Pittsford, NY, USA: Saelig Company, Inc. (www.saelig.com) has introducedXprotolab – the first mixed-signal oscilloscope with an arbitrary waveform generator housed in a tiny 1” x 1.6” DIP module. It can be mounted directly on a breadboard or pcb for in situ testing and verification. Based on Atmel’s ATXMEGA32A4 microcontroller, with 32KB Flash, 4KB SRAM, 1KB EEPROM, Xprotolab can also be used as a development board for the AVR’s XMEGA microcontroller.
Xprotolab uses a 0.96″ 128×64 pixel OLED display to provide the functions of an 8-bit mixed-signal oscilloscope with simultaneous sampling of analog and digital signals, providing 2 analog channels and 8 digital channels. It also offers Arbitrary Waveform Generator capabilities. The maximum input voltage is +/-10V with a maximum sampling rate of 2MSa/s, giving an analog bandwidth of 320kHz – more than enough for many servicing needs and experiments. Amazingly, most features found on today’s scopes are present in Xprotolab – even an external trigger! Trigger on any signal, Trigger level adjust, Voltmeter mode, XY mode, Spectrum Analyzer, Horizontal and Vertical Cursors, etc. Having logic analyzer features also makes this miniature device extremely versatile, and the 44kHz Arbitrary Waveform Generator offers +/- 2V Sine, Triangle, and Square waves, with control of amplitude, frequency, offset and duty cycle. Four tactile switches are mounted to provide onboard function control, and Xprotolab can be powered either via the micro-USB connector or with external +5V on the appropriate pin.
Scope features include: Advanced Trigger – Normal / Single / Auto, with rising or falling edge and adjustable trigger level; XY Mode (plot Lissajous patterns or see phase difference between two waveforms); Cursors (horizontal and vertical) with automatic waveform measurements; Display – persistence, grid options, and more; Spectrum Analyzer with different windowing options and selectable vertical log; Meter Mode with dc, average and frequency readout; Protocol Sniffer for UART, I2C, SPI, etc.
