Lewis Reeves
ELEC 2120 Signals & Systems
9/3/2024
Lab 2: Introduction to TIMS
Introduction:
This lab is supposed to introduce TIMS and the Picoscope software to students. Students will learn the basics of how to operate the TIMS and oscilloscope software for future labs. This lab will explain how adders work along with triggering.
Procedure:
1.
First, channel A is connected to the 2 kHz message, and channel B is connected to the 8.3 kHz sample clock.
Next, PicoScope 6 software is opened. The scope mode, a time-based representation of the input signals, is shown in the top left corner of the software. Channel A starts as on while channel B does not in the software. While watching the PicoScope display, the trigger is set to “auto” to stabilize the display. To understand how the time scale works, it is changed to 1ms/div to 10ms/div and finally to 200 us/div.
Channel B is enabled in the PicoScope software. The result is displayed in Figure 1.
Figure 1 – Channel A and Channel B PicoScope Display
2.
Spectrum mode is the third icon from the top left corner of the PicoScope software. The spectrum range is set to 16 MHZ. Once at 16 MHz, it is changed to 10 kHz, and the result is displayed below in Figure 2. A Blue Spike is visible right around 2 kHz. The spectrum range is reset back to 16 MHz.
Figure 2 – Spectrum Mode at 10kHz
3.
When working with waveforms on an oscilloscope, the wave will jump all over the place and is unstable. To get a constant display of the waveform, triggering is used. Triggering allows the waveform to be displayed starting from the same time on each wave. Triggering helps to allow the waveform to be readable easily.
4.
Channel A is now connected to ARB1 and channel B is connected to ARB2. The S&S V2 SFP application is opened. LAB 1 is loaded and run through ARB. The signals are displayed on the PicoScope software. With some scaling, the signals appear better. A square wave and sinusoid wave are present.
5.
The triple adder is inserted into the fifth slot of the TIMS unit. Slot number five is selected for the SFP numeric entry.
The 2 kHz MESSAGE sinusoid is connected to input a0, and channel A is connected to input a0. The time scale is set to 200 us/div on the PicoScope software, and the trigger is set to auto. Output A is connected to channel B. Channel B is turned on in the PicoScope software, and the scaling is set to +/- 5V. The gain for a0 is set to 1.0, and the results are observed before changing the gain to 2.0. The 8.3 kHz signal is connected to a1 on the triple adder. The gain for a0 is set to 1.0 and the gain for a1 is set to 0.5. The result is displayed below in Figure 3.
Figure 3 – Triple Adder Gain Function
Conclusions:
This lab successfully introduced students to some of the basics of a TIMS that will be used throughout the semester. The lab was enjoyable because of the opportunity to work with new hardware and software components and learning how to work their basic functions. This lab took longer than it should have because some of the software applications were not easy to find on the lab computer. Something that could improve the lab experiment could possibly be to explain why certain things have their names such as the ARB and ports a0 and a1 if that is not too much work.