The virtual oscilloscope: an impedance match to beginning ECE students

The design of a virtual oscilloscope, a personal computer interfaced to an analog-to-digital (A/D) interface that imitates the functioning of an oscilloscope, is described. It is shown that this system comes close to the ideal instrument for the student to use in the lab because the instrument functions are transparent, e.g., it does note have so many of the knobs that often get in the way of the measurement process. The design is based on the user interface of the Macintosh computer. The A/D hardware interface is based on an inexpensive single-board computer. Software, custom programmed in the Forth language to implement the virtual oscilloscope concept, links the two computers. The remote system design details, host system program design, and system operation are discussed