Hi All,

I just bought my first oscilloscope and my eyes are being opened to the world of electrical T&M. I recently developed a CMOS board to decode encoder signals from an industrial robot I am refurbishing as a hobby. One thing that would have been helpful is to inject a RS422 differential signal bus into the board emulating the encoder signals to help validate the functionality of the board. I have seen arbitrary waveform generators, but these look like single or dual channel devices mostly for analog design (although I'm sure their use extends into the digital realm). For my particular application, I would have wanted to inject 3 synchronized channels with various waveforms (a parallel bus). How do designers accomplish this task without building custom hardware. I saw a high end scope that came with a 4 bit pattern generator, but what if you needed 8 or 16 channels?

Thanks - just curious.

 

Hi All,

I just bought my first oscilloscope and my eyes are being opened to the world of electrical T&M. I recently developed a CMOS board to decode encoder signals from an industrial robot I am refurbishing as a hobby. One thing that would have been helpful is to inject a RS422 differential signal bus into the board emulating the encoder signals to help validate the functionality of the board. I have seen arbitrary waveform generators, but these look like single or dual channel devices mostly for analog design (although I'm sure their use extends into the digital realm). For my particular application, I would have wanted to inject 3 synchronized channels with various waveforms (a parallel bus). How do designers accomplish this task without building custom hardware. I saw a high end scope that came with a 4 bit pattern generator, but what if you needed 8 or 16 channels?

Thanks - just curious.

Yes AWG's can do that sort of stuff and it's somewhat easier if you have a sample signal to capture on a DSO and then upload it into the AWG nevertheless that's only good for 2 channels of output unless you have 2 similar AWG's that you can trigger their outputs ON together. A pair of SDG1032X's can do this and pair nicely with your new X-E for its Bode plot feature.
There is also a SW package for SDG's called EasyWaveX where you can construct your custom waveforms and upload them to the AWG. It also permits downloading captured waveforms from your X-E for editing and uploading into the AWG.

It's not until you carefully look into the functionality of these modern instruments that you can see how capable they really are.

 

Yes AWG's can do that sort of stuff and it's somewhat easier if you have a sample signal to capture on a DSO and then upload it into the AWG nevertheless that's only good for 2 channels of output unless you have 2 similar AWG's that you can trigger their outputs ON together. A pair of SDG1032X's can do this and pair nicely with your new X-E for its Bode plot feature.
There is also a SW package for SDG's called EasyWaveX where you can construct your custom waveforms and upload them to the AWG. It also permits downloading captured waveforms from your X-E for editing and uploading into the AWG.

It's not until you carefully look into the functionality of these modern instruments that you can see how capable they really are.

Oh cool. So can you chain many different AWGs together to produce time synchronized signals?

 

Oh cool. So can you chain many different AWGs together to produce time synchronized signals?

Yes although enabling them all instantaneously is not possible due to latency in the connectivity methods used.
The Aux In/Out BNC connector is the most straightforward method using an Out from one unit to the In of another unit to trigger the outputs to ON and this can also be done with SCPI commands from a PC over either USB or LAN.
This is the rear panel showing the connectivity available for all the SDG****X models.