Hi, it's product review time. We're going to take a look at the new digilent analog Discovery 3 because you've seen the analog Discovery 2. It's incredibly popular, especially with schools and stuff like that could be I Don't know if you're I've been out of school for quite some time, so uh, let me know. Is this like the de facto standard in schools now? Um, the software is killer for this thing so but wouldn't surprise me.

uh, it has lots of popularity. It is, uh, cheaper if you're a student. By the way, this is the old analog uh Discovery too. This is National instruments Edition I Don't think it's any, uh, different to the regular one, but did you let have sent in the new analog Discovery three thank you very much.

I've had this uh for quite a while now, but it was only released like two weeks ago or something I believe. so we're going to check it out. It is very nice so we get some pin headers. we get a bunch of uh pin leads for it and one of the big changes is it's USBC now instead of USB a micro USB So there you go.

There's our pin out diagram and that's all she wrote. Oh for those sticker aficionados. Like a bought one. Beautiful.

So um yeah. nice green case. Don't know if it comes in any more fruity colors, but yeah, um USB C Now five Volt R DC They have removed the headphone uh Jack which apparently like you can get like an additional board to plug into it or something if you want the headphone interface. I Guess they took that out for some reason.

Um, and it's just the same exactly the same interface as before except the labels are now on here instead of on top here. I Don't I like on top, they should have duplicated those on top I Think yeah, it's never here nor there on the bottom. It's got nice rubber baby buggy bumpers. So yeah, so that's an improvement.

It really doesn't move around much on at least on any static mat like that, whereas this one was significantly easier to move around. so it's bigger and more better. Now if we actually go over and take a look, we'll link these in we can have a look. Uh, it is 379 Yankee bucks.

Yes, it is pricey for what you get. I mean like it's basically just an Fpga and a big ass 14-bit analog to digital converter. and DAC um, it's You know it's not 379 dollars worth of Hardware But as you'll see, um, all the value of this is in. most of the value is in the software.

The waveforms are software. so anyway, it is Backward Compatible Um, adjustable system clock now whereas it was 100 megahertz? Uh, before. Um, so now you can adjust it from 50 to 125. That might be useful for some applications.

Um, for you know, if you're matching sample rates or whatever, all all instruments are available in every configuration. No more losing access to digital I o So it's basically got a bigger and better Fpga in it that allows you to do a lot of extra stuff at the same time whereas before, there were limitations. Now there's lots less limitations. Oh No Limit Don't know if they're I'm not gonna say there's none, but anyway USB uh C I Don't think, um, it gets you any faster throughput I think it's just a USBC interface is it? It's got the same 14-bit R resolution differential Um analog to digital converter 9 megahertz bandwidth minus three DB uh 0.16 bit resolution sampling a quarter of the system clock.

maximum sample buffer has doubled from 16 to 32k. that's part of the Fpga difference and Hardware Hardware Fur filters are for each input, so it's got Hardware filters Now instead of software inputs, we might be able to demonstrate that that would be really cool. so you can feed your signal in there. it can do Hardware filtering and then you can output it straight to the DAC.

That's uh, it's pretty versatile stuff and apparently you can sample it straight in, whereas before you had to, if you wanted to know what you were outputting, you had to use one of the channels to feedback or something like that. Anyway, two single-ended analog outputs plus minus 5 volts 14 bit resolution exactly the same. They're doubled that 16 digital I O's are all still the same I Think though they have removed the 1.8 volt Lvcmos. uh though, but uh, plus five volt minus 5 volt.

Power supplies are um, 2.4 watts each. but I think you have to use the external uh plug Packy for that. And there's a very comprehensive article here written by um James Colvin who's one of the developers of all the apps and the reference things and whatnot. So they have actually reduced the price from 399 Yankee bucks to 379 uh bucks.

and I won't go through. but they've basically upgraded from a Spartan 6 fpga to a Spartan seven. Um, inside. we'll open it up and we'll have a quick squeeze.

But there's a whole ton of other stuff that you can do in this new one with the new Fpga that you couldn't do in the previous Spartan six. So it's basically uh, they've lowered the price a little bit and um, yeah, it's it. Looks like it can do do some really like really versatile stuff Anyway, Um, let's go back to the videotape. Let's take this apart.

now. while I'm taking these apart, let's talk about the price. 379 Yankee bucks which seems crazy I think it's about 250 if you're a student or something. Um, that, don't quote me on that.

Anyway, there is a student discount for that thing. now. for that sort of price, you can buy a proper four Channel desktop scope like you can get get your Rye gold. Don't know if you can get the sequence that cheap can you, but it's pretty close, right? It's basically the same price as a desktop scope.

So why would you buy this sort of like dinky looking thing with no real, um, like front end? You know it's got no like, doesn't have a proper front end. uh in it. Why would you buy this instead of buying a real bench top scope? Well, and it's only got like nine mag bandwidth. There's bandwidth, isn't you know? 150 Meg 100 Meg or anything like that.

