Hi As promised, we're going to take a look at this. National Instruments Virtual Bench. Have a play around with it now! I've done a teardown video of this thing and it's beautiful inside. Are you gonna check it out? So click here if you haven't seen that, definitely watch that first.

Now this is a roughly six thousand US dollar instrument. It's a four channel 350 megahertz oscilloscope. That's why you're paying so much a paying for the bandwidth. There is a lower model one for this: About two thousand US dollars to channel only one hundred megahertz.

This is the top of the line. 350 megahertz for channel, arbitrary waveform generator, fourteen bit, all the usual stuff external trigger of course. Very nice to have the four channels plus the external trigger. Five-and-a-half digit multimeter should do all your regular stuff.

Our five-and-a-half digits, as you know, pretty much all you want in this class of instrument. Got a nice DC power supply in that, plus minus twenty five volts at one amp. so there's fifty watts and at six volts, three amps up to all digitally programmable. Quite accurate.

Everything else. I Believe the specs on your digital multimeter. Pretty good too. It's got digital eight channels of digital I/o here, and also it's a mixed signal oscilloscope.

so you get sixteen digital channels for your logic analyzer as well one Meg sample memory per channel, which is not a lot in the scheme of things, so quite disappointed by that. And it's also somewhat disappointingly for a bench instrument like this, like a USB sort of like educational type at all. It's only an 8-bit can. regular 8-bit converter would have much preferred to see a higher resolution.

Our converter in this thought inside this thing, even if you have to sacrifice bandwidth, would have been very nice to get like a 12 bit converter. you could do some nice DSP stuff combined with the function. Jam You could do, you know, bode plot II And it really, you know decent stuff like that so they haven't done that. It's just a regular 8-bit digital scope.

It's the hardware in here as we saw in the teardown. Absolutely. You know top-notch hardware in here, and in fact, it's more capable than the specs that this thing's got. I Don't believe it has intensity are graded.

Display will check out the software and things like that so it's basically a complete lab in one box. You've got the mixed signal scope, the function generator, the multimeter, the power supply, the digital I/o you can play around with and all tied into National Instruments our software. I'm pretty sure the software will be pretty decent, but that's basically what we got a test tonight. We're going to plug it in, have a play around with the software, so let's actually plug this sucker in.

It is Wi-Fi It's got Wi-Fi connection and also Ethernet and USB as well, so I'm not sure which one we'll use. it'll be a lucky dip. Let's so let's plug it in and don't know if you heard that, but that fan was pretty loud for a couple of seconds and we've got a little light. Tell me, oh it's blue.

look at that that fan noise. Obviously it's a temperature controlled fan, but that's the power button it's got I believe it's got some extra LEDs across here for various status and things like that. but apart from that, it's pretty boring so far. and you get four of the probes with the four Channel are unit.

these a multi contact brand. you get the regular easy hook, you get the BNC adapter. Always love the BNC adapter. You get the little high frequency ground probe and well, what's the specs on these things? and these are fixed ten-to-one probes 500 megahertz.

So much better than these specs. So yeah, the spared no expense. That's why the scope actually does Molly scope. The unit doesn't have x ten probe detection.

it just assumes that you're going to use x ten probes with it, presumably because that's what's supplied. So I hope you can change that in software so you can just feed our coax and stuff straight in and they actually look pretty decent. Look at that look fully insulated right around the top there. Very nice.

Let's have a look at that. We've got our little high frequency ground adapter there that's very nice. I Like that G is nicely formed brewing it better than the little dickie spring ones. And I love the BNC adapters they do.

They're so handy. I use the damn things all the time. You get a whole bunch of other stuff with it I love the National Instruments screwdriver. I've had plenty of these kicking around cause I've been to lots of National Instruments training courses and seminars and stuff over the years and I did that.

They've been giving this away for I don't know. 20 years now and I still got them and they're just incredibly useful. and we have the Phoenix connector for the digital I/o Very nice. we can get in there.

that's why they supply the screwdriver and it is the correct height. Look at that. Beautiful. you know? Tell you what.

I'm enjoying the 16 channel logic analyzer Pro that's pretty spiffy I don't like my chances of opening that I assume it's got some MSO logic analyzer input cable there. it is 18 25 volts max. I sim it's got some buffer circuitry in there to drive the differential and probably differential drivers to drive the line and that is really nice quality. Where's my mini grabbers? I swear I can't find the mini grabbers so they've just given you the hose.

What? Come on and we've got some my Ul rated Cal Tester brand I Don't think I've heard of a contest brand pros before. They're reasonably sharp, very nice silicone leads, very flexible, and they just ya. they feel real high-quality Hey the fan is starting up I'm not doing anything with it. Start it.

up. Got a pro plugged in I'm gonna hook it into the function gen but I haven't talked to. uh, set it up and that's reasonably annoying. That fan don't like it.

