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PicoScope-6428E-D
PicoScope 6428E-D 3GHz Bwd, 4 ch, 4 GS memory, 10 GS/s, FlexRes
Features:
- 4 channels and four input ranges per channel (±50 mV, ±100 mV, ±200 mV, ±500 mV)
- Up to 3 GHz bandwidth
- 100 ps time resolution
- 4 GS capture memory
- Up to 10 GS/s real-time sampling
- 8-, 10-, or 12-bit flexible resolution (FlexRes)
- Segmented memory/rapid block trigger
- Built-in function generator/AWG
- Fast transfer of captured data to the host computer via the USB 3.0 SuperSpeed connection
- Drivers and SDK included (Windows, Linux, Mac)
- Programming examples for LabView, MATLAB, Python and C++
- PicoScope software included
Typical applications:
- High energy physics
- Particle accelerators
- LIDAR (light detection and ranging)
- VISAR (velocity-interferometer system for any reflector)
- Spectroscopy
- Medical imaging
- Semiconductor test
- Non-destructive test
- Production line test
PicoScope 6000E Series ultra-deep-memory oscilloscopes
A smarter scope for faster debug
The PicoScope 6000E Series fixed-resolution and FlexRes oscilloscopes provide 8 to 12 bits of vertical resolution, 1 GHz bandwidth and 5 GS/s sampling rate, and now includes the four-channel PicoScope 6428E-D which offers 3 GHz bandwidth and 10 GS/s maximum sampling rate.
Models with four or eight analog channels have the timing and amplitude resolution you need to reveal critical signal integrity issues such as timing errors, glitches, dropouts, crosstalk and metastability issues.
- Up to 3 GHz bandwidth
- 8-bit to 12-bit FlexRes® ADC
- A choice of 4 (up to 3 GHz) or 8 (up to 500 MHz) analog channels
- Supports up to 16 digital MSO channels
- 200 ms capture time at 5 GS/s
- Up to 10 GS/s with the PicoScope 6428E-D
- Up to 4 GS capture memory
- 50 MHz 200 MS/s 14-bit AWG
- 300 000 waveforms per second update rate
- PicoScope, PicoLog® and PicoSDK® software included
- 38 serial protocol decoder/analyzers included
- Mask limit testing and user-definable actions
- High-resolution time-stamping of waveforms
- Over ten million DeepMeasure™ results per acquisition
- Advanced triggers: edge, window, pulse width, window pulse width, level dropout, window dropout, interval, runt, rise/fall time and logic
Typical applications
These instruments, with PicoScope software, are ideal for design engineers working with high-performance embedded systems, signal processing, power electronics, mechatronics and automotive designs, and for researchers and scientists working on multichannel high-performance experiments in physics labs, particle accelerators and similar facilities.
The PicoScope 6000E Application Programming Interface (API) provides programming access to the full set of advanced hardware features and can be used to develop diverse custom and OEM applications.
Best-in-class bandwidth, sampling rate and memory depth
Capture time in PicoScope at maximum sampling rate: 200 ms at 5 GS/s (10 GS/s for the PicoScope 6428E-D)
The PicoScope 6000E Series oscilloscopes, with up to 1 GHz analog bandwidth complemented by a real-time sampling rate of 5 GS/s, can display single-shot pulses with 200 ps time resolution.
The PicoScope 6428E-D with up to 3 GHz analog bandwidth complemented by a real-time sampling rate of 10 GS/s can display single-shot pulses with 100 ps time resolution.
The PicoScope 6000E Series gives you the deepest capture memory available as standard on any oscilloscope – up to 4 GS in total.
This ultra-deep memory allows the oscilloscope to capture 200 ms waveforms at its maximum sampling rate of 5 GS/s. The PicoScope 6428E-D can capture 200 ms waveforms at 10 GS/s.