Um, why would you buy that? Not only does it have a dual 14 bit ADC it's also got the Uh 14 bit DAC as well. So so you can output signals and as we'll see that all the value is in the software, this can do a ton of stuff you simply can't do on a benchtop scope. but it is no replacement like you shouldn't even compare these two. You can't compare this to a bench top Skype it's horses for courses.

Um, how do I get this bloody thing on? Proudly designed by digilit Inc in Romania and the United States of America I think it's made in China though. Uh, secret squirrels screws under there. Unbelievable. All right.

Oh, we're in. Look at this. Okay, that is, uh, significantly different isn't it? Oh look at that. We've got a big metal.

Oh, here we go There we go. We've got a big metal can over here that's interesting. There you go, So there's the new Spartan six if PGA on an angle if a routing or sorry Spartan seven um, Fpga for routing reasons of course and the previous one is over here. There you go.

It went from a six uh, SLX 16 to a Spartan 7 xc7s25 so significant upgrade there. I'm not sure of the price difference, but they have actually lowered uh, the price here. So anyway, looks like there's our DAC We can call up the specs on that and we've got a TI 36r44 that'd be the 14-bit analog to digital converter there. they uh, I've been working on this for a while.

Copyright 2022 Got some real overexposure uh issues there. Sorry, you can't see the there we go. It's turned the iris down a bit and uh, there we go. We've got two uh relays here on the input their trimmer capsa again.

um for your input voltage device I Think there's only two ranges on this thing from memory and then we've got the input buffer and it's a dual 80s I think it's a dual ADC We'll have a squeeze yes, low power dual Channel ADC Then we've got our Dax on our output. Um, and it looks like they've got the requisite grounds in here. Look at the Vias and stuff it looks like they did have. look.

They've thought about putting a metal can on here, but they didn't so that's interesting. They've got a metal can up here, so I assume that's like the switching uh converter up there. but they didn't put cans on the analog front end or the ADC so that's rather interesting. I Guess you know the whole idea is you want to keep the crap from here out of here.

So let's just put one can on here instead of having three cans. That's probably easier. It's not much else as an Ftdi chip. uh here.

Then we've got like as a 1.6 volt voltage Regulators at a 1.0 volt voltage regulator. that would be for the Fpga cores. Uh, would it? So yep, um, some switching nut converter here. you can tell by the inductors, you don't even have to look at the chip number.

and yeah, not a huge amount more. Um, not too fussed about that. So there you have it and under the can. Oh I Thought that cam would, uh, prize off it doesn't looks like it's soldered down.

yeah I couldn't be bothered getting that um off now? um I'm not that fast. That'll be the uh DC that'd be the power supply uh section there I would presume. And for those curious to see the other side, yes, it is a double-sided Dart load. They couldn't fit at all on the top.

Um, even with the bigger board so that'll cost them a bit extra. A little bit extra of course to uh, make that so that'd be is that your protection for your uh, logic and light? Yeah, that looks like protection for your logic analyzer there? No workers? Yes. I Hit there. You have it.

There's the two of those. Was that? Yeah, that was a significant double-sided load. So yep, that is. Uh, More betterer.

For Less Cost: Has anyone actually cost it out? Um, it did well. This one's so new. Maybe someone hasn't done it yet. Has anyone actually cost it out the analog guard Discovery 2 or the three for that matter? It'd be interesting.

No. at the bomb cost of this thing, uh, would be in volume, but they're making a crap ton of these. So yeah, the volume's huge. So they have it.

That's a 14-bit 125 Meg sample per second. low noise dual patent Channel ADC blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And now Dak is this uh Joby here? and it does have an amplifier. Uh, to give I think plus minus five volts output, which is quite reasonable.

Ah, there's a little light pipe there. Where did that fall out from? I Don't see a hole in the case for it to pop out. these at the side? It's got to be the side somewhere. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, look at that isn't that cute. Just fits in there like a OJ glove. And for those wondering, uh, what that does, well, here's our lead down here and it's a vertical emitter of course, the lights coming out out the top Of the board and how do you get that out the side? Well, they could have just used a right angle lead, but you know, hey, nastier or whatever. Like, especially like a surface mount version like that.

So you just use a light pipe and it just takes the vertical and bends it a bit and it comes out the front of the case. No workers, but that's another part you've got to add to your bill of materials. Then you've got to engineer it and have it manufactured and everything else, so you know adds to the cost. I Do like how they added a slot to the board down there and that just holds that light pipe in place.

That's very nice. Yeah, hats off. More attention to detail. The rubber feet here.

They've done a curved slot there and that just goes in like that so there's no way that can come off. It's not just stuck on, they've actually, you know, put a bit of pride in the design of this thing. Nice. And because the pin out is exactly the same I Can reuse uh the breakout board that I've got for the two waveforms and the channel one and channel two doesn't add any extra ability.

I Mean it does have like AC DC uh coupling and this has a 50 ohm output uh, termination. but apart from that doesn't add any like extra vertical attenuation on the front and you're still limited to the two ranges of uh, plus minus two and a half volts to plus minus uh 25 volt. uh, input ranges on this thing and I think the waveforms are only single uh, plus minus five volts out. But um, anyway, with the 14-bit converter, it's still pretty Schmick Anyway, download the latest waveform software.

