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Software customizes DSOs, simplifies on-scope data analysis
By Dan Strassberg -- EDN, 11/13/2003
Late last year, when Agilent Technologies added the 20G-sample/sec/channel 54850 series to its Infiniium line of digital oscilloscopes, the company, which had been the first to market Windows-based DSOs, finally allowed its new scopes to run the customer’s choice of Windows-based software applications—something competitors had done years earlier (Picture). Infiniium users were thus able to use their scopes for analyzing as well as capturing data. Using a separate PC for data analysis was no longer necessary. Nevertheless, the company continued to restrict older members of the Infiniium line to running the scopes’ one preinstalled—DSO—application.
Now, Agilent is offering an upgrade that opens previously shipped members of the 54830 Infiniium series to the entire world of Windows software. The upgrade, model N5383A, costs $495 when you purchase it separately, but through December 2003, customers can get it at no additional cost when they purchase a second software package, the $795 E2699A My Infiniium instrument-customization package, whose operation requires that the N5383A be installed in the scope.
The upgrade is unnecessary in all 54850 and 54830 instruments that Agilent is now shipping. These scopes already contain the equivalent software, which adds such features as support for Agilent’s InfiniiMax probes, highpass and lowpass waveform filters, an intensity-graded variable-persistence mode, support for simultaneous use of two monitors, a bus-state mode for mixed-signal scopes, and the ability to simultaneously store waveforms from all channels. Because the oldest Infiniium scopes—those in the 54820 series—don’t run Microsoft’s (www.microsoft.com) Windows XP Professional operating system, a part of the N5383A that Agilent says Infiniium scopes must have to operate stably in an open-software environment, these units cannot accept the N5383A upgrade or the My Infiniium package.
My Infiniium lets users easily configure the scope’s user interface and customize the menus; Agilent calls the feature eGUI (extensible graphical user interface). Although the N5383A upgrade is all that an Infiniium scope needs for compatibility with such applications as Agilent’s VEE and the MathWorks’ (www.mathworks.com) MatLab, My Infiniium tightly integrates such applications with the scope. With My Infiniium, pressing a single button beneath the scope’s screen invokes an application of your choice without your having to leave—or even minimize—the scope application, something you normally must do if you haven’t installed the My Infiniium package.
Agilent’s announcement includes several other items, including the $3995 E2681A EzJIT jitter-analysis package, which targets embedded-system developers and two more comprehensive jitter-analysis packages licensed from Amherst Systems (www.amherst-systems.com).
Agilent Technologies, 1-800-452-4844, www.agilent.com.
