Virtual instrument software exceeds the functionality of traditional ordinary oscilloscopes
Virtual oscilloscope usually contains three parts: data collector + computer + virtual instrument software, data collector on the input analogue signal conditioning, analogue-to-digital conversion, if necessary, to cache the data; computer is a widely popular common tool with powerful human-computer interaction resources, including a large-screen display (as opposed to the traditional oscilloscope's narrow screen), mouse operation, keyboard operation, touch-screen operation, Sound operation, etc., and powerful computing capabilities, including one or more high-speed CPU, massive storage space, including hard disk, network drive, memory, etc.; virtual instrument software is built on top of the computer's powerful computing resources and human-computer interaction resources, processing, analysis and display of the collected data, and provide users with human-computer interaction interface.
Compared with traditional stand-alone oscilloscopes, virtual oscilloscopes have a hardware price advantage, mainly because the computer is a mass popularity products, although powerful, but due to the billions of units sold on the market each year as well as extensive competition, the price is very cheap. Traditional oscilloscopes that integrate the capabilities of an ordinary computer are very expensive, and can be ten or even a hundred times more expensive than an ordinary computer. Another advantage of virtual oscilloscopes is brought by virtual instrument software. The software can provide the flexibility, scalability, and upgradability that traditional oscilloscopes cannot provide. Through the change of software functions, different instruments can be defined on the basis of the same hardware, and multiple instruments can even be used at the same time. Therefore, although we sometimes still call it a virtual oscilloscope, in fact, inaccurate, because its functions far beyond the scope of conventional oscilloscopes, and covers a variety of traditional instruments, including spectrum analysers, dynamic signal analysers, distortion analysers, signal generation, data loggers, LCR tables, vibration analysers, etc., logic analysers, protocol analysers, network analysers and so on.
Virtual instrument software is the core component of the virtual oscilloscope. A good virtual instrument software can maximise the most effective use of the computer's own powerful resources, including the computer's CPU, memory, hard disk and interactive tools. The design guideline of virtual oscilloscope is that if it can be realised with the computer's own hardware, there is no need to duplicate the same functional hardware in the data collector to maximise the reuse of resources and reduce costs. The functionality of a good virtual oscilloscope software should greatly exceed the functionality of a traditional ordinary oscilloscope, because the virtual instrument software runs on a much more powerful computer than the traditional oscilloscope hardware.