It did have to register to do it to get to the download page though. that sucks. Come on. Seriously.

Um. Anyway, we've got Scope wave Gen uh, Power Supplies uh, Voltmeter and the power supplies can actually be modulated. apparently like slowly modulated. They're not like the arbitrary waveform Generos, but apparently you can slowly modulate so you can do like ramp ups and ramp down sounds and stuff like that.

Great. Um, we will actually see if that's the case. Uh, and then you've got a volt meter. You've got a Data Logger as well.

logic analyzer, pattern generator um, static I O type stuff. You know, if you just want to light up some seven segment I think that's the yeah, that's the example seven segment display there. They've got a spectrum analyzer, a network analyzer, and they've got an impedance analyzer as well. Fantastic.

And they've got a curved Tracer I didn't know I've never played with that before. Uh. protocol analyzer which? um, what sort of protocols do you get? Do you art spy? I Square C can uh CDC JTAG Swd and AVR as well. Nice.

And then you can do, uh, custom scripting as well. I've never tried to script this thing so I don't know. but apparently it's really good and apparently it integrates with Matlab And because National instruments own it now I think it integrates with national instruments um, tools somehow and all that sort of jazz. So automation is a pretty high on the list here anyway.

so we can go to. if you just want to get back, you can get to Welcome so we can go to any of the oh I just heard the relays uh click down in there and we're good to go. Like it just automatically detected it down here. Um, and can we call that up? Yep, there you go and then we can reset all the stuff internally.

now. I didn't know about this. Can What? The waveform software actually support your sound card? Really? That's fantastic. Can you just download this for free? You've got to register, but download it for free.

And can you turn your sound card into oscilloscope? I Didn't know that I might have to try that on the I just do like a quick second Channel video and try that out. Actually, if that's the case, Wow. and I don't know what these other products are. The E-explorer the Eclipse uh, the the digital Discovery I've got.

uh, that's a different product Discovery Studio I'm not sure what that is, but there's yeah they've got all these different ADP um I Don't know so. but yeah. Anyway, we've got the analog Discovery three. so you can see the difference in the waveform, memories and stuff here between the three and the two.

There you go. they are much smaller. Um, so yeah, this had apparently they have removed the 1.8 volt digital. um, input here.

That's just. um, yeah, that's Gonski. So these are the different modes that you can actually, uh, configure. You can only select like one of these modes.

so Discovery three. So you gotta, you know you've got to pick your poison here. What do you want? And why would you want to select like a lower memory range like two by four? K Uh, for example, um, because it faster updating, more better updating speed. So it's a trade-off between I presume your updating rate and uh, your memory depth.

But that's typical of these types of Scopes which do the capture and then dump the data capture. dump the data captured up the data I Don't know what settings we're at, but I'm just start running this now. and as you can see, uh, we're taking 16k samples at 1.58 uh Meg and that's kind of the uh update rate. so can we change this in a real tight night? It stops updating when we do that.

That's a bit of a shame, isn't it? Anyway, let's go to the two channel by 4K option, shall we? for the scope. So if we select that no, that looks like a similar is that a similar update rate? Ah 4096 to 4K at 400 kilohertz now so they can't run it at the same clock rate they could before for a given uh, time-based setting. Move my head out of the way here. and this is how we control the input here.

So we can turn off channel two if we want turn off channel one or channel two. And uh, we can set offsets here. The controls are what you expect for a USB scope. They're not, You know, absolutely.

Uh, terrific. But they do the job. So we have a selection between Uh two five volts uh, per division like this. But really? um, I Do believe these are only fixed to input ranges physically on, uh, the front end.

So, but, but they're doing that, You know they're giving you the traditional 125 Secret words to make it a familiar scope interface. That's nice. And there you go. If we switch to five millivolts per division, you can see.

well, we can stop that. Okay, you can see that. Yeah, it's software magnified like this because we don't have a true five millivolt. Uh, per Division I Believe, it's like it's just two and a half volts.

Uh, like input plus minus two and a half volt input range. but you've got to divide that by 14 bits. Let's get the confuser out here. So we've got a 5 Volt range plus minus uh, two and a half volts divided by two to the power of 14.

Uh, sixteen thousand? uh, 384.. that gives us uh, 305 micro volts per bit, so you know it's It's not too shabby, so we can actually go down to 200 microvolts per division like this and you can see. Let's run that again. It's hard to sort of see, but each one is yeah, around about that 300 microvolt uh, level there.

so you know that's a bit how you're doing 200 microvolts I Don't even know why they bother. like 1M Really old is fine. it's just, you know. marketing wankery, really.

Anyway, let's go into the Wave Gen: let's see what we've got here. Uh DC Sine square triangle ramps uh, noise pulse? uh, trapezium sign power. Um, see Scope channel one. Okay, so you can take it from the I don't know what C Sharp is there, but Scope Channel One: It looks like you can take it from the ADC so it looks like that's looping the channel one ADC and back to the Uh DAC output.

so that's pretty darn flexible. And then you can filter from Channel One, right? so we can take an input signal from Channel One filter it and then output it. Um, on the arbitrary wave Gen: Nice. and that's done in I Believe that's done in the hardware as I said Hardware filter, it's done inside the Fpga All right.

