How to use an oscilloscope to achieve remote control

As one of the most commonly used measuring instruments in the electronics industry, the oscilloscope involves a large amount of image import and export, data processing, automated operations, etc. We plan to explain the remote control of the oscilloscope in detail here. The specific arrangements are as follows:

 1 Remote image access and control through wireless network environment (suitable for special occasions or remote debugging)

 2 Rapidly implement automated testing without any foundation based on special software (suitable for quick setting of simple automated testing)

 3 Basics of programming based on SCPI instructions (What should I pay attention to when learning programming?)

1. Oscilloscope remote control: wireless control

There are many occasions where it is not convenient to use a cable to connect the computer and the oscilloscope, such as when the desk is far away from the test bench, the laboratory needs to be fully enclosed due to safety issues, or we want to view the oscilloscope waveform at home or anywhere else.

How to use wireless remote control of oscilloscope

Allows you to monitor oscilloscope waveforms and control them in real time anytime, anywhere

The specific steps are as follows↘↘↘

Step 1: Connect the oscilloscope to the router via an Ethernet cable. It can be used in a local area network (suitable for office environment) or a wide area network (remote control anytime, anywhere).

Step 2:

Step 3: Enter the oscilloscope IP address 130.29.70.57 in the IE browser address bar to automatically enter the oscilloscope basic information interface:

After installing the Java plug-in according to the system prompts, you can enter the full oscilloscope remote front panel under the Browser Web Control option, which allows you to perform all operations on the oscilloscope. The operation panel is exactly the same as the real panel of the oscilloscope.

You can also access the screen-only remote front panel under the oscilloscope menu bar to remotely control the oscilloscope.

Use the oscilloscope's web interface to:

oView information about the oscilloscope, such as model number, serial number, host name, IP address, and VISA (address) connection string.

oControl the oscilloscope using the remote front panel.

oSend SCPI (Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments) remote programming commands through the SCPI Command applet window view.

oSave setups, screen images, waveform data, and template files.

oRecall a setup file, reference waveform data file, or template file.

oCapture screen images and save or print them from your browser.

oActivate the identification function to identify a specific instrument by displaying a message or flashing the front panel indicator.

oView installed options, view firmware versions and install firmware upgrades, and view calibration status (via the Instrument System Setup page).

oView and modify the oscilloscope's network configuration

In addition to using the Web server to remotely control the oscilloscope, Keysight's oscilloscopes also support mobile devices (cell phones or IPADs) for control and waveform observation anytime and anywhere.

2. Automated control of oscilloscope remote control

Remotely controlling the oscilloscope and accessing waveforms in a wired or wireless environment can improve the test efficiency of engineers to a certain extent. Of course, what can really liberate engineers is to achieve automated testing as much as possible. Here I will share with you a software that can quickly achieve automated testing without programming.

This software is Benchvue mentioned two days ago. Today we will use Benchvue software to control an oscilloscope to implement a small automated test:

When the voltage peak of oscilloscope channel 1 input reaches 4V or 7V, the oscilloscope is triggered to start measuring the current peak voltage and frequency and automatically save the waveform.

The specific steps are as follows↘↘↘

Step 1: Connect the computer and oscilloscope, open the Benchvue software, and enter the oscilloscope control interface.

Step2: Create variables Vsine, V4, V7, V4f, V7f.

Step 3: Set Vsine equal to the peak voltage of channel 1 measured by the oscilloscope.

Under "Loops", find the "Until" loop and set the program to keep getting the value of Vsine until Vsine is greater than or equal to 4V.

Step 4: After the loop, set the oscilloscope trigger mode to "single". The oscilloscope will automatically stop at the end of the loop (i.e., when the voltage of channel 1 is detected to be greater than or equal to 4V), and then measure the peak voltage of channel 1 at this time and assign it to V4, and the frequency to V4f. After the measurement is completed, save the waveform on the oscilloscope screen.

Step 5: At this point, the program for automatically measuring and saving the image when the oscilloscope detects that the voltage of channel 1 reaches 4V has been built. The complete program is:

Step 6: Change the oscilloscope status to Run, and then set the automatic test and waveform saving when the peak voltage of channel 1 reaches 7V in the same way.

Step 7: Finally, set up automatic export of data. You can change the exported data, folder path and name, etc.

Once the automated program is created, it only takes 5 minutes to fully implement the automated testing of the program. And you don’t need to write any code. You deserve it.

3. Programming Basics of Oscilloscope Remote Control

For remote control of instruments, you can use the ready-made software provided by the manufacturer or implement it through your own programming. No matter which method you use, you must set up the environment in advance. You may wish to make a list based on the hardware and software architecture of the automatic test system to avoid omissions.

The above picture is a block diagram of the hardware and software architecture of remote control of instruments. The bottom layer is the instrument you want to control, followed by the I/O hardware interface used by the computer to control the instrument, and above that is the I/O software library. Some manufacturers will provide instrument drivers, and finally the remote control platform or programming environment.

The I/O hardware interfaces supported by each instrument may be different. Common I/O hardware parts include Ethernet, USB, GPIB, Ethernet and USB. You only need to prepare Ethernet or USB cables. For GPIB interface control, in addition to GPIB cables, you also need to configure a GPIB card on the computer side.

If you don't have an I/O (software) library, you can find the original manufacturer or download it from the website. For example, Keysight's I/O library can be found by searching for IO Libraries Suite on its official website.

Most engineers can find I/O (software) libraries and instrument drivers from the websites of Keysight and NI. Instrument drivers write the main functions of the instrument into subroutines for engineers to call directly. The advantage is that they are simple and direct, but the disadvantage is that instrument drivers generally do not cover 100% of the functions of the instrument and may not be the most optimized in terms of test throughput.

There are many types of remote control software or programming environments. The most common ones are VB, C++, C++, VEE, LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, Matlab, and Python. Different programming environments have different corresponding instrument drivers. For example, if you program in C language, you should look for C language instrument drivers. If you program in LabVIEW, you should look for LabVIEW instrument drivers.

What if there is no instrument driver, or the instrument driver does not fully meet your needs?

At this time, it is necessary to perform low-level programming control on the instrument. In addition, if you want to optimize the execution speed of the test program, you often need to bypass the instrument driver and directly perform low-level programming control on the instrument. At this time, you need to refer to the instrument programming manual. Taking the Keysight DSOX4154A oscilloscope as an example, you can search for DSOX4154A on the Kesight official website, and then select Technical Support to find the programming manual and instrument driver.

The programming manual contains a collection of instrument commands and explanations of each command. It is generally recommended to start with the manual's directory page to understand the classification of instrument commands and where example programs are located.