Oscilloscope Interface

Credits

This web application has been designed and implemented by João Ferreira, in the context of his Bachelor project on ECE, at ISEP [J. Ferreira, 2023], under the supervision of Professors Mário Alves and André Rocha, which contributed with the original idea, application requirements, software architecture, system designers and alpha testers. This project builds on previous work from the following former ISEP students:

• Pedro Salgueiro, who developed an analogue oscilloscope simulator back in 2005 [P. Salgueiro, 2005], featuring a panoply of relevant functionality and being extremely useful and massively used for more than a decade;
• João Pereira, who has implemented a simulator for this same Oscilloscope, but as a stand-alone application (requiring PC installation) and with some restrictive bugs/limitations, in 2015 [J. Pereira, 2015]. Again, this simulator has been used by thousands of ISEP students for almost a decade.

Comparing to its "antecessors", both the software architecture's and application's quality, functionality and robustness have been much improved, so it will replace them for our academic purposes.

About the App

This web application mimics the graphical user interface (GUI) and operation of the GW-Instek GDS2062 Oscilloscope [Oscilloscope Manual], which is the one equipping the Laboratory of Electrical Circuits and Signals ("Laboratório de Circuitos e Sinais Elétricos"), of the Electrical Engineering Department at ISEP. It enables two operation modes:

Simulation

• Including signal stimulus from a Signal Generator (mirroring the one used the lab), calibration and CSV file

Remote acquisition/control

• Permits the remote signal/waveform acquisition and command control of the Oscilloscope

This application has been developed in a client-server architecture with Node.js, using the Javascript, HTML and CSS programming and markup languages respectivelly and IDE/editor Visual Studio Code and is publicly available as open source at [GitHub (Not yet)]

Objectives

This application enables to be used:

• as a self-learning tool of the basic operation and functionality of an Oscilloscope and Signal Generator;
• as a teaching tool, either in-class or off-class, for instance to produce waveforms for teaching material such as slides, exercise books, lab scripts or exams
• to easily (locally or remotely) capture real circuit signals for further analysis, processing and visualization, for didactic or any other purposes;
• to implement remote lab experiments (using the Oscilloscpe), for didatic and other aims

Version Control Table