I've enabled both channels here. So what I'm going to do is feed and generate a signal on the output of Channel One. So I'm gonna feed up its own clacker here. I'm generating a waveform on channel waveform Channel One here I'm going to feed that into Channel One ADC the scope input and then we're going to filter that and then we're going to Output that on waveform channel 2 and then read it back on channel 2 of the scope.

Let's see if we can do that. I I Don't know I haven't tried it yet, but I think we can. So if we go into Channel 2 of our arbitrary waveform generator and we select the source for that signal as the scope channel one which we're reading in okay, from the ADC, we can actually read that in. and if we do, let's let's just do 50.

Okay, so it should. actually. Well, no, we'll do a hundred percent first. Okay, so we'll go over here and we'll see that they're actually there's two waveforms there, right? there's there's channel one.

Channel two is identical because channel two is being fed from waveform generator or two which has been fed from analog ADC input channel one which is being fed from the arbitrary waveform generate I Can just think of like I can remember when I was studying how useful this would have been like from an in an educational scenario if I was teaching stuff. Oh my goodness. Like just the flexibility just with the two channels here. The flexibility you can do with this sort of thing is absolutely amazing Anyway, right? So we can do this All in real time.

So as I said, we can set this to like 50 and now our waveform Gen 2 will be 50 of what we sample in with channel one. so it should automatically be half. Yeah, there it is half right. It's half the amplitude nice and we can offset that by a volt if we want right? So let's do that right.

So it's 50 of the amplitude plus a volt up. and is that what we say? Oh, we don't Why no, Oh, are we Ac coupling or something? Are we? Oh yeah? I Yeah, No. Silly me, that's me. that's actually my Hardware doing that.

I You will see I'm I'm AC coupling. Okay, so let me go to DC coupling and this board doesn't come with it. By the way, I had this for my analog Discovery too. So and bingo there it is.

You get your one volt. Uh, offset? Nice. So can we actually filter stuff like this? Let's go back in here and let's experiment once again. I Haven't read the manual with this right? So look, we can get like an average.

Is this like an average responding? Let's let's have a let's see if that makes and it shouldn't make any difference. No, and it doesn't. Okay So filter Channel one I Don't know what filter C4 is? What's C4 I'm gonna have to Rtfm on that. but can we go filter Channel one and go whoa Whoa.

That's that's off the scale. Okay, so what is that filter doing? What's that? C sharp or C hash? Yeah. I Don't know what the C hash is like is being programmed in like C sharp or whatever? I I Don't know what the deal is. Can we actually sweep the channel coming from the ADC Channel one? I Think we can check it out.

We can damp it to five percent Like we can damp it to a percentage right in like a certain time period like 100 microseconds. Wow, look at that. Look at that and you'll notice the um, the Shaded part in here. It looks like we have a uh, persistence uh display in there as well.

That's a nice uh touch. So look at like, just just think about what's happening here. This is the nuts. Now you can actually um, move these vertical.

You can just grab that with the mouse and just move it as well as like using the offset uh thing over here as well. And if you want to select Channel one, you just go here. and then we can just move Channel One like that. but you'll notice that it is changing because we're actually offsetting Channel One What we're reading in.

So what we're reading in with Channel One is impacting what we're generating on our second Channel arbitrary waveform generator and which then has been read by Channel two. like how good is this? This is just amazing. Wow. So unfortunately I haven't figured out this filter yet.

Um, and I don't know why it's got filter C4 I don't know it's C4 means that like Channel 4 There is no Channel four, right? So like filter Channel One if we go there and then up run like that. Okay, oh, what's what's happening? Yeah, we've just got a massive signal there, so let's let's get rid of those and we filter. Yeah! I I'm not sure what's going on there right? because all I'm doing like I'm filtering I don't know what the filters actually doing and where you set that up like it's it's not in here. So once again, like I haven't read the manual.

This is like my first time playing around with this new analog Discovery 3 and I haven't played with the original one for Donkey's years. Um so yeah, please forgive me but you can see like the amazing capabilities I've made this do in just minutes of just plugging it in and as far as the help goes, look, it's uh, it's all built in so if we do, but hopefully if we do want to find out actually it'd be nice if I could like right click on that and like call up you know and say I want help on that like what is that like what is that feature? It'd be nice if like that would if there was a button next to everything that automatically hyperlinked you over to the various help. But you know I mean it's fantastic as it is. but yeah, that just would have been a nice touch.

But anyway, I wonder if it's in here? Oh and it's got an editor for your arbitrary waveform shapes as well. Once again, like I won't go in and play with that but like that's just like Siri like look, look input tables of stuff in there. Oh goodness. Oh wow.

