Extended Digitizer Packages

The new complete package covers an extremely wide application area without the need to order extra options.

The digitizers as well as the waveform generators and digital I/O cards now include a standard memory of 512 MByte, doubling the former memory as well as all enhanced trigger options like Multiple Recording, Gated Sampling, Timestamps and ABA mode (dual timebase). As before all operating system drivers (Windows and Linux 32 bit and 64 bit) and all API examples are included free. In addition the new delivery packages also include LabVIEW and MATLAB drivers without any charge.

The main reason for the change is the intention of the German manufacturer to make product selection easier for the customer and to avoid later confusion if a special option or driver was not ordered with the card. In the past, states Oliver Rovini, Technical Manager at Spectrum, it unfortunately happened quite often that customers did not discuss their application in detail before or that circumstances changed during the project and options or drivers have to be ordered afterwards sometimes problems with fixed budgets or slow purchase processes.

Doubling the standard memory is a bonus due to better purchase conditions and changed memory availability on the market. The 512 MByte of on-board memory is shared between all active channels and are also used completely as a FIFO buffer if streaming mode is used. Having for example the new M2i.4932-exp with 8 channels 30 MS/s 16 bit the standard memory allows to record more than one second of data on the card. Even if using the fastest card, the one channel 8 bit 1 GS/s digitizer M3i.2130-exp, the memory is sufficient to record more than 500 ms of data.
Together with the free base version of the comfortable measurement software SBench 6 the cards can now be directly used without any further options to order. The only order options that remain now are adapter cables, further memory options, synchronization of several cards and additional synchronous digital inputs or outputs making the product selection very easy.

Spectrums own software SBench 6 is included as base version with a limited professional version usage for evaluation. Later upgrade to the professional version just needs a new software key and can be done within a short time.

All features of the products are fully supported by SBench 6. SBench 6 has been optimized to handle several GByte large signals and is running natively under Windows and Linux, both 32 bit and 64 bit. With this SBench is the first out-of-the-box measurement software with full Linux support. The internal software separation between streaming engine and user interface makes it possible to take advantage of the full hardware performance. With this a constant transfer rate to hard disk RAID array of more than 200 MB/s is easy to achieve.

SBench 6 has been designed for the Spectrum PC instruments and supports all usage modes and settings of the hardware with comfortable setup dialogues. The software is able to run the cards in oscilloscope mode as well as long time transient recording mode (streaming mode). A special feature of SBench 6 is the segmented view that allows to display segment based signals together with signals of a second timebase (ABA mode) as well as highly precise timestamps. Besides this SBench 6 has a lot of build-in features for comfortable data analysis and documentation like FFT analysis, a function interpreter, several integrated analysis functions, export into ASCII, Wave, MATLAB, comment functions for signals and display details as well as a comfortable printout function.

A 2-years manufacturer warranty is standard for all Spectrum hardware products. Drivers, software and firmware updates are available free of charge as well as the support given directly by the development engineers themselves.