based software that ships with the units. The package allows downloading of data to a PC via the ScopeMeters' optically isolated RS-232 interface and performing a variety of analysis functions. The new version supports the instruments' color displays. Despite the data files' somewhat larger size to accommodate the color, the software operation is faster than that of the previous version. Part of the reason is that adding color did not increase the file size nearly as much as you might expect. Fluke's implementation displays only eight colors, even though the display is capable of many more. For example, rather than use color grading, which in benchtop scopes has become a staple for indicating how often various pixels are illuminated, the color-display ScopeMeters use intensity grading, which many users find more intuitive.

Fluke Corp, 1-888-492-7541, www.fluke.com.