Custom applications using PicoSDK can allocate the scope’s whole memory to a single waveform and sustain the maximum 5 GS/s sampling rate for even longer captures, up to 800 ms. The 6428E-D can sustain a maximum 10 GS/s sampling rate for 400 ms at 8-bit resolution.
The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface and hardware acceleration ensure that the display is smooth and responsive even with long captures.
The PicoScope 6000E Series gives you the waveform memory, resolution and analysis tools that you need to perform stringent testing of today’s high‑performance embedded computers and next-generation embedded system designs.
PicoScope 6428E-D with MSO, 3 GHz, 10 GS/s, flexible resolution & SDK support
The PicoScope 6428E-D adds a high-speed oscilloscope to the PicoScope 6000E Series with high bandwidth 50 Ω inputs and a reduced set of input ranges. Larger input signals can be accommodated with the use of external attenuators or probes designed to be used with a 50 Ω input, such as the TA062 1.5 GHz low-impedance passive oscilloscope probe with 10:1 attenuation or the PicoConnect 900 Series of passive probes.
Built for speed!
With up to 3 GHz bandwidth complemented by an extremely fast, real-time sampling rate of 10 GS/s, the PicoScope 6428E-D can display single-shot pulses with 100 ps time resolution. This level of sampling rate allows you to capture very fast, high-frequency signals with precision, for detailed signal analysis.
The 4-gigasample buffer can hold up to two 200 ms captures at the maximum sampling rate of 10 GS/s. This means you can record multiple instances of a signal or capture different signal conditions.
The PicoScope 6428E-D is designed for scientists, engineers and researchers working in high-speed applications, including high-energy physics, particle acceleration, LIDAR and VISAR, who need to capture, measure and analyze sub-nanosecond waveform events – either in stand-alone applications or integrated as part of a larger system.
Power, portability and performance
Traditional benchtop mixed-signal oscilloscopes take up a lot of bench space, and models with eight analog channels are prohibitively expensive for many engineers working on next-generation designs. PicoScope 6000E Series oscilloscopes are small and portable while offering the high-performance specifications required by engineers in the lab or on the move, and deliver lowest cost of ownership for this class of instrument.
The PicoScope 6000E Series offers up to 8 analog channels, plus an optional 8 or 16 digital channels with the plug-in 8-channel TA369 MSO (mixed-signal oscilloscope) pods. The flexible high‑resolution display options enable you to view and analyze each signal in detail.
Supported by PicoScope software, these devices offer an ideal, cost-effective package for many applications, including design, research, test, education, service, and repair. PicoScope software is included in the price of your scope, available for free download, with free updates, and can be installed on as many PCs as you want, allowing you to view/analyze data off-line without the scope.
High-end features as standard
Buying a PicoScope is not like making a purchase from other oscilloscope companies, where optional extras considerably increase the price. With our scopes, high-end features such as serial decoding, mask limit testing, advanced math channels, segmented memory, hardware‑based time-stamping and a signal generator are all included in the price.
To protect your investment, both the PC software and firmware inside the scope can be updated. Pico Technology has a long history of providing new features for free through software downloads. We deliver on our promises of future enhancements year after year. Users of our products reward us by becoming lifelong customers and frequently recommending us to their colleagues.
Powerful tools provide endless options
Your PicoScope is provided with many powerful tools to help you acquire and analyze waveforms. While these tools can be used on their own, the real power of PicoScope lies in the way they have been designed to work together.
As an example, the rapid trigger mode allows you to collect 10 000 waveforms in a few milliseconds with minimal dead time between them. Manually searching through these waveforms would be time-consuming, so just pick a waveform you are happy with and let the mask tools scan through for you. When done, the measurements will tell you how many have failed and the buffer navigator allows you to hide the good waveforms and just display the problem ones.
The screenshot above shows changing frequency versus time as a graph. Perhaps instead you want to plot changing duty cycle as a graph? How about outputting a waveform from the AWG and also automatically saving the waveform to disk when a trigger condition is met? With the power of PicoScope the possibilities are almost endless.
What is FlexRes?