There's a little wine in there and it does sound quite whiny. Not impressed with that at all. And imagine if you know, like if you had a classroom full of these things, like twenty thirty of them could get real Annoying real quick. I'm sure if you're gonna hear that, but the fan is quite like it's it's low enough, it just dropped down a little bit further.

but it's it's whiny and ratalie and it just feels really cheap. and I can't imagine what this thing's gonna sound like when it's under like full load. that FP Gianna that Kintex FPGA has gone full pelt and the fans gotta try and keep up. If you had a classroom for these things, 20 30 of them could get real Annoying real quick Oh shame because it's otherwise.

The hardware is brilliant, but the fan that's a bit of a fail and we have ourselves a QuickStart guide it's showing to connect it up to the USB port. I Believe there's a drive in there with the software installer already installed for the PC so that is very nice. We shouldn't have to download anything. that's beautiful assuming it works.

By the way, this supports both PC and will only PC and iPad. There's no support at all for Android tablets. so I don't have one of those bloody iPad thingies. Now that's attention to D So I'll check it out.

They've actually got one of these locking jacks on the USB cable. Absolutely brilliant. And you know, like in a classroom environment as students throwing these things all around you don't want your bloody USB cable to come out. This can fall out quite easily, so that is a very nice touch.

Thumbs up! Alright, here we go. Let's give this a ball. I've got the USB cable. It's all the way on the bench over there I've got it.

run it like through it like a 5 meter USB cable. so let's plug it in. This is not my main screen. it says yep, installing device driver, blah blah blah.

here it is and searching 13 anyway knows what it is in a virtual bench ad 34 USB device and it looks like you have files waiting to be no hang on files waiting to be burned to disk. Oh do I know I don't? Well, I'm young. come on. Well I'm young.

Anyway, the best storage device is there. Is it? Ok, it's taken a while, but we're getting there interface 1 of 3, 2 or 3, 3 of 4. sorry and that'll be 4 or 4 and it's actually it says that's like a CD Drive There it is. That is the actual word Drive that we got and here's all the software on it: Awesome Virtual bench.

And that's what it told us. Run Virtual Bench Launcher! So here we go. We've installed everything that worked. Hunky-dory I Like this so you don't have to download anything you don't have to put in a CD Brilliant! Here we go: I Run Virtual Bench.

There we go. Who's gonna pop up? Do you agree to a little Ow Unite appear or periodically collect non personal usage data No Piss off. Oh, go away. Alright, here we go.

Allow access. Oh wait, that's it. That's if we're in like Flynn Wow I I Expected it to install software or whatever that is. Brilliant.

That is absolutely brilliant. Huge thumbs up to that. Well, I've got the one Kilohertz signal on the front. It hasn't triggered.

but wow, that's terrific. Beautiful. Okay, the first thing I'm going to do is hit the dreaded Auto button Auto Setup I Just want to see if it stops if it actually triggers on the one Kilohertz signal. So performing auto setup blah blah blah.

Yep, there we go. Yep, we're in. Beautiful. And where's our time base for Oh Phosphor intensity.

It does have variable intensity display. Brilliant. Okay, we'll test that later, but that's great. Okay, so where's that? Here's our time per division.

and yeah, okay, it's a USB scope. You know it, right? But I don't like first glance. I Don't particularly mine this. Here's the function generator over here.

so that's like a level indicator for the function generator. that's the output voltage level. Wow It can go to plus minus 12 volts. That's a big signal range I wonder if we can do that in 250? Ohms, that's interesting And look here up here: I've got look I Don't mind that how you highlight the you highlight the digit you want and you go up and down.

Hey I've seen a hell of a lot worse than that actually. I I Really like that I Really like that. Presumably you can just type in. Oh, you can type in and I hang on.

But if I delete everything one I can probably is type in one. Oh, look at that one hurts one kilohertz, one megahertz playing around with the function Jun Hvenaer forget the scope. it's just there. It's in your face.

The function Jenna's well. but look, everything's here. Actually, this is the first time I've used it. So you've got the scope of course, which is this panel here.

Can we move it? Can we acquisition? No, that's an eye. There's all your averages peek detect our digital phosphor. There it is. It does support hence all the hardware that Kintex that real kick-ass Kintex FPGA in there and everything else.

That's what they're using it for. So it's got digital phosphor display. Very nice. Okay, excellent.

Um, it's got peat to Tekmoto. Seems to be really fast. Updating to this is really quick updating so they've think they've got this right. They're probably only transferring on the USB.

