I've been playing with the Oscilloscope software's Auto Player feature and after tripping over myself a few times decided to write down the steps to get it to work. So I thought I'll share this cheat sheet with those of you that may want to further investigate the usefulness of this feature.
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To use the Auto Player feature first go to Port Settings.
1. Click the check mark box for "Save data file automatically to below directory".
2. Browse to an empty folder and press OK, or browse to a folder of your choice and click "Make New Folder", enter the folder's name, and press OK. The correct folder path and name should appear in the directory field.
3. Use Windows Explorer to navigate to this folder so you can watch its content. There is a bug in the software that can start filling this folder very rapidly with new numbered folders (1,2,3,4.....800,801, etc.).
4. Set the "Keep Getting Delay(ms):" to the interval in ms that you want to have between captures. For example, 3000.
5. Capture some data by clicking "Keep Getting Now!", or click "OK" and then click the "Continue Data Download" icon on the toolbar. On the folder you are watching a file named "filename.ini" and a folder named "1" should appear.
However, you may see a bunch of numbered folders being created. If this happens, CLOSE the Oscilloscope application. This is the bug mentioned on step 3. Delete the folders and try again.
During each capture interval a new data file is created and stored in folder "1". A list of these file's names is kept in filename.ini to keep track of the sequence in which the data files are recorded. At the bottom of the Oscilloscope application window the path and name of the current destination data file and a progress bar are displayed. This information is automatically updated during each capture interval.
6. To stop capturing data click the "Stop Data Download" icon on the toolbar.
7. To setup the playback of the captured data click the "Auto Player" icon on the toolbar.
8. Set the desired "Play Mode" and the "Time Delay" between frames. Choose "Turn" to playback the captured files in the same sequence that they were recorded, choose "Reverse" to play them back from last to first. During playback each file represents a frame, the "Time Delay" is the dead time before the next file is read and displayed.
9. Click "Add..." and browse as required to add the folder created during step 2 to the "History:" list. Choose this folder from the history list.
10. Click the "Play" button to begin the playback. During playback you can click "Pause" and use the "Next" and "Previous" buttons to manually step from one frame to another. Automatic playback ends once the last frame is reached, there is no loop option and you must press "Play" again to repeat.
NOTES:
There is no built in mechanism to edit the history list. However, to delete folders from this list you can physically move them or delete them with Windows Explorer. When you close/open the Oscilloscope application, any folders in the history list that can't be found will be automatically purged from the list.
It's possible to create your own capture sequences for playback. The filenames don't seem to need any particular syntax, so you can name the BIN files of your choice at will. The filename.ini file must contain these filenames in the sequence you want to playback the BIN files. If the BIN files are on a different folder this needs to be reflected in filename.ini with a path.
For example, for a folder in the history list named "Data" which contains the files, TomC_1.bin, TomC_2.bin, TomC_3.bin, the filename.ini file within "Data" should look as follows:
TomC_1.bin
TomC_2.bin
TomC_3.bin
or as follows if you want for example to play TomC_3 before TomC_2:
TomC_1.bin
TomC_3.bin
TomC_2.bin
Now let's say that we want to put these 3 BIN files in a subfolder named "1". In this case the filename.ini file within "Data" should look as follows:
1\TomC_1.bin
1\TomC_2.bin
1\TomC_3.bin
If you rename existing BIN files or edit existing filename.ini files, some of the previous information may still be stored in temporary memory. As a result Auto Player may not work as expected and you may need to Close/Open the Oscilloscope application to set things straight.
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There are times when static images don't tell the whole story of what's happening when scoping a particular event. Perhaps this feature may be useful in those cases to capture a more dynamyc reprensentation of the event. It seems to me that the data folder created with this feature could be compressed into a ZIP file and posted in this forum when a dynamyc representation is more appropriate.