Chapter 5
Main Window

The only fixed UI elements in ngscopeclient are the main menu and toolbar at the top of the window. All remaining space may be filled with waveform plots, properties dialogs, protocol analyzers, and other dockable windows as required for a given experimental setup. This flexibility allows almost the entire screen to be dedicated to waveform views, or more space allocated to controls and protocol decodes.

5.1 Menu

5.1.1 File

This menu contains commands for saving and loading session files.

• Open Online...
  Loads a session file and reconnects to the instrument(s) to continue existing work. Settings from the saved session will be applied and overwrite the current channel and timebase configuration of the instrument, if different.
• Open Offline...
  Loads a session file in offline mode, allowing you to work with saved waveform data without connecting to the instrument(s) the data was captured from.
• Recent Files
  Displays a list of recently accessed session files and allows them to be opened online or offline.

• Save
  Saves UI configuration and waveform data (including history) to a session file for future use.

  A session consists of a YAML file called filename.scopesession containing instrument and UI configuration, as well as a directory called filename_data which contains waveform metadata and sample values for all enabled instrument channels, including history.

  Note that both the .scopesession and the _data directory must be copied if moving the session to a new location in order to preserve waveform data. If you only wish to restore the filter graph and UI configuration without waveform content, the _data directory is not required.

• Save As...
  Saves the session to a new file, rather than the current one.
• Close
  Close the current session without exiting ngscopeclient.
• Quit
  Exits the application

5.1.2 View

• Fullscreen
  Toggles full-screen mode
• Persistence Setup
  Opens the Persistence Setup dialog, allowing you to control the decay coefficient for persistence maps.

5.1.3 Add

This menu allows new waveforms views or instrument connections to be created.

• BERT
  Connect to a new, or recently used, bit error rate tester
• Load
  Connect to a new, or recently used, electronic load
• Generator
  Connect to a new, or recently used, function generator
• Misc
  Connect to a new, or recently used, miscellaneous instrument
• Multimeter
  Connect to a new, or recently used, multimeter
• Oscilloscope
  Connect to a new, or recently used, oscilloscope
• Power Supply
  Connect to a new, or recently used, power supply
• RF Generator
  Connect to a new, or recently used, RF signal generator
• SDR
  Connect to a new, or recently used, software-defined radio
• Spectrometer
  Connect to a new, or recently used, optical spectrometer
• VNA
  Connect to a new, or recently used, vector network analyzer
• Channels
  Displays a list of filters and instrument channels which can be opened in a new waveform view
• Generate
  Allows synthetic waveforms to be generated for testing, simulation, and channel design applications
• Import
  Allows waveforms to be loaded from external data files in various interchange formats

5.1.4 Setup

• Manage Instruments...
  Opens the Manage Instruments dialog, which allows control over synchronization, deskewing, and cross-triggering of multiple instruments.
• Timebase...
  Opens the Timebase Properties dialog, allowing sample rate and memory depth of each connected instrument to be adjusted.
• Trigger...
  Opens the Trigger dialog, allowing configuration of trigger settings.
• Preferences...
  Opens the Preferences dialog.

5.1.5 Window

This menu provides access to various utility windows.

• Analyzer
  Opens protocol analyzer dialogs for active protocol decodes
• Generator
  Opens the properties dialog for a currently connected function generator
• Multimeter
  Opens the properties dialog for a currently connected multimeter
• Power Supply
  Opens the properties dialog for a currently connected power supply

• SCPI Console
  Opens a console window allowing you to send raw SCPI commands to a currently connected instrument.

  This is a low level debug tool primarily intended for use by driver developers. The console is interlocked with background threads polling the instrument, so that replies to commands typed in the console will not be mixed with replies which the instrument driver is expecting to its own commands. However, commands sent in the console will bypass any caching in the driver and can easily lead to the driver and instrument firmware states becoming mutually inconsistent.

• Lab Notes
  Opens the Lab Notes dialog, allowing you to take notes on your experiment.
• Log Viewer
  Opens the Log Viewer dialog,, allowing you to see debug log messages generated by the application. This is the same log stream which is normally written to stdout, but this dialog allows it to be accessed even when the application was not launched from a shell session and stdout is thus inaccessible.
• Measurements
  Opens the Measurements window, displaying scalar-valued measurements coming from instrument channels or filter blocks.
• Performance Metrics
  Opens the Performance Metrics window, which provides access to debug information which can be helpful when debugging slow application performance, optimizing the code, or benchmarking instruments.
• History
  Opens the History dialog (see Chapter 9), which allows access to a rolling buffer of recently acquired waveforms.
• Filter Graph
  Opens the filter graph editor (see Chapter 10)

5.1.6 Debug

Provides access to GUI toolkit test dialogs and other features intended only for developers.

5.1.7 Help

Nothing here yet, we should add at least an About dialog at some point...