Pico FlexRes flexible-resolution oscilloscopes allow you to reconfigure the scope hardware to optimize either the sampling rate or the resolution.
This means you can reconfigure the hardware to be either a fast (5 GS/s) 8-bit oscilloscope for looking at digital signals, a 10-bit oscilloscope for general-purpose use or a high-resolution 12-bit oscilloscope for audio work and other analog applications.
Whether you’re capturing and decoding fast digital signals or looking for distortion in sensitive analog signals, FlexRes oscilloscopes are the answer.
FlexRes is available on the 8-channel PicoScope 6824E and the 4-channel 6424E, 6425E and 6426E.
Resolution enhancement - a digital signal processing technique built into PicoScope software can further increase the effective vertical resolution of the scope to 16 bits.
FlexRes - how we do it
Most digital oscilloscopes gain their high sampling rates by interleaving multiple 8-bit ADCs. This interleaving process introduces errors that always make the dynamic performance worse than that of the individual ADC cores.
The FlexRes architecture employs multiple high-resolution ADCs at the input channels in different time-interleaved and parallel combinations to optimize, for example, the sampling rate to 5 GS/s at 8 bits or the resolution to 12 bits at 1.25 GS/s.
For simplicity, the diagram shows one bank of four channels; the 8-channel PicoScope 6824E has two banks. The 4-channel FlexRes models use one quad-ADC chip for each pair of analog channels.
Coupled with high signal-to-noise ratio amplifiers and a low-noise system architecture, FlexRes technology can capture and display signals up to 1 GHz with a high sampling rate, or lower-speed signals with 16 times more resolution than typical 8-bit oscilloscopes.
The PicoScope software lets you choose between setting the resolution manually and leaving the scope in auto resolution mode, where the optimal resolution is used for the chosen settings.
Mixed-signal operation
When fitted with optional 8-channel TA369 MSO pods, the PicoScope 6000E Series adds up to 16 high-performance digital channels to up to eight analog channels, enabling you to accurately time-correlate analog and digital channels. Digital channel bandwidth is 500 MHz, equivalent to 1 Gb/s, and the input capacitance of only 3.5 pF minimizes loading on the device under test.
Digital channels, captured from either parallel or multiple serial buses, may be grouped and displayed as a bus, with each bus value displayed in hex, binary or decimal, or as a level (for DAC testing). You can set advanced triggers across the analog and digital channels.
The digital inputs also bring extra power to the serial decoding feature. You can decode serial data on all analog and digital channels simultaneously, giving you up to 24 channels of data – for example, decoding multiple SPI, I²C, CAN bus, LIN bus and FlexRay signals all at the same time!
Intelligent probe interface
With an intelligent probe interface on channels C to F on 8-channel models and all channels on 4-channel models, the PicoScope 6000E Series supports innovative active probes with a low-profile mechanical design for ease of connectivity and low loading of the device under test.
Signal fidelity
Careful front-end design and shielding reduce noise, crosstalk and harmonic distortion. PicoScope 6000E Series oscilloscopes exhibit a dynamic performance of up to 60 dB SFDR.
With PicoScope, when you probe a circuit, you can trust in the waveform you see on the screen.
High resolution for low-level signals
With their 12-bit resolution, the PicoScope 6824E, 6424E, 6425E and 6426E can display low-level signals at high zoom factors. This allows you to view and measure features such as noise and ripple superimposed on larger DC or low-frequency voltages.
Additionally, you can use the lowpass filtering controls on each channel independently, to hide noise and reveal the underlying signal.
Total cost of ownership (TCO), environmental benefits and portability
Total cost of ownership of a PicoScope 6000E is lower than traditional benchtop instruments for several reasons:
- Low power consumption—just 60W—saves hundreds of dollars throughout the lifetime of the product compared to benchtop instruments. It's kinder to the environment too, with lower CO2 emissions.
- Everything is included in the purchase price: serial protocol decoders, math channels and mask limit testing. No expensive optional upgrades or annual license fees.
