Hardware

The hardware for the SmartScope consists of a small metal enclosure (for good shielding), with a pair of full-sized BNC connectors on the front for the analog inputs, and a 16-pin header at the back, for the 8 digital inputs of the logic analyzer, 4 digital outputs, and the output of the built-in arbitrary waveform generator (AWG). Also on the back are a mini and a micro USB connector. The mini-USB is for connecting to a tablet, smartphone or computer, the micro-USB is used to connect an external power supply, or for daisy-chaining several SmartScopes together. This last feature has not yet been implemented, so the SmartScope currently operates with 2 channels.

The printed circuit board contains a powerful Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA, which takes care of the main tasks (such as processing the received measurement data and creating the AWG signal). The conversion of the input signals is taken care of by an A/D converter with 100 Msamples/channel and a resolution of 8 bits. A RAM chip provides a buffer capacity of 4 Msamples/ channel. A PIC controller takes care of the communications with the computer via de USB connection. There are several relays and opamps at the inputs for the range and AC/DC selections. The bandwidth of the analog input section is 45 MHz. This is quite large compared to the sample frequency of 100 Msamples/s. This was done on purpose in order to minimize the attenuation of the input signals as much as possible. The usable input range is up to about 10 to 20 MHz (which is also stated by LabNation).