LeCroy SDA, Operator'S Manual

Page: 226 / 397

These examples are purely illustrative, but you can easily imagine that with a VBScript you can
add value to the scope in a very short time. This gives you an instrument that does exactly what
you want, time after time, by using your stored setups and scripts.
What can you do with a customized instrument?
If you require a result that can be derived logically from the input waveform, you can do it. Many
calculations can be done with remarkably small scripts, but if you have no time for scripting, you
can use one of the proprietary packages, such as Excel, MATLAB, or Mathcad, which offer
immense processing power.
Scaling and Display
Scripting and programming allow a large variety of opportunities. You may, for example, be using
transducers. If so, you can change the units of your waveforms, and write N (newtons), J (joules)
and so on, and you can introduce scaling factors. If the transducers are non-linear, you can
correct for that, too. You can also transform horizontal scales and vertical scales by manipulating
the data. Logarithmic scales in amplitude and frequency are often required. Squaring and taking
square roots are needed in certain applications. Here is a picture showing some graphs related to
white noise, showing ways of detecting small deviations from the true distribution. The lower two
graphs were generated and placed in one trace using a VBScript.
In the next example, four graphs are placed in one trace.
Golden Waveforms
This is a rich field for VBS. An example was given earlier. The only limits to the shapes that can
be generated are the vertical resolution and the number of samples.
A practical example – DVI Data-Clock skew
The next example is a measurement of DVI Data-Clock skew jitter measurement, using a
VBScript to emulate the PLL. A solution to a practical measurement problem was shown earlier.
These are just a few of the many solutions that can be created.
226
SDA-OM-E Rev H