T&MZONE Products for the week of October 3, 2005
CWAV Says . . .
CWAV Introduces the USBee ZX Digital Test Pod
Capture or Generate Hundreds of Millions of Samples Using
PC Memory
CWAV announced the addition of the USBee ZX digital test pod to the USBee product family. The USBee ZX digital test pod is a high-performance USB high-speed based pod that provides an assortment of digital test and control functions, such as s logic analyzer, a signal generator, a data logger, a frequency counter, a frequency generator, an asynchronous serial controller and monitor, a pulse counter, a PWM controller, and remote controller functions, all in one compact and easy to use unit. Also included is the USBee ZX Tool Builder software that allows the creation of custom test tools using Visual Basic or C++.
The USBee ZX digital test pod utilizes the USB high-speed bus to turn an existing PC into a high-powered logic analyzer or signal generator that can store enough samples to fill available PC memory. "USBee ZX users are now routinely storing over 200 million samples per logic analyzer trace" states Tim Harvey, CWAV's director of marketing, "which allows visibility into an embedded design that was previously only available on dedicated test equipment costing tens of thousands of dollars. Since the USBee ZX pod can generate hundred-million-sample waveforms as well, it opens the door to a type of control and analysis that was not cost feasible before for many embedded developers."
CWAV has designed the USBee ZX system to take advantage of already existing PC resources. The USBee ZX pod streams data over the high-speed USB bus to and from the PC, allowing the PC to perform all of the triggering and data storing. This makes possible an affordable USBee ZX, while pushing the sample storage capabilities orders of magnitudes beyond that of traditional dedicated logic analyzers or signal generators. The USBee ZX digital test pod can use available PC memory as the sample buffer, allowing selectable sample depths from one to many hundreds of millions of samples.
The USBee ZX digital test pod can capture and generate samples up to a maximum of 24 million samples per second depending on the PC configuration. The USBee ZX Auto-Calibration feature automatically reduces the sample rate to ensure accurate and reliable timing, even on systems with slower processor and USB bus speeds.
Unlike other PC-based digital test equipment, the USBee ZX digital test
pod provides many different test and control capabilities depending on the
software that is run on the PC. The software for the USBee ZX is provided
for free and will run in a demonstration mode with
no USBee ZX pod attached to the PC.
analogZONE Says...
This is precisely the kind of instrument that will have a huge market
impact on self-contained test equipment available from large companies like
Agilent Technologies and Tektronix. Of course it does require a PC, but
what designer does not have one? And while it doesn't have some leading-edge
specifications -- like a large number of channels, complex triggering, etc
-- of self-contained instruments, it has impressive enough specifications
to work for a large number of applications; certainly at the low price of
$895 it commands. Watch out Agilent Technologies and Tektronix…
The USBee ZX can be purchased directly from www.usbee.com.