- Free updates: new features and capabilities are provided throughout the lifetime of the product as we develop and release them.
- The PicoScope 6000E Series are highly portable and are very suited to home-working where desk space might be limited.
Ultra-deep memory
PicoScope 6000E Series oscilloscopes have waveform capture memories of up to 4 gigasamples – many times larger than competing scopes. Deep memory enables the capture of long-duration waveforms at maximum sampling speed. In fact, the PicoScope 6000E Series can capture waveforms 200 ms long with 200 ps resolution. In contrast, the same 200 ms waveform captured by an oscilloscope with a 10 megasample memory would have just 20 ns resolution. The scope automatically shares the capture memory between the analog channels and MSO ports you have enabled.
Deep memory is invaluable when you need to capture fast serial data with long gaps between packets, or nanosecond laser pulses spaced milliseconds apart, for example. It can be useful in other ways too: PicoScope lets you divide the capture memory into a number of segments, up to 10 000. You can set up a trigger condition to store a separate capture in each segment, with as little as 300 ns dead time between captures. Once you have acquired the data, you can step through the memory one segment at a time until you find the event you are looking for.
Powerful tools are included to allow you to manage and examine all of this data. As well as functions such as mask limit testing and color persistence mode, PicoScope software enables you to zoom into your waveform up to 100 million times. The Zoom Overview window allows you to easily control the size and location of the zoom area. Other tools, such as the waveform buffer, serial decoding and hardware acceleration work with the deep memory, making the PicoScope 6000E Series some of the most powerful oscilloscopes on the market
Arbitrary waveform and function generator
The PicoScope 6000E scopes have a built-in 50 MHz function (sine and square wave) generator, with triangle, DC level, white noise, PRBS and other waveforms possible at lower frequencies. As well as basic controls to set level, offset and frequency, more advanced controls allow you to sweep over a range of frequencies. Combined with the spectrum peak hold option, this makes a powerful tool for testing amplifier and filter responses.
Trigger tools allow one or more cycles of a waveform to be output when various conditions are met, such as the scope triggering or a mask limit test failing.
All models include a 14-bit 200 MS/s arbitrary waveform generator (AWG). This has a variable sample clock, which avoids the jitter on waveform edges seen with fixed-clock generators and allows generation of accurate frequencies down to 100 µHz. AWG waveforms can be created or edited using the built-in editor, imported from oscilloscope traces, loaded from a spreadsheet or exported to a CSV file.
Digital triggering architecture
Many digital oscilloscopes still use an analog trigger architecture based on comparators. This causes time and amplitude errors that cannot always be calibrated out and often limits the trigger sensitivity at high bandwidths.
In 1991 Pico pioneered the use of fully digital triggering using the actual digitized data. This technique reduces trigger errors and allows our oscilloscopes to trigger on the smallest signals, even at the full bandwidth. Trigger levels and hysteresis can be set with high precision and resolution.
Advanced triggers
The PicoScope 6000E Series offers an industry-leading set of advanced trigger types including pulse width, runt pulse, windowed, logic and dropout.
The digital trigger available during MSO operation allows you to trigger the scope when any or all of the 16 digital inputs match a user-defined pattern. You can specify a condition for each channel individually, or set up a pattern for all channels at once using a hexadecimal or binary value.
You can also use the logic trigger to combine the digital trigger with an edge or window trigger on any of the analog inputs, for example to trigger on data values in a clocked parallel bus.
Hardware acceleration engine (HAL4)
Some oscilloscopes struggle when you enable deep memory; the screen update rate slows and the controls become unresponsive. The PicoScope 6000E Series avoids this limitation with the use of a dedicated fourth-generation hardware acceleration (HAL4) engine inside the oscilloscope.
Its massively parallel design effectively creates the waveform image to be displayed on the PC screen and allows the continuous capture and display to the screen of 2.5 billion samples every second.
