Hello. My name is Dave Tenney. I’m a product manager with Agilent Technologies. I’m going
to demonstrate some new waveform generation software that works with several Agilent function
generators, arbitrary waveform generators, and pulse generators. I’m going to begin
with a simple walk through of showing you how to create a waveform, download it to the
instrument, and then we’ll show you the waveform on the oscilloscope.
So let’s begin by showing you what the software looks like when you first start it up.
You first get the choice to create a new waveform, actually create a sequence of waveforms.
You can open an existing waveform created by the software or you could import a CSV file of
a waveform from some other software that you’re using as well on your bench. For right now,
we’re going to do this basic walk through, so I’m going to create a new waveform.
Now the first thing we need to do is select the instrument that we want to connect to.
This sets some defaults in terms of the number of arbitrary waveform points
and the size of memory, things like that.
So we’re going to connect to a 33522A, which is the function arbitrary waveform
generator that we’re going to be demonstrating the waveform with.
Then we have a choice now of setting up some waveform parameters. I’m going to just pick a 100 milli-second
duration for this waveform and let’s select a sampling rate of 1 giga-sample per second
and that will give us 100 kilo-sample points to work with as we create our waveform. So I hit OK.
Now I’m going to get a display here that looks much like an oscilloscope where I can
begin creating the waveform. But before I do that, let’s just take a walk through
the capabilities of the product and then we’ll begin by creating a simple waveform.
So first under the waveform menu is basically where I do the creation of the waveform.
So I have one section here that are basic waveform segments, much like the ones that are built
into the function generator. I have some advanced segments that get a little more complicated,
things like a multi-tone segment. I have a trapezoidal segment here and in fact,
you can even build a serial data segment. Another way to create some waveforms is through
an equation editor and then finally, there are some drawing modes, a freehand mode, a line
draw mode, and a point draw mode. The point draw mode has interpolation methods that
you can select: linear, smooth, which is like a polynomial. And in fact there’s an area
here where I can reset my duration sampling rate if I’d like to do that.
So let’s begin by just creating a very simple waveform. We’ll select a sine wave and I’m
going to create several cycles of the sine wave and then we’ll download it to the instrument.
You’ll notice as I go through the demonstration, you will see this window quite often. It’s
basically the waveform creation window. Once it’s open, I can actually change the waveform.
For now, we’ll just keep it a sine wave and let’s run it through the whole 100 milli-second
time duration. The default amplitude is two volts peak-to-peak and we’ll just leave
it there, but let’s set it up to run for ten cycles. You’ll notice I get a preview
window at the bottom of this window to see what the waveform is going to look like.
So when I hit OK, now I get the waveform in the display.
Let’s do one more thing before we transfer this waveform to make it a little more interesting.
Let’s say that we want to take one cycle of the waveform and let’s just have a drop out
there where it drops out to DC. So I’m going to select a cycle. I’m going to pick
a DC component. We’re going to do this for ten milliseconds and we want the voltage to
drop to zero, which is the default setting right now. So we select OK. Now in this case,
since I already have a waveform on the screen, it’s asking me where to put this
new waveform. I’m going to basically say, replace the selection, and say OK and now
you’ll see that I have a drop out in the sine wave here to a DC level.
So let’s download this now and look at it on the oscilloscope. So I go to the communications menu.
The first thing I need to do is to actually connect to the instrument. So I have to find
the instrument first. So the software has to find the instrument first. Then I do the connection.
So under Find Instrument, you can see now it found the 33522A. I simply hit
Connect and now I’m connected. In fact, I have a USB connection right now to the 33522A
signal generator. I can also connect with LAN. Okay, so now there’s a default waveform
name that comes up. You can rename it yourself but we’ll just leave the default.
It’s called waveform 1. So now I’m just going to send it to the instrument and we’ll see
it show up on the instruments, as well as the oscilloscope. And you can see that we
have that DC, that one cycle of zero DC, that we edited into that ten-cycle waveform.
That’s the walk through of Agilent’s Waveform Builder Pro signal generation software.
We will be showing you some additional videos with creating more complex waveforms, as well
as creating some sequences of waveforms, so thank you for watching.