They can't transfer all the one Meg worth of data so that's not being continually transferred. I Don't know how many times this is updating per second. You know, 20 time, 15 20 times a second or something that kind of looks like it's It's really quick and responsive. I Really like that? That's great.

but yeah, it's not. It can't dump the 1 Meg of memory each time, so it's obviously it's taking the 1 Meg sample memory, but then it's going to be just doing the the display data and then dump it. streaming the display data to the PC via the USB portal via Wi-Fi or Ethernet or whatever you happen to connect to. But when you stop it, when you stop it, that's the point where it would upload the 1 Meg points of memory.

So if we go like this, if we go way out like that and we go Waldo mode, so let's go out like that and we should be able to, let's have a look at that. let's stop that. Okay, and it should give us the one Me capture and we should be able to zoom in that and see Ah, there we go. Well I don't know.

You'd have to do the math on the time base to figure out that might be the limit of our one midpoint memory. Does it say how much memory it's used? Doesn't say? is that a bit of a bit of a fire? I'd like to see how I assume it's using all the memory all the time, so would have liked to have seen that actually displayed anyway. I This is working great so far. I Really like it anyway.

So we've got all these panels. It looks like we can't drag the panel's around and like rearrange it. not that you'd really want to. What's in the file menu up here you can import configurations, connect, configure, network, blah blah blah blah blah.

export screenshot very nice PNG Please Yes, thank you very much PNG Awesome! Great stuff. Um, here's the digital I/o look look. We can just can we just go down. Ah, digital I/o in the bottom corner down here.

Why can't I just set all to are set? Huh? Set lines to output. Okay, because I haven't actually turned them to outputs. There we go. and I can turn it the output on or off that colors in the green.

Okay, Oh yeah. alright. that's fine. You know.

Just like, don't use green. put one so that everyone knows it's high. You know? like yeah. But anyway, that's minor.

MSO Trigger: That's interesting so you can. Actually, if you're using all of your 16 channels, you can use some of your external digital I/o as the MSO trigger and the function generator start as well. That is very flexible and it's very flexible. I Like that.

I Like that. I'm impressed. Okay and here we go. We can now set our voltage and our current limit.

so this is our power supply. This is our volatile like a bigger font. Please like that tiny little six volt font there. Anyway, that's really quite nice if we.

So if we just highlight that and go on 5 volts, please thank you very much. Bob's your uncle, very nice and then you plus minus 25 volts here you can actually turn the output off or on there it is. Now it's live reading. So this is your set voltage, your set current and you read voltage and current.

1 millivolt resolution: 1 milliamp resolution. This is great you. he's certainly getting your money's worth. This looks very nice.

Constant voltage mode: I'll tell you when it switches over in constant current mode if we just go short the output and go into constant current. Here is our aware on the hundred milli volt range. sorry I'll just drag this over here like this and we're now on our digital multimeter panel down here. Volts DC Volts AC will like the fonts are a bit small, would like them to be larger than that but anyway and then continuity range in know it's fixed.

Okay, but yet we go down to 100 millivolt range. 1 microvolt resolution everything's hunky-dory I Like this thing I Like it. They've done it really well, but that's what you'd expect you'd expect mmm National Instruments to produce. You know, confident you know useful software.

It's exactly what you expect. All right. I Got the scope plugged into the function generator. Let's check out the function gen itself.

I got it set to 1 volt peak-to-peak and here's the signals. We can choose Sine Square Triangle it's all very 1970s and DC level as well. but we can also choose arbitrary waveform which is wonderful. But if we go in here and browse yeah, browse what? browse the up the CD drive.

Why does it keep moving? Like where it's looking for a text or CSV file. Where are the files? Where are the built-in waveforms everyone wants expects building waveforms to an arbitrary function generator, especially in an educational lab environment. That's a huge oversight. That's crazy.

Why can't they provide that? Maybe they're in here. There wouldn't be in licensing and wouldn't be in documentation. These are just different languages, right? I Mean, come on, it's just nothing. There's nothing there that's a huge, huge, fail, massive fire.

Well, let's go back to our sine wave shower. We've got our one megahertz sine wave, but can we do anything else with it? Can we modulate it? No, we can change the DC offset. Also in change the duty cycle of the yeah, that's no worries at all. Okay, great, but this is rudimentary functionality.

I'm very disappointed by that, especially for an educational tool of this price level nuts. and well, here we go. I've used a external function generator to do my standard 1 megahertz carrier with a 1 kilohertz Am modulation without 100% modulation. and the triggering is very typical of most scopes.

So that jitter in is you know that's that's fairly normal. Don't don't worry about that at all. But what we look at that is the intensity, greater display and it's there. You know it's actually doing a half reasonable job.

But yeah, that's ok. it gets a pass, but will let a leus. That is the question. Let's have a squiz.

No, it's doing. it's doing pretty alright. Yep, Excellent. No.

