Oscilloscope and other Equipment
The first thing that appears when you open the ExpEYES GUI program is an Oscilloscope window. The graphs of the four channel scope appears on the left side. On the right side we have the Buttons, Sliders etc. to control the scope and most of the hardware features of ExpEYES, like DC supplies, waveform generators etc. To understand ExpEYES, one should start with the Input/Output trerminals and their functions as expleined below.
Graphical User Interface
The GUI menubar consists of several pulldown menus for different categories of experiments.
The left side of the the screen is the four channel oscilloscope window. On the right side there are Buttons, Sliders and Text Fiields for accessing the hardware features explained earlier.
Oscilloscope Controls
- Channel Selection
- The four channels A1, A2, IN1 and IN2 can be selected for display using the Check buttons on lower half of the right side.
- Volatge Display Range
- Pulldown menus are provided against each channel for selecting the voltage display range.
- Amplitude and Frequency
- Check buttons on the right side of the range selection menu enables mathematical fitting of the captured data using a Sine function. The calculated Amplitude and Frequency are displayed.
- Time base Slider
- The time base slider is for selecting the duration of the X-axis. The allowed full range can be set from 2mS to 500mS.
- Trigger Controls
- A digital storage oscilloscope digitizes periodically captures the input for a given duration and displays the result. To get a stable trace, the amplitude and slope of the input and the beginning of each capture operation should be kept same. This starting value is decided by the trigger level setting.
- Saving Data
- The data of the traces can be saved to a file in text format. The time and voltage values of each selcted trace will be written to a file.
- Cursor
- A vertical cursor can be enabled to view the instantaneous values of each channel at the cursor position along with time.
- Fourier Transform
- The Fourier transform converts the data from time domain to frequency domain. The amplitudes of the frequency components will be displayed. The value of the fundamenta frequency will be displayed.
Other Controls and Readbacks
- On the top right side there are Check boxes labelled A1, A2, IN1 and IN2. Selecting them will display the instantaneous values of the voltages at those terminals. These are useful for measuring DC volatges only.
- The value of the resistance connected to SEN is displayed below the DC voltage displays.
- Next is a Button for measuring the capacitance connected to IN1.
- A Button is available for measuring the frequency of a digital pulse at IN2. The signals should be swinging from zero to 5 volts.
- Two CheckButtons are provided for selecting OD1 and CCS.
- There are four vertical sliders on the left side of the GUI. They are used for horizontally shifting the traces. This is useful in experiments like the study of logic gates.