Welcome to BasicScope

StickyBasicScope

BasicScope can seem daunting initially because of the lack of familiar knobs and labels. But once you understand the basic layout of the program, everything should be simple.

Time/Div control Channel 1 Enable Channel 1 as Trigger Source Channel 1 Volts/Div Channel 1 Vertical Position Channel 1 Trigger Slope Channel 1 Trigger Level Channel 1 Probe Attenuation Channel 2 Enable Channel 2 as Trigger Source Channel 2 Vots/Div Channel 2 Vertical Position Channel 2 Probe Attenuation Trace Display Legend for Trace Display Scroll Bar for Trace Display Status Log Toolbar with Buttons
Click on parts of the picture to jump to an explanation of the items.

Time Control

TimeDivTime/Div (Sweep) Slider: This is like the sweep rate knob on a classic oscilloscope. It sets the time per division. When the cursor is positioned over this slider, the present setting pops up as a tooltip. Any displayed trace is magnified to match the time setting. If the scope is running, the next trace is captured at the selected time setting.

Channel 1 Controls

Items associated with channel 1 are generally yellow.

Ena1Channel 1 Enable: When checked, this box enables channel 1 for display.  If this box is unchecked, the rest of the channel 1 controls below disappear, as they are no longer relevant.

Volt1Channel 1 Volts/Div: This slider controls the input sensitivity for channel 1.  When the cursor is positioned over the slider, the present setting pops up as a tooltip. Any displayed trace for channel 1 is magnified to match the voltage setting. If the scope is running, the next trace is captured at the selected voltage setting.

Aten1Channel 1 Probe Attenuation: This must be set to match the probe attenuation on channel 1.

Pos1Channel 1 Position: This slider controls the vertical position of the trace for channel 1.  When the cursor is positioned over the slider, the present setting pops up as a tooltip.  As this slider is moved, a faint line appears on the Display Window to graphically indicate the zero level for the channel 1.

EnaTrig1Channel 1 as Trigger Source: When checked, channel 1 is selected as the trigger source.  When unchecked, the channel 1 Trigger Slope and Trigger Level controls below disappear, as they are no longer relevant.  Note: Channel 1 and Channel 2 cannot be simultaneously selected as the trigger source, however, it is possible to deselect both, resulting in a free-running trace based on no trigger condition at all.

SlopeChannel 1 Trigger  Slope: This selects the slope of the trigger – rising edge, falling edge, or both edges.

Trig1Channel 1 Trigger Level: This slider sets the trigger level for channel 1.  When the cursor is positioned over this control, a tooltip pops up indicating the present voltage level for the trigger.  As this slider is moved, a faint line appears on the Display Window to graphically indicate the trigger level.

Channel 2 Controls

Controls associated with channel 2 are generally cyan in color.

Ena2Channel 2 Enable: When checked, this box enables channel 2 for display.  If this box is unchecked, the rest of the channel 2 controls below disappear, because they are no longer relevant.

Volt2Channel 2 Volts/Div: This slider controls the input sensitivity for channel 2.  When the cursor is positioned over the slider, the present setting pops up as a tooltip. Any displayed trace for channel 2 is magnified to match the voltage setting. If the scope is running, the next trace is captured at the selected voltage setting.

Aten2Channel 2 Probe Attenuation: This must be set to match the probe attenuation on channel 2.

Pos2Channel 2 Position: This slider controls the vertical position of the trace for channel 2.  When the cursor is positioned over the slider, the present setting pops up as a tooltip.  As this slider is moved, a faint line appears on the Display Window to graphically indicate the zero level for the channel 2.

EnaTrig2Channel 2 as Trigger Source: When checked, channel 2 is selected as the trigger source.  When unchecked, the channel 2 Trigger Slope and Trigger Level controls disappear, as they are no longer relevant.

SlopeChannel 2 Trigger Slope: This selects the slope of the trigger – rising edge, falling edge, or both edges.

