I recently purchased a PCS500 Scope and am just getting around to familiarizing myself with it. This is my first digital scope and I’m relatively new to electronics in general. I get a clean, stable sine wave when measuring low frequency signals from my generator (HP 8640B), but when I scope higher frequency signals (10Mhz for example) the waveform is consistent as far as amplitude, but the trace moves horizontally as if it was having problems triggering. I get a nice smooth waveform if I use the 1Gs/s function on higher frequencies. Is this the manner in which the scope is supposed to function? I eventually want to use the spectrum analyzer to measure THD percentages on some audio equipment. I plan on exporting the spectrum analyzer data to an Excel spreadsheet and do calculations to come up with distortion percentages there. Is this doable - am I on the right track? Thanks for any light you can shed on my questions.
[quote]I get a clean, stable sine wave when measuring low frequency signals from my generator (HP 8640B), but when I scope higher frequency signals (10Mhz for example) the waveform is consistent as far as amplitude, but the trace moves horizontally as if it was having problems triggering.[/quote]This is normal operation due to the sample rate of 50MHz in real-time mode. There is horizontal “jitter” about +/-1 sample.
[quote]I plan on exporting the spectrum analyzer data to an Excel spreadsheet and do calculations to come up with distortion percentages there. Is this doable - am I on the right track?[/quote]Yes, you are.
In File menu select Save FFT Data.
When saved, you can open the file in Excel.
The data file is plain text file.
To get the best possible dynamic range select: Options -> FFT Options -> Vector Average.
The “best” FFT window function is Hanning in this case.
The triggering must be on when the Vector Average mode is used.
Thanks. I thought that was the case. I’m finding the PCS500 very handy and a good value for the money.