Custom math functions and things like that and just generate Let it generate our way as well as importing like existing things and presumably let you save the ADC and then you can import that. you know you can modify it elsewhere and then you can bring it back in. But wow, just the like the customization the of the arbitrary waveform generates, compile and combined with the adcs, this is incredible. Now unfortunately, the help doesn't tell you anything about those extra types.

like yeah, it just doesn't tell you about these extra types here. So that's a little bit disappointing. but you know and like I'll I'll eventually figure that out. but just not for this video.

and let's go to the power supply over here and see what we've got. Here We go positive and negative. Uh Supply this would all be that stuff under the can in there that we saw. It got an internal temperature sensor that's the die on the Fpga so that's run at UH 60 almost 64 degrees there Fahrenheit for you Yanks um USB voltage 4.7 So I'm just powering this from a USB 2..

by the way, I'm not powering it from like a USB um, C or USB 3.. So is that how much current it's actually take is its own current consumption. so there's not much left over on that pool. What is it? One amp port or something? so there's not much left over to power our products.

So that's why it has an external 5 volt Jack on it. So then you can actually Supply the more output voltage there. But anyway, um, positive Supply Well, it looks like it's already on. There you go.

so we can just use that bar. Or can we type in? You betcha! Or we can set maximums too so that we don't accidentally. you know, damage our circuitry. If you've got you know, a three volt circuitry.

you don't want to accidentally. you know, slide that bar all the way with LBJ right over to five volts and then blow up your bloody. You know, your expensive widget. So yeah, that's that's pretty cool.

Oh, and we can have a tracking power supply too. Nice. Master Enable is off. How about we turn Master Enable on? There we go.

Hardware power limit. Okay, and then we can set a power limit as well so you can go up to 15 watts here. Wow. Okay, yeah, but of course I don't don't know if you can do that from the USBC suppliers Analog: Discovery three see power supplies for more information.

So yeah, it looks like it does have extensive fusing um inside here so you shouldn't be able to blow up your USB it should uh and electronic fuse in there. Nice. You should be able to actually limit that. Um, but if you want the full power, of course you know the 15 watts.

I Don't think uh, you might not be able to do that over the US USB but Aha and the USB port there you go. the USB will only go to 5.5 Watts uh total. So if you want, um, higher power than that, you'll have to use the auxiliary uh, five volts there. up to a 15 absolute.

Max Well, it does say down here. uh, anything over 10 watts your risk? uh, thermal shutting down, but it's got lots of protections built in. Nice. You need that, especially in a school environment.

I Think we just turn on crazy stuff like a 3D spectrogram for example. like that's nuts, right? We can. just we can bring that up All right. we can make that bigger.

Look, it's just like, seriously great stuff, right? This thing just as I said I could go for hours and hours and hours doing a video showing you every single feature of this thing I can't possibly cover it. All and all the combinations of all the different things you can do, ice cart and persistence. And then we've got eye diagrams, right? We've got histograms, we've got spectrograms, we've got Ffts of course. um, you know that's a given um And then you've got measurements and then we've got login.

and then we've got uh counter, is that just a frequency counter thing? Then we've got audio function. Stop it I can't handle it. too many features. Okay, let's see if we can ramp our power supplies, shall we? in our waveform Gen.

Here, we can not only waveform one waveform two, but we can actually use the wave Gen to control the power supplies now. I believe you could do this in the analog Discovery too. although I haven't tried it, but you had to choose a certain mode. Now you can just do it freely in in any mode you want.

So let's choose the positive voltage rail here. Okay, and Bingo! we now have the ability to I Don't know why that didn't change at all. didn't change to an arrow, didn't want to go full screen there. How do I get back? Like you can have these on separate screens, which is really cool for multi-monitor setups.

but like I can I can dock this back, but I don't know how to get back to like having the split screen hang on options. Instrument: Windows Tabbed separate docking docking mode There you go. Got it, You just go into settings there. Beauty Bobby does.

Look at that. So what's our maximum frequency here for our power supply? 2.5 Hertz Yeah, that's not surprising because when you want to characterize and simulate your power supplies ramping on, they typically ramp on in terms of milliseconds. hundreds of milliseconds, even microseconds. Um, So yeah.

so there you go down to one micro. Hertz or you can just have DC Anyway, so let's ramp up at a rate of one Hertz period one second amplitude. Uh, it's okay. let's go from zero to one volt and uh.

2.5 volts offset. Well, we don't want any offset do we? And we don't want sinusoid. All what we want is a ramp up. There you go.

So we what they've already. They've put that in there for us. Awesome! So we want it to ramp up. So now we want a single shot capture on our scope our voltage ramp.

Now I've got to tie the M inputs so that we can use our channel one to measure our power supply. Yeah, here's where I would have preferred those silk screen on the top here. So our Channel One the orange one we want to connect through to our V plus there. And because this is a differential input input, remember, we've got uh one minus as well.

We should have to connect the grounds together as well. Of course, this is not going to be a common ground scope, but it is not isolated. Don't think that this is isolated from the USB Um, I've done a video. How not to blow up your oscilloscope? You still could come a gutter.

