Chapter 17
Oscilloscope Drivers

This chapter describes all of the available drivers for oscilloscopes and logic analyzers.

17.1 Agilent

Agilent devices support a similar similar SCPI command set across most device families.

Please see the table below for details of current hardware support:

17.1.1 agilent

Typical Performance (MSO6034A, LAN)

Interestingly, performance sometimes gets better with more channels or deeper memory. Not sure why.

Typical Performance (MSOX3104T, LAN)

17.2 Antikernel Labs

17.2.1 akila

This driver uses a raw binary protocol, not SCPI.

Under-development internal logic analyzer analyzer core for FPGA design debug. The ILA uses a UART interface to a host system. Since there’s no UART support in scopehal yet, socat must be used to bridge the UART to a TCP socket using the “lan" transport.

17.2.2 aklabs

This driver uses two TCP sockets. Port 5025 is used for SCPI control plane traffic, and port 50101 is used for waveform data using a raw binary protocol.

17.3 Demo

The “demo" driver is a simulation-only driver for development and training purposes, and does not connect to real hardware.

It ignores any transport provided, and is normally used with the “null" transport.

The demo instrument is intended to illustrate the usage of ngscopeclient for various types of analysis and to aid in automated testing on computers which do not have a connection to a real oscilloscope, and is not intended to accurately model the response or characteristics of real world scope frontends or signals.

It supports memory depths of 10K, 100K, 1M, and 10M points per waveform at rates of 1, 5, 10, 25, 50, and 100 Gsps. Four test signals are provided, each with 10 mV of Gaussian noise and a 5 GHz low-pass filter added (although this can be disabled under the channel properties)

Test signals:

• 1.000 GHz tone
• 1.000 GHz tone mixed with a second tone, which sweeps from 1.100 to 1.500 GHz
• 10.3125 Gbps PRBS-31
• 1.25 Gbps repeating two 8B/10B symbols (K28.5 D16.2)

17.4 Digilent

Digilent oscilloscopes using the WaveForms SDK are all supported using the “digilent" driver in libscopehal. This driver connects using the “twinlan" transport to a socket server which links against the Digilent WaveForms SDK. This provides network transparency, and allows the Digilent bridge server to be packaged separately for distribution and only installed by users who require it.

As of 2022-03-09, analog input channels on the Analog Discovery Pro and Analog Discovery 2 have been tested and are functional, however only basic edge triggering is implemented so far. Analog inputs on other devices likely work, however only these two have been tested to date.

Analog outputs, digital inputs, and digital outputs are currently unimplemented, but are planned to be added in the future.

17.4.1 digilent

Typical Performance (ADP3450, USB -> LAN)

17.5 DreamSource Lab

DreamSourceLabs oscilloscopes and logic analyzers supported in their fork of sigrok (“libsigrok4DSL” distributed as part of their “DSView” software package) are supported through the “dslabs” driver in libscopehal. This driver connects using the “twinlan” transport to a socket server which links against libsigrok4DSL. This provides network transparency, and allows the DSLabs bridge server to be packaged separately for distribution and only installed by users who require it.

As of 2022-03-22, a DSCope U3P100 and a DSLogic U3Pro16has been tested and works adequately. Other products may work also, but are untested.

On DSCope: Only edge triggers are supported. ‘Any’ edge is not supported. “Ch0 && Ch1” and “Ch0 || Ch1” trigger modes are not supported.

On DSLogic: Only edge triggers are supported. All edges are supported. There is currently no way to configure a trigger on more than one channel. Serial / multi-stage triggers are not supported.

Known issues pending fixes/refactoring:

• Interleaved sample rates are not correctly reported in the timebase dialog (but are in the waveform display)
• Trigger position is quantized to multiples of 1% of total capture
• Non-localhost performance, and responsiveness in general may suffer as a result of hacky flow control on waveform capture
• DSLogic depth configuration is confusing and performance could be improved (currently only buffered more is supported)
• DSLogic devices trigger even if pre-trigger buffer has not been filled, leading to a small pre-trigger waveform in some cases

17.5.1 dslabs

Typical DSCope Performance (DSCope U3P100, USB3, localhost)

Typical DSLogic Performance (DSLogic U3Pro16, USB3, localhost)

17.6 EEVengers

17.6.1 thunderscope

This driver connects to the TS.NET application to control a ThunderScope.

It supports full-rate 1 Gsps streaming given suitably fast hardware.

17.7 Enjoy Digital

TODO (scopehal:79)

17.8 Generic

Drivers in this section are not specific to a particular manufacturer’s products and support a wide variety of similar devices.

17.8.1 socketcan

This driver exposes the Linux SocketCAN API as a stream of CAN messages which can be displayed as-is or used as input to other filter graph blocks. When paired with the “socketcan" transport and a suitable CAN peripheral, it allows ngscopeclient to be used as a CAN bus protocol analyzer. Since SocketCAN is a Linux-only API, this driver is not available on other platforms.

17.9 Hantek

TODO (scopehal:26)

17.10 Keysight

Keysight devices support a similar similar SCPI command set across most device families. Many Keysight devices were previously sold under the Agilent brand and use the same SCPI command set, so they are supported by the “agilent" driver.

Please see the table below for details of current hardware support:

17.10.1 agilent

17.10.2 keysightdca

A driver for the Keysight/Agilent/HP DCA series of equivalent-time sampling oscilloscopes.

