Yokogawa ushers in new generation of ScopeCorder

“Customers gave us three development goals, increased channel count, faster sample speed and increased flexibility and efficiency of usage,” says Kelvin Hagebeuk, the company’s European Marketing Manager.

Yokogawa has delivered a combination of the high-speed sampling and signal fidelity of an oscilloscope and the long-term data recording capabilities of a recorder. The DL950 measures signals at a high bit resolution while securing data in the harshest of environments.

The ScopeCorder can handle larger amounts of data at a faster sample rate and with a longer recording time. It has a large acquisition memory up to 8 Gpoint, and a 200 MS/s sample rate at 14-bit, compared to the DL850E’s 100 MS/s at 12-bit.

This is twice the sample rate but with much more detail. The DL950 can run up to 32 isolated analogue channels with 10 MS/s at 16-bit or up to 128 digital channels, and it can run up to 32 isolated analogue channels with 10 MS/s at 16-bit or up to 128 digital channels.

Developers can obtain a high degree of insight into the behaviour of these systems by capturing and analysing a wide variety of electrical signals, mechanical performance parameters indicated by sensors and decoded vehicle serial bus signals.

As companies develop more energy efficient technologies for transportation, home & industrial appliances as well as new renewable energy sources, the DL950 is designed to offer manufacturers a highly detailed view of an application’s electrical and mechanical behaviour.

The dual capture feature offers both data acquisition recorder functionality and the sample speed and trigger features of an oscilloscope. This allows developers to analyse the finest waveform details while observing multi-channel measurements over longer periods.

The DL950 offers five options for acquiring data, allowing users to choose the best method for their application. They can opt for normal acquisition into the fast internal acquisition memory, recording to flash memory (coming soon), recording to the internal hard disk (SSD) or directly to the PC via normal Ethernet or opt for 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

Data can be captured to a PC streaming over a very long time at up to 160 MB/s, with data volumes limited only by the PC’s storage size. Using 10 Gigabit Ethernet, data can be transferred from the DL950 to a PC at 50 times the speed of its predecessor.

A fibre optic cord and the Yokogawa’s IS8000 PC software are used for transmission.

The DL950 will also soon feature Flash Acquisition. This can be used to store data when a PC cannot be used, for example when capturing data from within a vehicle, power plant or other similar applications.

In these applications the unit would usually need to be switched off before moving it to an office to save data on a PC.

Using Flash Acquisition, data can be captured over a long time with a high-speed sample rate of 20 MS/s (8CH) and 10 MS/s (16CH).

The 512GB internal SSD can record up to 50 days. Depending on the sample rate it can record for five hours on one channel at up to 2 MS/s, or record at 200 kS/s for 20 hours with 16 channels. Waveforms from dual capture can also be recorded, useful for in-vehicle endurance testing and capturing rare spontaneous events.

The instrument can be connected to 21 types of input modules. These include 12-, 14- and 16-bit isolation modules, universal voltage/temperature modules, acceleration/voltage modules, strain modules and frequency modules.

Up to five DL950s can also be synchronised to allow the use of up to 160 voltage channels. Alternatively, up to 640 temperature channels can be used, employing 16 channels with eight slots for each of five DL950 units. The subunits can be synchronised to start and stop their measurements via signals from the main unit.

A large 12.1-inch touch screen, providing convenient access to the ScopeCorder’s features.

Yokogawa’s power analysers and a selection of other instruments can be time synchronised through the device’s integrated IEEE1588 PTP master function and the IS8000 Integrated Software Platform. The units can also be controlled remotely, allowing home workers to continue conducting tests while working away from the test laboratory.

Dedicated application menus simplify the setup. Touching an application icon brings up the graphical setup screen for the application, while users can also register frequently used applications as favourites.

Yokogawa says that the DL950 will find use in many markets, including transportation for applications such as testing electric vehicles and SiC/GaN inverters. Uses in the power and energy sector include capturing data on renewable energy systems, while manufacturers of industrial equipment will find the DL950 invaluable in testing high efficiency motors, robots and sensors.