I Always seen on that many are better scopes have failed that one. That's great. Thumbs up and some of you might be thinking Dave What's up with the fuzziness of this line is this scope noisy In quote marks I Know I've done a whole video on that and that is very normal or a high-bandwidth scope Like this. high-bandwidth scopes are inherently noisy and high bandwidth and high update rate scopes are even noisier.

Again, because they're actually capturing the real stuff. That's Their low-end scopes appear less noisy because they're armed. they're just not fast enough to actually display it, so that's no problems whatsoever. Um, maybe if we can turn some averaging on, we might I get that.

So let's have a play around with the input here. Here we go. We can have our AC or DC coupling. There we go, We can do the times 1 times 10 probe attenuation there, and if we do the 20 megahertz bandwidth, maybe we'll see it clean up a bit.

There we go, and also because it's only an 8 bit sampling converter 256 levels I'm doing a 1920 by 1080 screen capture here, so obviously it's got to do some pixel doubling. you know, interpolation, all that sort of stuff. Um, you can set the input impedance to of 50 Ohms. Excellent.

selectable. Nice. Let's check out the triggering here on the menu. What do we got? Edge pattern, pulse width pretty basic.

nothing fancy pantsy there at all. You can trigger from any of the digital channels all the digital I/o channels, the trigger B and C the line frequency of the function gen start very nice. That's actually quite flexible in terms of that. Sources rising, falling either you're gonna have the either and noise reject There we go, that's but that's that's pretty basic.

It'll do all the things this looks like Tada. we can pop up. these pedals is good so you can just leave them anywhere if you're using these all the time. don't snap into place anywhere, but you know if you're using them all the time.

Just yeah. Break out the panels and leave them there nice. And by the way, you can just move the waveform up and down. just grab it and drag it or you know you can do the thing on the side there.

There's no button to center it, but err, that's neither here nor there. And the trigger level you can just set like that'll like it how it shows the level as you hold it and drag it. and if it's off the screen like this, it actually puts it right up there like that, so you can just drag it back down. So a trigger and waveform movement works.

Just hunky-dory Now if we go up here, we've got our acquisition stuff. It's not immediately obvious. You know, I'd like to see like an acquisition button or something like that, but you know, whatever, it's got. Pizza Tech Mode: Awesome.

Yeah, whoa. There we go. Hey. I Expected a bit more noise on the pita Tech mode there.

What's going on, huh? Anyway, Digital phosphor. Okay. acquisition. and here's our averaging.

and there we go. It will see it go to a nice thin line because it's averaging out the noise there. No workers. It doesn't have any high resolution mode at all.

There's no high resolution mode. Why? I would have expected that on a scope like this? Or is that all right. That's that sampling mode. Okay, so it's not real-time mode at some equivalent time our sampling.

That's what's going on there. but that's really I I Expected more functionality for the money. I Really did. Anyway, we've got we can do persistence.

No worries at all. So if we go off the script off the trigger, yep, our persistence shows up. It resets the persistence when you move the trigger like that. Okay, some scopes clear at some scopes don't depends on your preference and what else we'll go.

We've got clear display and we've got pin out which we've seen before. That's fine and dandy. but yeah I know high resolution mode. Quite quite disappointed.

No, yeah, no. Boxcar averaging on the thing. Mm-hmm Thumbs down. Well let's go into more.

We always want more. Let's check it out. I Like they've got tons of room here. Why does it have to be more? Look at all this unused room here.

Why bother having more? Why not just put FFT there I like it and in the reference way for like math and FFT why not just put them there? That's just dumb I Don't know. Yeah, they got 90% with the user interface and then gave up store from the analog channel so we can actually store the data we can capture we can load from files. Okay, so what what does it expect when we load that? it's expecting a VB reference file. So it's obviously some custom file.

some custom job'. Anyway, the math functions. Let's check out the math functions. Where are they? Where are they here? We go here.

We go now. See it showed up like why not just keep their mouth there I mean I I Don't get it all right? So if we go in there we can actually change it. There we go. plus minus multiply divide all the usual stuff.

Nothing fancier than that. There's no integration Once again, for a educational tool, especially one of this price point I Would have expected all of the math functions like even the Rygel D is 1050 for Zed right 400 buck bench scope. it can do. You know a ton more than this? That's just.

no, that's that is not good enough. That is not good enough. They need to work on their mouth. Yep.

Not happy with you got to drag both at once. You can't drag one ie. can drag one individually. Here we go.

Yeah, there we go. So drag on the screen, drags everything. That's kind of handy and then if you want drag one, it's over here. But too bad.

if it's behind it. you got to drag that one first and then that one. It depends on which one you're focused on. Yeah.

Anyway, all right. so math is barely what's there. That's about all I can give it. and now FFT is.

Presumably it's not done in hardware on the virtual bench. it's done in the software here. So let's we can break that panel out. Actually, There we go, There we go.

