USBLabTool

ECE-Lab-USB-Multitool

In recent years students have been required to purchase USB Laboratory Instruments such as the Analog Discovery 2 (AD2) from Digilent Inc or the Advanced Active Learning Module (ADALM 2000) from Analog Devices. These devices allow the students to complete Laboratory exercises at home and to experiment on their own time without the need to rely on open lab hours. The COVID pandemic created a high demand for such devices as throughout the US lab classes have been converted to at-home labs. This high demand in concert with the chip crises has propelled the price for these devices to currently $199 and $249 (academic price for the AD2 and AD3 respectively) and $237 (ADALM2000).

This USB Multi-function Laboratory Instrument will be inexpensive and therefore less capable than the AD2 or ADALM 2000 while still fulfilling the requirements for most laboratory exercises in the undergraduate ECE curriculum. This new device should use a microcontroller with analog front ends for the Oscilloscope and Wave Form Generator functionality. It should function as a 2 channel Oscilloscope and Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG) with a Bandwidth of up to 2 MHz and a sample rate of 5 Msps, a 16 channel logic analyzer, and be controllable via USB from a PC (Windows, Mac, and Linux) as well as offering live waveform viewing on a PC. The total part cost should not exceed $50. A similar project was once offered by the Opencope MZ (https://digilent.com/reference/test-and-measurement/openscope-mz/start) which has been discontinued.

Previous senior design projects have built a one-channel prototype for of the oscilloscope and a two channel AWG. However, the oscilloscope did not fully meet the requirements. The arbitrary waveform generator function is complete. The logic analyzer is now a separate project and currently being designed. The goal of this project is to learn from the oscilloscope prototype and create one that meets the requirements and integrate the arbitrary waveform generator and the logic analyzer, all with an intuitive and easy to use graphical user interface on the PC using PyQtGraph. This project requires analog circuit design of amplifiers, filters, etc., while being cost-conscious. The fewer different parts are needed and the fewer parts are needed overall, the more likely you'll meet the $50 target. It also requires programming of an STM-32 microcontroller in C, GUI design and programming in Python.