The hardware acceleration engine eliminates any concerns about the USB connection or PC processor performance being a bottleneck.
Time-stamping
The PicoScope 6000E Series features hardware-based trigger time-stamping. Each waveform can be time-stamped with the time in sample intervals from the previous waveform.
Fast trigger rearm times are possible down to 300 ns (typical).
PicoScope 6000E Series software
Ultra-high-definition display
PicoScope PC-based instruments use the host computer’s display, which is typically larger and of higher resolution than the dedicated displays installed in traditional benchtop oscilloscopes. This allows room for simultaneous display of time- and frequency-domain waveforms, decoded serial bus tables, measurement results with statistics and more.
PicoScope software scales automatically to take full advantage of the improved resolution of larger display sizes, including 4K ultra-high definition models. At 3840 x 2160 resolution—over eight million pixels—PicoScope allows engineers to get more done in less time through split-screen views of multiple channels (or different views of the same channel) from the device under test. As the example shows, the software can even show multiple oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer traces at once.
Large, high-resolution displays really come into their own when viewing high-resolution signals with the PicoScope 6000E 12-bit FlexRes models. With a 4K monitor, PicoScope can display more than ten times the information of some of our competitors’ scopes, solving the problem of how to match a big display and features with a small-footprint portable oscilloscope.
PicoScope also supports dual monitors: instrument control and waveforms displayed on the first, and large data sets from serial protocol decoders or DeepMeasure results on the second. The software can be controlled by mouse, touchscreen or keyboard shortcuts.
Serial bus decoding and protocol analysis
PicoScope can decode 1-Wire, ARINC 429, BroadR-Reach, CAN & CAN-FD, DALI, DCC, DMX512, Ethernet 10Base-T and 100Base-TX, FlexRay, I²C, I²S, LIN, PS/2, Manchester, Modbus, SENT, SPI, UART (RS-232 / RS-422 / RS-485), and USB 1.1 protocol data as standard, with more protocols in development and available in the future with free-of-charge software
upgrades.
Graph format shows the decoded data (in hex, binary, decimal or ASCII) in a data-bus timing format beneath the waveform on a common time axis, with error frames marked in red. These frames can be zoomed to investigate noise or signal integrity issues.
Table format shows a list of the decoded frames, including the data and all flags and identifiers. You can set up filtering conditions to display only the frames you are interested in or search for frames with specified properties. The statistics option reveals more detail about the physical layer such as frame times and voltage levels. PicoScope can also import a spreadsheet to decode the data into user-defined text strings.
Click on a frame in the table to zoom the oscilloscope display and show the waveform for that frame.
DeepMeasure
One waveform, millions of measurements
Measurement of waveform pulses and cycles is key to verification of the performance of electrical and electronic devices.
DeepMeasure delivers automatic measurements of important waveform parameters, such as pulse width, rise time and voltage, for every individual cycle in the captured waveforms. Up to a million cycles can be displayed with each triggered acquisition or combined across multiple acquisitions. Results can be easily sorted, analyzed and correlated with the waveform display, or exported as a CSV file or spreadsheet for further analysis. For example, use DeepMeasure with PicoScope’s rapid trigger mode to capture 10,000 pulses and quickly find those with the largest or smallest amplitude, or use your scope’s deep memory to record a million cycles of one waveform and export the rise time of every single edge for statistical analysis.
Mask limit testing
Mask limit testing allows you to compare live signals against known good signals, and is designed for production and debugging environments. Simply capture a known good signal, draw (or have PicoScope auto-generate) a mask and then measure the system under test. PicoScope will check for mask violations and perform pass/fail testing, capture intermittent glitches, and can show a failure count and other statistics in the Measurements window.
Waveform buffer and navigator
Ever spotted a glitch on a waveform, but by the time you’ve stopped the scope it has gone? With PicoScope you don’t need to worry about missing glitches or other transient events. PicoScope can store the last ten thousand oscilloscope or spectrum waveforms in its circular waveform buffer.