So let's move area 50 like that frequency per division. There we go and we're going to be very coarse actually. let's put the square wave in there. we go.

It's a very coarse of course. The frequency resolution just isn't there. The bending resolution isn't there because we've only got a couple of cycles on the screen, so that's absolutely useless. So let's go and fix that and you'll notice that our resolution gets better and better and better.

Let me. Yeah, there we go. There we go. Gets better and better and better.

So I'll show you that getting worse. Now here we go see until it's practically unusable. If you've only got a single cycle, that's a trap for young players. Students learn that very quickly.

That's the advantage of it's not just here. any scope you can do this on. you know you play off the time base. I Think oh ok.

I've got my square wave on the screen. Let's see what the frequency components are and that Why you get this ridiculous looking? You know spectrum like this, which doesn't look anything like the lecturer said, or what the textbook shows and even this looks like you know, some dick and balls it Hopeless. Yeah, you've got it. Get more samples, data.

The algorithms don't work without data. All right. They've got all the usual window culprits down here who are regular and advanced. Oh Seven-time Blackmun Harris for you Blackmun Harris Fanboys out there Exactly Blackmun Well, you don't want this seven-term rubbish.

You want to be exact anyway. I'm low side low there where it's all that. that's reasonable. but the FFT functionality.

you know, pretty basic. you know, we can do some vertical offset and stuff like that. but yeah. I mean volts per division 20 does it Well, that's the other thing.

Where's the scale? Where's the scale? look? they should. Where's that? Why Vertical scale? That's just ridiculous we need. Okay, it's over here. but if you didn't have that panel open right, if you had this panel closed I Know there we go.

20 DB Volts. Okay, I don't know. it would have been nice to scale it over here. Look at all that unused space on the screen.

There it it would have been nice. Anyway, Well cursors down here. Here we go. we can time.

Oh, hang on Channel One. Ah, there we go. We can choose the FFT Okay, it's going to change. All right.

there we go. Cursor one, but it doesn't Looks like you can't Just like skip to the peaks and things like that. There's no auto peak detection. It would have been nice if you know it detected all these frequency Peaks and had a button down there here that said you know, enable peaks at some threshold value and you know auto detect Peaks and things like that, but no, nothing.

Once again, you know rudimentary scopes. Rudimentary scope FFT Functions have better functionality than this and they cost a lot less. so you know yeah, there's still like I. Like the software, the software is quite good.

In terms of you know USB scopes I've seen it's really quite good. but it's just it's not good enough. I expect more, especially for the price. And if go to the digital stuff down here, we can choose buses.

We've got I squared, C parallel and SPI where is like Rs-232 where serial. That's disappointing. So yeah, there's our line so we can choose what's that enabled. Okay, so there we go.

We're turning those on here. Presumably we can track, yet we can drag those. it automatically rearranges. That's good.

It's doing all the regular stuff. Our maximum sampling rate is one gig sample per second on the digital lines and we can set our threshold voltage. It's all adjustable so it doesn't matter what logic family you're using and that maximum digital buffer size 1 million transitions. There you go.

So that's it. So it must have sample compression because it's doing train it'll enable. Should have select transitions instead of Meg samples. It's got the sampling right and instead of setting a memory depth sighs it's giving you.

you know X number. You know, ten thousand transitions and million transitions or whatever. So it's obviously doing sample compression and that's very nice. I'm not sure you'd have to check the spec sheet to know exactly how much sample memory it actually does have, but that's nice.

It means that when you have a you have packets of data that are spread. You know, by long period, long dead periods, you're not wasting all your sample memory taking all those dead periods. you only it's only the transitions that are stored in memory. time-stamped and did it transition higher? Did it transfer transition low and then that makes more effective.

You see your memory, but you still need a lot of sample memory. You know the sampling compression like this is not magic. You've got to have a lot of memory to back it up. of course, because if one, if you've got a thousand transitions in one packet and you want to measure ten packets and you've only got you know 1k of sample memory, then it can only do a thousand transitions.

You're going to miss these other packets. So yeah, but I'm sure it does. I Think it's got like Meg's or something worth of memory and I just found a limitation with the bus trigger. and if we're going to digital here trying to set it up like set up my SD a line, we can choose any one of the 16 digital channels.

We can choose the digital I/o but we can't choose the analog inputs and that's what I was using. Wow And here we go. check this out. I'll go in auto mode.