Okay, there we go. We've got our differential across our power supply. Let's go. So there you go.

We are pulsing at one Hertz there. but it looks like it's We're going to need a load on that because it's not going all the way down to zero. So where our offset is zero, our amplitude's one volt. But yeah, our power supply is.

It is ramping and watch what happens. I'm going to disconnect the ground there just to show you it's not not a common ground. Bingo Oops. Oops.

We're just I'm touching my finger on that. So we're getting our 50 Hertz main sum on there. Okay, so there you go. That's the differential input of the scope.

but I won't go into the difference between single ended and differential. There we go. I Just put a random resistor across here and you can see the perfect ramp up. and then we're going to discharge because the discharge into the resistive load is the discharge of the capacitor.

So that's going to be a capacitor discharge curve. but you can see. Yeah, it ramps up, it ramps up perfectly, isn't that great, and it's a half second ramp up because it's a one Hertz Period. We can change that.

change that to two and a half. Hertz But there you go. Oh silly me. I Um, thought we could do fast ramp up.

No, of course we can't. Two and a half Hertz is the absolute maximum we can do so. it's only going to get slower, right? So we can ramp up over 10 seconds. Here it goes over 10 seconds, right? So this is not really the tool to use if you want to like simulate like 50 microsecond turn on.

You really need a professional tool for that. but still, it's handy to do ramp on. It'd be nice if it was a bit faster, but that's the limitations of I Don't know the hardware in this thing. it can't go any quicker, but that's pretty cool, huh? We can actually ramp up our power supplies that's got to be handy for certain applications, so that's a very useful feature, but unfortunately not as useful as it could be for like, real, proper simulation of ramping up of your fast power supplies because you want to test your you know most as I said milliseconds.

Hundreds of milliseconds ramp up. Uh kind of thing. This thing's not going to do that. It's only going to do that.

This thing's only going to do Uh, 400 milliseconds, absolute, uh, minimum, uh ramp up time. So it's got to be faster than 400 milliseconds? unfortunately. but still. um yeah.

Oh, we don't have to do ramp up like we can do a ramp down so you can actually simulate your let's try that shall we? There's our ramp up and there's our ramp down. So if we actually stop that and we zoom in, how fast is that bad boy ramping up? That's just the that's not the software doing that, that's just the power supply telling it to go to another voltage and whoop as fast as the loop um of your of the internal power supply in this thing can actually goes I Don't like the fact that when you like uh, zoom in on this thing right? it gives you a Vernier but then it gives you like an odd scale at the bottom. You know you just get like a Vernier scale at the bottom like 0.906 seconds and 1.06 that like it's just yeah. Can you like snap it to the like, you know, nearest one or something? That'd be nice.

Anyway, we can add, uh, we can turn on cursors here and if you want to add cursors, we can actually uh go Well, you've got to actually add a Delta actually. so we need to get rid of that and and it's not going to automatically give us 2 which is a little bit confusing. so we need another Delta one and Boom! We need to snap that in there like that and we can measure our ramp on Tire ramp up time. But now they will track like that.

So there you go. Um, 7.5 milliseconds. Uh, ramp on time? that's you know. Typical for a hardware power supply, which is what you get in here.

Unfortunately, you can't control that. It's just as fast. it just ramps on as fast as it can. Yeah, if you want to turn on a lot of like stuff at once, you really do need a multi-monitor uh, configuration.

You know to Branch everything out I'm not turning on a whole bunch of stuff. it's just this is crazy. The amount of stuff this can do. And check this out.

this could be worth its weight in gold to a lot of people, right? I've Got The Power Once again, the power supply. We can do creative things with the power supply we can generate right? I'm just generating 3.3 volts. and here it is up here, right? It's measuring it live 3.3 uh volts. DC But we can actually add noise on top of that power supply so we can go one volt, right? Well, we're adding like random one volt noise at two and a half? Hertz right? So let's just add in, right? Just random noise? That's just ridiculous, right? Or let's make it a bit better, right? Let's go up to one Kilohertz.

Look like one. One Kilohertz is the maximum. But check it out. We've added one volt noise.

I Assume that's amplitude that's Peak to Peak Is it? It doesn't actually tell you you can actually set the your Peak There you go. So you can actually set units here All right. So you can set Peak to Peak. So if we wanted RMS There we go.

It adds a little RMS symbol. Oh so amazing, right? So we can add one volt RMS one Kilohertz noise like unfortunately, doesn't have infinite capability we can't like put on like one 100 kilohertz switching noise or something like that. right? between that one Kilohertz, right? Effectively, one kilohertz switching noise here and I like it to our 3.3 volt power supply. Are you kidding me Like that's just amazing.

So if we want to say 50 millivolts RMS noise on there, there it is. We just added our 50 millivolts RMS noise and we can do any of these functions. Okay, up to a certain you know frequency limits and stuff like that and we can even. We can even modulate the power supply based on what we read for our analog input.

Oh what. you can feed it back up its own clacker. This is just ridiculous And then we can once again I Haven't figured out this. Hardware filters or whatever.

but I go all right. I've got my power supply on below me here. Unfortunately, we're not reading with the ADC at the moment, so I'm just going to short that out. So oops, Yep, there we go.

