recoding scope data for more than 20 minutes

[pnielsen@gplains.com]

I have a test sequence that I need to perform. I need to record the data with a Scope. I have a TDS 2002B scope. The following is the steps I need to perform, It takes more than 20 minutes from start to end. Is ther a way to set the scope in auto mode and send the data the file loaded on a ramdisk?

This is a continuous test.

Voltage set to 27.5 hold for 5 minutes

4. The voltage shall be increased to 50 VDC ± 0.5 VDC within 1 ms. and held for 50 ms.

5. The voltage shall be decreased to 28 VDC ± 0.5 VDC within 1 ms. and held for

5-6 seconds.

6. The voltage shall be decreased to 12 VDC ± 0.5 VDC within 1 ms. and held for 30 ms.

7. The voltage shall be increased to 28 VDC ± 0.5 VDC within 1 ms. and held for

5-6 seconds.

8. The voltage shall be increased to 50 VDC ± 0.5 VDC within 1 ms. and held for 50 ms.

9. The voltage shall be decreased to 28 VDC ± 0.5 VDC within 1 ms. and held for

5-6 seconds.

10. The voltage shall be decreased to 12 VDC ± 0.5 VDC within 1 ms. and held for 30 ms.

11. The voltage shall be increased to 28 VDC ± 0.5 VDC within 1 ms. and held for 5-6 seconds.

12. The voltage shall be increased to 50 VDC ± 0.5 VDC within 1 ms. and held for 50 ms.

Can it be done? From 0 to 30 volts the turn on tome is 12 uS

[JÞB · Accepted solution]

OK,

I'm betting the TDS 2002B is not going to have Better than 1mSec resolution with a 330+ second acquisition.  It just does not have enough memory to store it In fact with 2.5K point record length the best you can achieve at 50sec /div is 50*10/2500 200mSec per point.  Even if you ignore the first 5 minutes you need a 5sec/div setting and get 20mSec per point. I read the spec

Now that you threw away the scope- You need a different way to sample the voltage At 0-50 Vdc you need an industrial I/O (or suffer with pre-scaling the input.):smileysad:

Doing your local NI reps job,  the NI USB-9162 chassis with a NI 9221-C series module seems like a cost effective solution.

Then you only need to stream the data to a file (look into a P-C archetecture to avoid data loss and maximize the data transfer speed)

[pnielsen@gplains.com]

I know the scope is a cheap model. But the company is cheap. My MSO 2024 at home is far superior. I do allot of embedded code at home. I did not think the scope was very high end.

Thanks for the help and suggestions.