Here we go. We're now doing real-time I squared C decoding. I've basically got the same signal I've got data on channel one and clock on channel two here in same with D0 and D1 there, so they're actually back to front like that. so if we actually single-shot capture, that we should be able to.

oh actually sorry. I got that? Got that back to front? There we go. We should be able to capture that like that. and if we zoom in, we can see.

oh, that's not a good example that it's single-shot capture that again. There we go. Do that. There we go.

there's a whole I squared C Pack it. Very nice since on the business, what's happening with that little that pulse there? Oh I don't know. I'm using a Tektronix demo board here by the way. So I have no idea what signals has actually generated.

may actually deliberately been putting in a false pulse there? perhaps? huh? but that's the advantage of having your um your being able to view your waveform as well. So yeah, it's a bit disappointing that you can't actually trigger off the analog signal channels cuz that's handy to be able to view your signal to make sure your signal integrity is fine. but check out the rise time on that ad is poor as and but hey we're getting data out of it and it seems fairly quick and it seems to be doing. Seems to be doing the business anyway and we're good.

Just got some you know line termination probing type issues here but no big deal but it seems to be seems to be doing it and I'm not sure if we're gonna actually set the height on those digital channels. it'll be nice to actually expand those I Don't think you can like if you're only got like two channels like this. actually expand the things. And the other thing that's a bit disappointing is I can I like the fact that they snap into place and then automatically move around.

That's fine and dandy, but if you want to overlay that now, you can see that they tighten that the digital and the analog are correlated there. Okay, that's fine and dandy, but you can't leave it there. It just snaps back and you'll notice that this is correlated down here as well. So that's obviously you can see that pulse in here.

that one that didn't go all the way up you. but you saw anyway. it just didn't have the rise time. Actually, that's yeah, that's what it is.

We've just got a rise time issue on the I squared C lines. The the pull-up resistor value is not high enough. So yeah, it's just not doing the business there. But anyway, it's still detecting that because that will depend on our threshold value, which we can change.

Um, so let's actually give that a go. I Just notice that the threshold maximum digital threshold can only go to two volts. What the? And it hasn't got like an upper or lower threshold. So I don't know what's going on there.

Um, that's quite disappointing Anyway, Huh? Yeah, there we go. Did we get it yet? We still got it. We still got it. And of course we can change that to our binary there for you binary aficionados.

None of that hex rubbish. but unfortunately I can't see any way up here to trigger off the like a pattern or anything like that. so there's nothing hard where they got all that hardware sitting in there. They've got that zinc FPGA plus the Kintex FPGA huge beasts and they can't they haven't implemented, you know, I squared C and an SPI pattern triggering for example.

So it's It's quite limited. You've got to go in there and like decode it, so you can't you know trigger on missing acknowledges and you know all that sort of jazz. so it's not really a protocol. you know analyzer as such.

So there we go. You know it's got its with the one make sample memory we can capture like the entire group of data here and then we can zoom in so that's okay, but that's standard on them. Deep ish memory scope like this one with one Meg But yeah, you can't trigger unfortunately on anything. so you can't you know like a data word or something like that, which is very useful for our debugging things like that.

But considering I guess this is primarily targeted the educational market I Think you know it? Okay, but still. Yeah, it would have been nice to have that sort of stuff. So this is not a real this is not a real tool for real world. You know, advanced troubleshooting and things like that.

Certainly on I Squared C you know serial buses and the like. You can view them, you can capture them. But yeah, the rest is up to you. And the other thing that I realized it's not here that I would have liked to see is some sort of automated you know, programmable control over the I owe down in the bottom corner here.

but we can set them to input, set them to outputs, but we can't sequence them. you know you can't like put a counter on there for example. you know, basic sort of. you know, educational training, stuff like that you just can't do it.

So like, yeah, that would have been nice. but granted, all this National Instruments hardware is fully configurable with the other LabVIEW or Lab Windows Ce VI which is I which is what I've used in the past for doing lots of National Instruments based test systems. The lab Windows CE VI stuff is that quite nice and you can. You know they've got the libraries for all this and I'm sure have absolutely no doubt whatsoever.

even though I'm not going to test it today, it requires too much time and effort, but you can. Actually, they have a library set you can program it using at LabVIEW Lab Windows whatever tool floats your boat. and yeah, it'll all work. That's the advantage of National Instruments is that everything's integrated with all their tools and things like that, all their programming environments.

So yeah, you can do that. But in the app here? No, it's just. it's pretty basic and I will not play with this today. but there's a networking option up here because it's just going to work the same I'm you know and I don't have an iPad So I can't test the iPad app.

but we can create a new wireless network here and we can disable write so we can create a new wireless network and send all up and everything you know. and we can play around with the ethernet as well and hook it up either way. but it works excellent via USB No problems at all. It's in fact, as we saw at the start, it's fantastic.

With USB you just plug it in. It's a drive the software's on there using to run it. Boom it. No software installation on your machine.

It's beautiful. Why can everyon do that for USB scope Ida And again, another disappointing aspect of this thing is the digital multimeter down here. I like it's going to have good specs I don't like and probably won't even insult National Instruments reputation by you know, hooking up you know, my reference generators to this and playing with it looks like it's like fast I played in five and I've did you meter but what can you do with it it's just a multimeter. Where's like trend applauding and stuff like that Like you know it, it's just not there.