There's our there's our current limit. You can see that coming on red so no workers. It's limiting that we're not. It's not like shutting down our USB uh, Supply or anything.

So let's do the same on five volts. Yep, we can just yeah short that, no problems and it's still it's all being powered from the USB like this is just a USB 2. uh Supply no workers. and if I change it to plus minus uh, five volts there I Like how it actually reads it actual reads the actual voltage back and we'll see that actually drop.

uh like that. and uh, the negative rail hasn't uh dropped, but it is limiting. Uh, that as well. You can see the USB current increased from 692.

that's the supply of the analog Discovery and then yeah, we don't have much to play with and then it's gone up to 800. Um, there for uh, when? I short the thing so it doesn't have much current to play with and it would have been, you know, Absolutely fantastic if it had like a proper power supply capability with current like adjustable Uh current limiting and stuff like that. but it looks like it doesn't actually like you can limit like the hardware power limit, but it's not like you know you can set up like a constant current uh Supply or anything like that by the looks of it. And let's plug in an external 5 volt power supply auxiliary voltage.

No, it's not there. Oh I Just plugged in an external five volt power supply and something popped up. Don't know what that was. Can I do that again? Hey I've disconnected the five odd Supply and it's still showing down below that there's five volt aux.

Let me short out the power supply 4.6 volts. That's interesting. Is that a bug? It's still showing auxiliary current I Am not plugging in any auxiliary Supply voltage. Let me plug it back in now.

4.7 No, What's what's going on? Have I got it like? is it locked up in some State Because it's not. It's not changing. Try to turn it off and on again. I'm going to remove the USB power.

Here we go. Okay, communication with the device failed I Think that's what it popped up. Is that what it popped up with before? Okay, let's plug it back in. Okay, I'm reconnected.

It's redone. its thing. Okay, now it's down to zero volts aux voltage. now.

let me plug in the aux Supply again. 4.7 volts. Okay, now we're good. So again, if I short out that Supply rail, it's USB current.

But it's only drawing. It's only drawing 24 million 29 milliamps from the Ox. So let me let's say set it to five Watts or something. There we go.

1.2 amps now from from the USB is 1.2 So that why no, my USB port's not capable of 1.2 I think there's a bug there I think I found a bug. Um, something's going on with the monitoring. I I think I've discussed. Oh, and it's and it's not okay and I've got it.

The load is no longer shorted and it's still showing two red buttons down below. So it's still, but it's dropped down to 680 milliamps. but it's still. the master enable is on off on 680 right? Ah, there you go.

It's not actually recovering automatically. One point and none of that currents come in from the external arcs which are there I did for a second there am I gonna I'm physically around with that. so is that they are no. I think I've got a Dicky connection.

Maybe I don't have the correct Barrel Jack Yeah, what diameter Pinner have they used on that? I've tried three different five volt plug packs now and they are. They're all not the correct diameter. Yeah, so that's embarrassing. Um, all the plug packs I can find here five volt ones are all.

uh, 2.5 millimeter pin and this thing is 2.1 millimeter pin. But yeah, you can see that when it's actually connected, all of the current, all of the output current comes from 1.2 amps there is been supplied from the auxiliary device. Oh, now it's Oh, now it's now. Now it's disconnected.

Oh, like I said, yeah. so there's an intermittent contact. So if you've got intermittent contact on your power supply, um, yeah, it's sort of the comms. The USB comms comes gutter a little bit.

I Don't know if that's like a hardware, a small Hardware issue or whether, or not, but just to use a reliable power supply. Don't be like idiot. Dave So what I'm doing is I'm shorting the input and you'll notice that the persistence there is like 10 millivolts. Um, so that's like I'm not sure where it's getting that from.

So because the I mean if we stop it right? we start. the noise is not as high as what those Peaks show there. So that's interesting. So like it.

Surely it doesn't have a like a peak detect mode. It's not. It's not that advanced. Anyway, we can add measurements here so we can go channel one and then we've got horizontal, vertical, or custom and then we can go over there or our vertical ones.

So AC RMS So that's what we want to measure our noise. I've done a video on Acrms hello ad It's automatic. It looks like it's automatically added them all. Really? Okay, Yeah, there you go anyway.

RMS Um AC Oh stopped. RMS AC Noise is 0.6 so 600 micro volts. uh there at this particular time base and Sample rate go down. It drops a bit.

There you go. Yep, expand the time base. It's drop in Yeah, because uh, we've got limit. This is going to be determined by your memory depth as well because I've done a video on oscilloscope, noise and uh, stuff like that? I'll have to link those in.

but yeah, 250 microvolts so you know, up to one and a half millivolts AC RMS of noise. uh there right at the top end. and I'm not hugely interested in like measuring crosstalk and its performance and all that you know. Leave it in the comments down below if you want me to do actual, you know, proper performance measurements on this thing.