17.11 Pico Technologies

Pico oscilloscopes all have slightly different command sets, but are supported using the “pico" driver in libscopehal. This driver connects via a TCP socket to a socket server scopehal-pico-bridge which connects to the appropriate instrument using Pico’s binary SDK.

17.11.1 pico

Typical Performance (6824E, LAN)

17.12 Rigol

Rigol oscilloscopes have subtle differences in SCPI command set, but this is implemented with quirks handling in the driver rather than needing different drivers for each scope family.

NOTE: DS1054Z firmware 00.04.02.SP4 is known to have problems with SCPI remote control (https://github.com/ngscopeclient/scopehal-apps/issues/790); it is unclear what other models and firmware versions may be affected by this bug. If you encounter problems, please ensure your scope is running the latest firmware release from Rigol before opening a support ticket.

17.12.1 rigol

Typical Performance (MSO5000 series, LAN)

Typical Performance (DHO800/900 series, LAN)

17.13 Rohde & Schwarz

17.13.1 rs

There is partial support for RTM3000 (and possibly others, untested) however it appears to have bitrotted.

TODO (scopehal:59)

17.13.2 rs_rto6

This driver supports the newer RTO6 family scopes (and possibly others, untested).

17.14 Saleae

TODO (scopehal:16)

17.15 Siglent

A driver for SDS2000X+/HD is available in the codebase which has been developed according to Siglent offical documentation (Programming Guide PG01-E11A). This driver should be functional across the ’next generation’ SDS800X HD, SDS1000X HD, SDS2000X+, SDS2000X HD, SDS5000X, SDS6000A/L/Pro and SDS7000A scopes. It has been primarily developed using the SDS2000X+ and SDS2000X HD. Some older generation scopes are supported as well.

Digital channels are not supported on any scope yet, due to lack of an MSO probe to test with. Many trigger types are not yet supported.

Typical Performance (SDS2104X+, LAN)

These figures were obtained from a SDS2104X+ running firmware version 1.3.7R5. Different scopes and software revisions may vary.

Typical Performance (SDS2104X HD, LAN)

These figures were obtained from a SDS2104X HD running firmware version 1.2.2.9.

17.16 Teledyne LeCroy / LeCroy

Teledyne LeCroy (and older LeCroy) devices use the same driver, but two different transports for LAN connections.

While all Teledyne LeCroy / LeCroy devices use almost identical SCPI command sets, Windows based devices running XStream or MAUI use a custom framing protocol (“vicp") around the SCPI data while the lower end RTOS based devices use raw SCPI over TCP (“lan").

Please see the table below for details on which configuration to use with your hardware.

17.16.1 lecroy

This is the primary driver for MAUI based Teledyne LeCroy / LeCroy devices.

This driver has been tested on a wide range of Teledyne LeCroy / LeCroy hardware. It should be compatible with any Teledyne LeCroy or LeCroy oscilloscope running Windows XP or newer and the MAUI or XStream software.

Typical Performance (HDO9204, VICP)

Typical Performance (WaveRunner 8404M-MS, VICP)

17.16.2 lecroy_fwp

This is a special performance-enhanced extension of the base “lecroy" driver which takes advantage of the FastWavePort feature of the instrument to gain high speed access to waveform data via shared memory. Waveforms are pulled from shared memory when a synchronization event fires, then pushed to the client via a separate TCP socket on port 1862.

On low latency LANs, typical performance increases observed with SDA 8Zi series instruments are on the order of 2x throughput vs using the base driver downloading waveforms via SCPI. On higher latency connections such as VPNs, the performance increase is likely to be even higher because the push-based model eliminates the need for polling (which performs increasingly poorly as latency increases).

To use this driver, your instrument must have the XDEV software option installed and the scopehal-fwp-bridge server application running. If the bridge or option are not detected, the driver falls back to SCPI waveform download and will behave identically to the base “lecroy" driver.

There are some limitations to be aware of with this driver:

• Maxmimum memory depth is limited to no more than 40M samples per channel, regardless of installed instrument memory. This is an architectural limitation of the FastWavePort API; the next generation FastMultiWavePort API eliminates this restriction however scopehal-fwp-bridge does not yet support it due to poor documentation.
• MSO channels are not supported, because neither FastWavePort nor FastMultiWavePort provide shared memory access to digital channel data. There is no known workaround for this given current instrument APIs.
• A maximum of four analog channels are supported even if the instrument actually has eight. There are no major technical blockers to fixing this under FastWavePort however no 8-channel instruments are available to the developers as of this writing, so there is no way to test potential fixes. FastMultiWavePort has a limit of four channels per instance, but it may be possible to instantiate multiple copies of the FastMultiWavePort block to work around this.
• Math functions F9-F12 are used by the FastWavePort blocks and cannot be used for other math functions.

17.17 Tektronix

This driver is being primarily developed on a MSO64. It supports SCPI over LXI VXI-11 or TCP sockets.

The hardware supports USBTMC, however waveform download via USBTMC does not work with libscopehal for unknown reasons.

17.17.1 Note regarding “lan" transport on MSO5/6

The default settings for raw SCPI access on the MSO6 series use a full terminal emulator rather than raw SCPI commands. To remove the prompts and help text, go to Utility | I/O, then under the Socket Server panel select protocol “None" rather than the default of “Terminal".

Typical Performance (MSO64, LXI, embedded OS)

17.18 tinySA

This driver is meant to be used with tinySA and tinySA ULTRA spectrum analyzers.

It has been developed and tested on a tinySA ULTRA.

The communication with the device is made with UART transport layer.

17.19 Xilinx

TODO (scopehal:40)