It's begging for it. It's absolutely begging to have a logging multi-meter there to get trend plots and stuff. and it's just not there other stuff that is missing from here. Did I mention it before? I Don't know.

this has been far too long. But where are the bode plots? For example? No, not Bode bode. It's how we pronounce it here and like, where is the bode plot? Like classic training stuff like that, It's got the function generator. It's got the DSO It's got the multimeter.

It's got that. Everything's built-in right? But you can't log stuff. You can't do things like that. You can't get bode flights like it.

Wait, how can we sweep the function generator? We can't sweep it. We can't modulate it. We can't do anything like it's just really rudimentary stuff. And this is a six grand instrument.

So I would have, you know, expected the software to have all the bells and whistles like that. You know you can go by. You know, your analog discovery thing for what is a hundred and fifty bucks or 200 bucks or whatever it is I think it's under a hundred bucks. Educational price and it does those sorts of things.

You know it and this thing doesn't do it. So yeah, disappointed thumbs down. National Instruments In terms of advanced functionality like that, but it gets a thumbs-up in terms of basic functionality and implementation. But that's all it is is a basic implementation of stuff and it's disappointing.

Like the power supply. for example, we can't sequence the power supply. where is the sequencing stuff track in? Oh, we can set tracking the positive and negative, but that's it, right? Um, like that that's begging out the programming. The power supply is begging out to be programmable.

Where's the programmable functionality? Like I said, you can code this stuff yourself using whatever National Instruments tool we like. But that's beside the point, right? A instrument of this price and grade and educational focus should have all this sort of, you know, programmable functionality built in. So yeah. disappointed.

Quite disappointed. Oh alright, there it is. I've hooked up my multi-thousand dollar 10k precision resistor and it's bang on and I'll tell you what else would have been nice on this thing as well. Would have been nice to maybe have a K-type thermocouple probe on this thing as part of the multimeter.

Or maybe they could have like a Titan quet type connector on the front panel so you can hook up their you know, regular temperature probes. Maybe two channels. That would have been really nice wouldn't it? and that would have added a huge amount. Wouldn't have added anything in the scheme of things to the cost to the hardware, but they they didn't add that and they could have done.

You know you could have done you know, sequencing of your power supply with log in with your digital multimeter, login the temperature as well while capturing scope signals and this could have been a ridiculously powerful debugging tool that everyone would have used Everyone you know if it had all that advanced functionality. and the and like the the 350 megahertz version we're looking at here is quite expensive, but the hundred megahertz dual channel one's not. You know, out of bounds for you know your hobbyist or your professional or something like that and had all that advanced functionality, then you know maybe it would have been a lot more tempting for the individual to buy this thing, but no, it's just got basic functionality. Alright I'm gonna try out some just some loads here.

on the plus 25 volt. Channel I've just got my DC electronic load here, my BK precision load and I've got a set for around 22 watts and which is constant power load and it doesn't start up. it does not start up with that whereas if I go switch it, hang on there. We go there we go.

I just went to what switch that and you'll notice that it came good. but if I turn that power off and on again, it won't restart. So I can't quite do the 25 volts at 1 amp that it claims on there. so there must be power.

You know there's some power envelope thing I'm not sure if they have that in the manual or not. I don't think it's that the specs of that detailed I Don't remember recall seeing any power response graphs so I'm just drawing a couple of watts from the second channel here and you know it's going to be very. It's great. It's got excellent specs on the power supply and you know it read: Baxton it reads back directly from the terminal.

It's everything sir. Hunky-dory So, but yeah, I can't quite deliver what it claims. That's all, but no big deal. So there you have it.

That's a look at the 350 Megahertz. National Instruments Virtual bench. Thank you very much. National Instruments for loaning this man so we can have a play around with it and you probably already know my opinion of this thing.

It's competent in what it does, the software is competent, there's no bugs, it's fast, and it has all the basic functionality. But I Can't help but be quite disappointed. Very disappointed, especially at the price point for this 350 megahertz one that doesn't have more programmable capability. The Arjun you know, like basic stuff.

power supply, sequencing, multimeter logging, things like that. Why can't I do these sorts of things it? I You know in granted its software they can add it and I hope they take this on board and things like that and actually improve the software. Because they can improve it, they can add stuff to the FPGA use and things like that. I'm not sure how they update them, but I'm sure they'd update the FPGA is in there I'm sure they thought of that.

Maybe you should be able to maybe get a tool to do that. And yeah, it really is some serious hardware at a serious price. And the software is competent but very quite basic but much better than most. USB Oscilloscope parts software I've used as just crap.

but as I said, there's some other good ones out there like the Analog Discovery and things like that that do have a lot more functionality in there for a lot less price. but this it does exactly what they wanted to do, which would be for the all-in-one education market, but in it. so this is not really something that the individual would go out and buy. necessarily it's a very niche market for that if you need the compact form factor.