But um, yeah, I'm just just having a play with it today just to see what's what. And the auto set seems to work on this thing. No worries whatsoever. And there we go.

Yeah, well, I'm don't want to trigger on either. There you go. so let's have a play, you know. And also there's like record functions and there's all sorts of like there's just tons of stuff on here.

I mean just look at this. We can do an XYZ plot. Yeah, look, we can. We can rotate this around right? so we can get an isometric view of that, right? Check this out.

I've got an XYZ plot and you can choose what your X Y and Z axes are and then you've got your isometric view. Okay, I should actually can I expand that to full screen? Yeah, I can, right? And then we can, We can move your isometric viewer around. It's just amazing what we can actually do with that, right? And then we've got an X Y as well, right? so you can do your or your regularly. This is just patterns and all that sort of stuff so that's not going to look very good at the moment.

but that is just to read like I'm not even using like a proper example to show you here, right? I'm just I'm just sticking around. So I can get an Fft there on Channel two and there you go. That's the Fft on Channel Two. There, it's going to give you your usual like Fft capabilities Once again, like like I'm not going to check like go into performance stuff and things like that.

So there's our 100 kilohertz uh sine wave there, that's the orange, uh, channel one and then the uh second one. The blue one is uh, channel two there. So you know we've got all our usual Fft stuff plus all this extra capability and we can put all these, dock them on different screens. Imagine if you had like five or six six screens and then as I said like we've got a spectrogram as well, can we go full screen on that right? There's our spectrogram.

Once again, not not the best example, right, But the fact that you can actually do this stuff is just incredible. And there's a 3D spectrogram, right? Come on. Come on. Seriously, this is fantastic, right? So this is like really like, unfortunately, it doesn't work in the RF domain, right? This is low frequency stuff, but it gives students the idea.

and if you're learning, uh, this sort of stuff and you can get to learn what an eye diagram is and a spectrogram and you know all sorts of uh, stuff, you can learn all this stuff. and you can change all the axes to be anything you want and it's just like, come on. this is just an incredible learning tool if this is not the de facto standard in schools. I'd I don't know what is right? So what? That basically showing is a frequency, right? This is the Spectrum analyzer, right? The X-axis is uh, frequency there and that's showing our 100 Kilohertz Peak there and it's basically just giving us all that information in 3D over time.

Of course that's just for a single sine wave. We can go to that more complex waveform we had on Channel two and look, look at that. Beautiful! And then you can change all the axes and you can change all the scale in and you can do whatever like and I haven't even looked at like the login like and and just just a voltmeter right? We can just get like you can just use it as a voltmeter. It's not terrific because you don't have like proper multimeter uh capability but you know it's it's there right? And then we've got the logger.

haven't even looked at the logic analyzer I haven't looked at the pattern generator I Haven't looked at this static I o where you can like just yeah. Here we go. We can just turn on outputs. Can we? I don't know, Haven't enabled it? whatever.

Sure, it all works fine and the then you get amazing stuff like a network analyzer, impedance analyzers. Just like that the Bode 100 that I've got I've done videos on that and then a curved Tracer uh, it's probably only going to go up to the supply of the you know you can't test at high voltages, component curve tracing right so that you can learn how like curve tracers work and protocol decoders. and then you can script all this like anyway, serious hats off to Digiland who's ni uh now? But yeah, hats off to the team who actually develop not not just the hardware, but you know, because the Hardware's just the hardware. I'm not going to say it's not great, but you know it's it's just right.

It's just Hardware It's an Fpga with some analog digital. All the magic is in the software. This is what you're paying for, right? This is just not. And I haven't even like Seriously? I barely scratched the surface of what this thing can do.

anyway that this video is more than long enough. It's not a proper review, it's just a first you know playing around with First Impressions Let me know your thoughts and comments down below. But yeah, like seriously, this is just an incredible bit of Kit you should um I think especially if you're on the road or something like that and you want like an all-in-one you want to, you know, just get like, do use a scope out in the field just and I'm sure you can buy and also people have developed I'm sure open source like interfaces for this thing. Front ends I've just got this one um which is a basic BNC and this is uh, this single ends your input too.

If you get this board so it converts your differential Um into a single-ended single-ended input and output, then you can probably get ones with like um, you know, screw terminal power supply interfaces and all sorts of stuff and it's just it's it's an amazing bit of Kit and for like under 300 US dollars? I Know it does sound expensive for what you get, but the software capabilities are just insane in this thing and it's worth every cent. But of course, as I said, this is not a replacement for a desktop oscilloscope, right? You still need your desktop oscilloscope with your proper front end and your high bandwidth. and yada yada, right? Your huge memory depth and everything else, right? This has got relatively small memory depth because it doesn't sample in real time. It it captures it in the Fpga buffer and then dumps it.

Um, so you know there's lots of blind time and everything, right? It's not a real oscilloscope, but yeah this way and the capabilities more than make up for this. So yes, you should have a bench topscope and one of these. It's just amazing Anyway, hope you found that useful if you did, give it a big thumbs up! As always, discuss down below and over on the EV blog forum. Catch you next time! Thank you thank you.