Channel 2 Trigger Level: (not shown) This slider sets the trigger level for channel 2.  When the cursor is positioned over this control, a tooltip pops up indicating the present voltage level for the trigger.  As this slider is moved, a faint line appears on the Display Window to graphically indicate the trigger level.

Waveform Display

Display
This is, of course, the display of the waveforms. There are 8 vertical divisions for voltage, and 10 horizontal divisions for time. The waveform may be moved right or left simply by dragging it with the mouse cursor. Additionally, it can be scrolled right or left with the scroll bar below the display. To zoom in on a particular part of the display, position the cursor over the point of interest, and push the mouse wheel forward to zoom in. The zoomed display will be centered about the point where the cursor was.  Similarly, the mouse wheel can be pulled back to zoom out. If there is no mouse wheel available, the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ keys may be used to zoom in and out, respectively.
Legend
At the bottom of the display is a legend that shows the present settings of the trace being viewed, and the position of the markers (see below) if enabled.

Status Log

Status
Important messages and warnings appear here. Use the scroll up/down buttons at the right to see previous messages.

Buttons

Buttons
When BasicScope is initially installed, every single button is on the toolbar at the bottom of the program. Don’t be overwhelmed – only a few of these buttons are commonly used, and you can hide the ones you don’t need, and rearrange the remainder to suit your taste (see Change Buttons below).

If there are more buttons on the toolbar than can be displayed, there will be a little paging arrow on the right or left of the toolbar to move to the next or previous page of buttons.

RunNormRun Normal: This tells the scope to capture data continuously. Click on it to start capturing;  click on it again to stop.  You can tell that the scope is running because this button will look like it’s pushed in.  Each time a trigger is received for a trace, the Trg label for the channel will briefly flash red.  If triggers are received continuously, the Trg label will be solid red.

RunOneshotRun Oneshot: Capture exactly one trace, then stop. When this button is pushed, it will stay in until the trigger condition is met.  At that time, the button pops out automatically, and the trace is displayed. To cancel capture, simply push the button again.

Markers Enable Markers: There are four markers – a square and circle for each of two channels. This button enables their display. To move a marker, simply drag it with the cursor. Except when moved, markers are fixed with respect to the waveform, and will scale and pan along with the waveform. If a marker would have been drawn off-screen, it is instead shown at the nearest edge of the screen. The legend area below the waveform display reports the positions of the markers, if they are enabled.

parkPark Markers: Sometimes the markers can be hard to see on the display. Pushing this button puts the markers in a fixed location near the upper left of the display, ready to drag to the desired location.

ScreenShotScreenShot: This saves the Waveform Display, along with its legend, to a PNG file.  The default file name is a the current date and time,  but can be changed.  Note: to get an image of specific dimensions, drag the border of the main program window to size.  In the top left corner of the Waveform Display will be a readout of the image dimensions.  This is very handy if you want to generate a picture of exact size for a blog or document.

SaveTrace Save Trace: the presently displayed trace in BasicScope’s proprietary format. The default file name is the present date and time, and the default extension is .bin .

LoadTraceLoad Trace: Load and display a trace that was previously saved by BasicScope.

SaveCsvSave to Comma-Separated-Value file: Save the traces to a text file that can read by Excel, OpenOffice Calc, and other programs.

UnzoomUnzoom: Restore the original voltage and time settings under which the displayed trace was captured. This is useful when the scope is not running, you have zoomed in on some detail, and want to reset the zoom.

FirstTrigFind First Trigger: Find the first trigger point (if any) in the trace, and center the view there. This is generally only useful when looking at captured data when the scope is not running.

NextTrigFind Next Trigger:Find the next trigger point (if any) in the trace, and center the view there. This is a handy way of skipping forward to the next trigger event in a trace.

SwTrigEnable Software Trigger Detection: The main advantage of this feature is that the trace preceding the trigger event can be displayed – something the Hantek trigger won’t do.   Also, Software Trig must be enabled, if triggering on both edges is desired.  As the overhead is relatively low, the Author recommends keeping this feature enabled at all times.