The buffer navigator provides an efficient way of navigating and searching through waveforms, effectively letting you turn back time. Tools such as mask limit testing can also be used to scan through each waveform in the buffer looking for mask violations.
FFT spectrum analyzer
The spectrum view plots amplitude against frequency and is ideal for finding noise, crosstalk or distortion in signals. The spectrum analyzer in PicoScope is of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) type that, unlike a traditional swept spectrum analyzer, can display the spectrum of a single, non-repeating waveform. With up to a million points, PicoScope’s FFT has excellent frequency resolution and a low noise floor.
With a click of a button, you can display a spectrum plot of the active channels using up to the full bandwidth of the instrument. A full range of settings gives you control over the number of spectrum bands (FFT bins), window types, scaling (including log/log) and display modes (instantaneous, average, or peak-hold).
You can display multiple spectrum views alongside oscilloscope views of the same data. A comprehensive set of automatic frequency-domain measurements can be added to the display, including THD, THD+N, SNR, SINAD and IMD. A mask limit test can be applied to a spectrum and you can even use the AWG and spectrum mode together to perform swept scalar network analysis.
Alarms
PicoScope can be programmed to execute actions when certain events occur.
The events that can trigger an alarm include mask limit fails, trigger events and buffers full.
The actions that PicoScope can execute include saving a file, playing a sound, executing a program and triggering the signal generator or the AWG.
Alarms, coupled with mask limit testing, help create a powerful and time-saving waveform monitoring tool. Capture a known good signal, auto-generate a mask around it and then use the alarms to automatically save any waveform (complete with a time/date stamp) that does not meet specification.
Math channels and filters
With PicoScope software you can select simple functions such as addition and inversion, or open the equation editor to create complex functions involving filters (lowpass, highpass, bandpass and bandstop filters), trigonometry, exponentials, logarithms, statistics, integrals and derivatives.
Display up to eight real or calculated channels in each scope view. If you run out of space, just open another scope view and add more. You can also use math channels to reveal new details in complex signals, for example graphing the changing duty cycle or frequency of your signal over time.
Custom probes in PicoScope oscilloscope software
The custom probes feature allows you to correct for gain, attenuation, offsets and nonlinearities in probes, sensors or transducers that you connect to the oscilloscope. This could be used to scale the output of a current probe so that it correctly displays amperes. A more advanced use would be to scale the output of a nonlinear temperature sensor using the table lookup function.
Definitions for standard Pico-supplied oscilloscope probes and current clamps are included. User-created probes may be saved for later use.
PicoSDK® – write your own apps
Our free PicoSDK software development kit allows you to write your own software and includes drivers for Windows, macOS and Linux. Example code supplied on our GitHub organization page shows how to interface to third-party software packages such as National Instruments LabVIEW and MathWorks MATLAB.
Among other features, the drivers support data streaming, a mode that captures continuous gap-free data directly to your PC or host computer at rates of over 300 MS/s, so you are not limited by the size of your scope’s capture memory. Sampling rates in streaming mode are subject to PC specifications and application loading.
There is also an active community of PicoScope users who share both code and whole applications on our Test and Measurement Forum and the PicoApps section of the website. The Frequency Response Analyzer shown here is a popular application on the forum.
PicoLog® software
PicoScope 6000E Series oscilloscopes are also supported by the PicoLog data logging software, allowing you to view and record signals on multiple units in one capture.
PicoLog allows sample rates of up to 1 kS/s per channel, and is ideal for long-term observation of general parameters, such as voltage or current levels, on several channels at the same time, whereas the PicoScope software is more suitable for waveshape or harmonic analysis.
You can also use PicoLog to view data from your oscilloscope alongside a data logger or other device. For example, you could measure voltage and current with your PicoScope and plot both against temperature using a TC-08 thermocouple data logger, or humidity with a DrDAQ multipurpose data logger and suitable sensor.
PicoLog software is available for Windows, macOS and Linux, including Raspberry Pi OS.
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