I Love that everything is all in the one unit. that's fantastic. I can think of many times in the past where I would have killed to have a such a small form-factor thing from National Instruments I've had to use multiple National Instruments cards in like production test systems and things like that to automate all sorts of stuff. I would have lower automate even benchtop art systems.

not necessarily production to all their production test systems but they're like on benches and just to have one little box that does it all is brilliant and I've had to have like a racks 19-inch racks full of all the different individual gear. to actually do stuff like this and to have it all in the one boxes is really quite neat and the hardware quality and design is first-rate so you're definitely no issues there at all. You're getting your money's worth and the software is competent but very basic. I just wish it was better and I think that they could actually have quite a reasonable bigger market out there for the thing if the software did more stuff in terms of out login and automation and stuff like that I know it's all programmable, but you know out of the box it would like to see it do a lot more I thought of as I said described like half a dozen different things that I was disappointed that the software didn't have and I kind of you know, expected it to have those sorts of things at least half a dozen and I couldn't you know if I said here and thought about it, probably a you know a dozen improvements I can make to the software to do that.

But anyway, so that's yeah, it's a nice bit of instrument gets a thumbs up but yeah, it's not something that you go out and buy like for a 350 you're paying for the bandwidth here. For 350 megahertz, there's much better you out there in benchtop scopes and things like that. Not you know, then they're not. This is not double the price of a 350 megahertz scope or so long might be.

Depends it. You know, the retail price might be like a 350 Meg Rai Go now. They're about four grand. Something like that.

This is about six thousand. so you know maybe the sequent ones are a bit cheaper. but it's a different instrument for a different market. but it's all in one.

The power supply, the digital I/o the function gen. yeah, and I Haven't tried out the you know, the iPad II app and things like that. so you know in theory you can sit this on your bench and have your iPad tablet just there. and it's actually incredibly small form-factor thing.

You know we can have a notebook or something like that. wireless connection, all that sort of jazz and you know it could be very good. But yeah, there's more powerful bench top oscilloscopes out there. and you know, if you're after a general-purpose instrument, you wouldn't be buying this thing.

You'd get a general-purpose bench scope or something like that with maybe a USB logic analyzer are added on. For you know, just for logic analyzer and protocol analysis because the protocol analysis is very rudimentary on this thing and you can't trigger off staff and search. You know I Haven't even gotten into all that sort of jazz that the logic analyzer functionality in the thing? It doesn't have any of that, so you know? Yeah, you wouldn't your average professional would not be buying this as their everyday tool. But for the education market, yeah, it's quite neat.

You can, you know hand a tablet around the classroom you know people can play with, they can be hooked up to all sorts of stuff, and they can, you know, interact with it and play. and it's really quite neat. But if you do have that niche need for an all-in-one instrument, especially one that's programmable using LabVIEW or lab we know CPR as CVI or any other programming system, then you know to automate stuff and things like that, This could be the bomb. Real small form-factor and and you know people might complain about the price, but you know from big companies that I've came from.

it's nothing to spend 20, 30 grand on a round and 19-inch rack full of you know, rack mount PC to automate stuff and then all the separate instruments cost in five 10 grand apart. You know it's not. It is not there, you know, unreasonably priced in in that respect. It's just a different market to what you know, a hobbyist or a you know a low-end professional might be used to.

When you're you know, spending your own money, it's quite a lot different. but for companies and educational institutions, who would be getting a hefty discount on this thing? I'm sure when they buy them in, you know, twenty thirty, you know, coupler classroom or two at a time worth? You know then they'd be getting substantial discounts. But yeah, it has its market, so don't complain about the price. It is what it is.

and I think it offers, you know, quite reasonable value for money. if you're in, you know, integrated all-in-one I don't know another. Is there another one that's as heavily integrated as this one? I'm not sure I don't think there is. You know there's a couple of like the bare boards like the Analog Discovery and things like that which is just like they're not professional like you know.

bench level instruments like like this one is so yeah, um, it is what it is and I like it. It's very nice. it worked out of the box I've had no bugs, no crashes and it was all seamless and it's great. I like it so that's it I Hope you enjoyed that not brief, had all look at the new National Instruments virtual bench.

Catch you next time Hi! There's a lot of people who've wanted me to take a look at this for quite a long time and slay to your heart's content with this thing all at 14-bit resolution up to basically 10 megahertz bandwidth. Fantastic. But hey, in my book, being able to get this bode plot this transfer function over frequency with 14-bit resolution up to 10 megahertz. That alone is worth the price of entry on this tool.

You know, even at the full two hundred and seventy bucks, that's you know. It's really quite decent.