Pocket-Sized 6 GHz 1 TS/s ET Scope

[SJL-Instruments]

I'm not liking that when the tracking is enabled, all other functions are disabled.  The problem is when you zoom in and start the tracking, it may already have drifted too far.  By the time you shut off tracking, close the menu, get things aligned again, then re-enable tracking, it may have already drifted too far.   Then you get things finally tracking and want to rearrange all the windows or add something, you start the whole process over again. 

It does track and I can at least make the measurement but it's a pain to use with my old Tektronix pulser having so much drift.   One fix would be let everything warm up for a half hour or so until the drift is less per time unit.  Then enable the tracking.  Personally, I would drop this limitation.  It's not like the PC is being stressed.

Thanks for the feedback. We'll remove this restriction in the next update (ETA next week).

Do you have a sense of how much your source is drifting (in ns/minute for example)? We didn't run into the issue you're describing during our QA, but we suspect our test sources had much slower long-term drift (perhaps ~100 ps per minute).

***

Here's a prerelease that removes this restriction. Note that the timebase controls are disabled while tracking is active. The timebase can still be adjusted with the tracking window open (but not yet started).
https://gigawave-releases.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/GigaWave_v2.6.8_PREVIEW20240615_Windows.zip

[joeqsmith]

Do you have a sense of how much your source is drifting (in ns/minute for example)? We didn't run into the issue you're describing during our QA, but we suspect our test sources had much slower long-term drift (perhaps ~100 ps per minute).

Shown sampled at 30 second intervals.   At 100ps per division or 100ps per minute drift on startup. 

Screen has 12 divisions. Center the transition using 10ps per division.  Transition is 40ps or 4 divisions.   Drift is 6 seconds per division.  Sweep rate is say a minute....  You can drag the waveform.... nope..  You can change the horz scale.... nope..  It's all locked out.  Best you can do is let everything warm up enough to allow for multiple transitions to remain on the screen for several sweeps, then enable the tracking.  It works as I let it run for about an hour last night to collect that data.   It's just not something you can measure from a cold start. 

[joeqsmith]

I tried the pre-release but I really would not limit any of the adjustments. 

I wonder if there is some difference in how we implemented the tracking that prevents you from allowing full access to all of the settings.   With mine, after I collect a sweep, I calculate the transition's center switch point.  Prior to the next sweep, I change the delay to recenter.   I do this on every sweep. 

[SJL-Instruments]

I tried the pre-release but I really would not limit any of the adjustments. 

I wonder if there is some difference in how we implemented the tracking that prevents you from allowing full access to all of the settings.   With mine, after I collect a sweep, I calculate the transition's center switch point.  Prior to the next sweep, I change the delay to recenter.   I do this on every sweep. 

The transition point is recalculated at the end of each sweep, then the timebase position is adjusted accordingly.

The concern is that the user may be in the middle of adjusting the timebase when the automatic adjustment is being applied. To solve this, we can temporarily pause tracking as long as the user is interacting with the timebase settings. The pre-release was a quick workaround in case you wanted to run additional experiments.

There are also many edge cases to consider due to interactions with other features. (For example, what to do if the user switches on/off power-user mode while the tracking is active? What if de-embedding is enabled?) For the official release, we will implement the necessary logic to handle this gracefully (or disable features for which we can't find a good resolution).

[joeqsmith]

For your software, has anyone besides me asked about adding tracking? The only reason I brought it up was to run that test for the person who had asked about it in the square wave thread.  It may be a non-issue.  Maybe just leave it as-is.  If I need to, I will just wait for things to stabilize enough to get a few transitions on one screen before enabling the the tracking to give it a chance to lock.

Really, we shouldn't be taking data this soon after power up anyway.  I'm just being impatient. 

[SJL-Instruments]

For your software, has anyone besides me asked about adding tracking? The only reason I brought it up was to run that test for the person who had asked about it in the square wave thread.  It may be a non-issue.  Maybe just leave it as-is.  If I need to, I will just wait for things to stabilize enough to get a few transitions on one screen before enabling the the tracking to give it a chance to lock.

Really, we shouldn't be taking data this soon after power up anyway.  I'm just being impatient. 

We haven't gotten any other requests for this feature. If you're fine with leaving it as-is, then we'll put 2.6.8 on hold for now.
Agreed that it's best to wait for the signal to stabilize before making precise measurements. 

That said, if anyone following this thread needs this feature, let us know and we'll put it back in our queue.

[SJL-Instruments]

(Thanks @points2 for reminding us to post here )

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