DataAcqModeEnable Data Acquisition Mode: When pushed in, this button enables Data Acquisition Mode. Every trace taken is written to a target CSV file, if that file does not already exist. If the file does exist, nothing is written. The default target filename is data.csv, but can be changed through the “Data Acquisition File…” selection under the File menu.

The idea is that a third party program can process or display the information in the data.csv file, for example, as x-y mode, a Fourier transform, persistent phosphor scope, heat map, and so forth. When the third party program wants more data, it will delete the existing data.csv file, which causes BasicScope to write another with the next trace taken.

This feature was added in BasicScope 1.3, to implement a cheap data recorder. There is a performance impact, as the entire output file must be written before the next trace is taken. This could lead to a delay of milliseconds up to several seconds between traces, depending on the size of the capture. The author recommends turning this feature off unless it is actually being used.

To turn off Data Acquisition Mode, simply push the button again.

ExtraEnable Extra Info Line:This adds an additional line of less-commonly used information to the legend.

AboutAbout: Display program version, build date, and licensing information. The duck icon

ChangeButtonsChange Buttons: This brings up a dialog that can be used to hide unwanted buttons, and change the order of existing ones.  Should this button itself be deleted, the Change Buttons functionality can be accessed from BasicScope’s regular menu, or simply by double-clicking a vacant part of the toolbar.  Experts can rearrange buttons by Shift-dragging them around on the toolbar, or Shift-dragging buttons completely out of the toolbar in order to delete them.  Have no fear about experimenting; it is impossible to delete a button permanently.

Zoom In and Recapture for More Detail

BasicScope, HowTo
max time per div is 1 second
A full 10 seconds of data are captured at 1 S/div. This appears as a big smear on the screen. We will move the time slider at the top 9 clicks to the left to zoom in.
zoomed in to 2 mS
At 2 mS/div, we start to see some structure in the waveform.  It appears that there are narrow pulses every millisecond.  We will zoom in on the second pulse from the left, to see how wide it is.  Position the mouse cursor over that pulse, and push the mouse wheel forward 5 clicks to zoom in 5 times.
magnified to 50 uS/div
At this zoom level, the pulse appears to be 30 μS wide.  But remember that this is just a digital magnification of the trace that was originally captured at 100 kSps.  We will click on the “run oneshot” button to recapture this trace at a sample rate appropriate for 50 μS/div.
recaptured at 50 μS/div
On the recaptured trace, the pulse width is more like 20 or 25 μS wide. Note at the lower left that the sample rate of this recaptured trace is 1 Msps. There also appears to be a suggestion of some ringing on the edges. We will use the mouse wheel again to zoom in 3 more clicks to 5 μS/div.
magnified to 5 μS/div
The pulse width is clearly 20 μS now. But we’re still looking at a trace captured at 1 Msps. We click the “run oneshot” button again to get more detail.
at 16 Msps
The recapture at 5 μS/div provided us with 16 Msps. Now the ringing is defined – we could even take a frequency measurement on it if we wanted to. Let’s zoom and recapture one more time at the maximum sample rate of 48 Msps.
out of range error
Oops. Because the sampling buffer is very short at high sample rates, we cannot capture data this far away from the trigger – about 1 mS (1000 μS) in this case. Fortunately, this is a repetitive waveform, and we can drag or scroll the trace to a similar point closer to the trigger.
closer to trigger
This part of the trace looks exactly like the previous display, except that we are now 5.19 μS from the trigger. We try clicking on the “run oneshot” button again.
at 48 Msps
This trace was taken at the limit of the hardware’s performance. Due to noise, 48 Msps does not look much better than 16 Msps, and moreover, the sample buffer is tiny – a mere 1016 samples. This is why some have said that, in practical terms, the 6022BE is really a 16 Msps scope. Hantek does provide sin(x)/x filtering to make the waveform look better, but this is turned off in BasicScope, to gain a tiny bit of performance, and because it doesn’t add any real information.

Note that although the “run oneshot” button was used in this example, we could have used “run norm” for most things. Basicscope is able to scroll and zoom a trace while it is running.