The PicoScope 4000A Series of PC oscilloscopes is a second-generation upgrade and expansion of our high-resolution, deep-memory product portfolio.
With 2-, 4- and 8-channel models available, the PicoScope 4000A Series boasts 12-bit hardware resolution (to 16 bits with Resolution Enhancement), 256 MS deep capture memory, 20 MHz bandwidth with 80 MS/s sampling speed, up to 70 dB SFDR and a built-in 14-bit triggerable signal generator and 80 MS/s AWG. A SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface powers the instrument and delivers up to 160 MS/s communications to the host PC. All models run with the popular PicoScope 6 user interface and benefit from the free PicoSDK software development kit, which gives users direct programming control of the hardware for custom applications. The scopes also work with PicoLog 6 data logging software for lower-speed long-duration captures.
The following features come as standard on all 4000A oscilloscopes:
2, 4 or 8 channels
20 MHz bandwidth
12-bit resolution
256 MS capture memory
80 MS/s sampling rate
1% DC accuracy
±10 mV to ±50 V input ranges
10 000 segment waveform buffer
80 MS/s AWG update rate
14-bit resolution AWG
Low-cost and portable
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface
Split-screen waveform viewing
Up to 70 dB SFDR
Advanced digital triggering
Serial bus decoding
PicoScope and PicoSDK® software included
Up to 8 channels of high resolution
With the PicoScope 4000A Series providing a choice of either 2, 4 or 8 high-resolution analog channels you can easily view audio, ultrasonic, vibration and power waveforms, analyze timing of complex systems, and perform a wide range of precision measurement tasks on multiple inputs at the same time. The scopes have a small, compact footprint, yet the BNC connectors with a minimum 20 mm spacing still accept all common probes and accessories. Despite their compact size, there is no compromise on performance. With a high vertical resolution of 12 bits, 20 MHz bandwidth, 256 MS buffer memory, and a fast sampling rate of 80 MS/s, the PicoScope 4000A Series has the power and functionality to deliver accurate results. With up to 8 channels, these oscilloscopes can analyze multiple serial buses such as UART, I2C, SPI,
CAN and LIN plus control and driver signals.
Why choose the PicoScope 4000A Series oscilloscopes?
The PicoScope 4000A Series provides 20 MHz bandwidth, low noise, 12-bit resolution, deep capture memory
and an integrated function and arbitrary waveform generator in a compact USB 3 connected PC-based package, together with a proven user interface. This series of oscilloscopes is especially suited to engineers,
scientists and technicians working on a wide range of electrical, mechanical, audio, lidar, radar, ultrasonic,
NDT and predictive maintenance systems who need to make precise measurements and analysis of repetitive
or single-shot long-duration waveforms.
The PicoScope 4000A Series is unlike conventional oscilloscopes with 8-bit resolution and limited capture
emory or card-based digitizers that require an expensive mainframe and offers the following benefits:
PicoScope 6 user interface with time- and frequency-domain waveform views
Automatic measurements of important waveform parameters on up to a million waveform cycles with
each triggered acquisition using DeepMeasure™
Decoding of 18 popular industry serial bus standards
An application programming interface that provides direct control of the hardware
Five-year warranty included as standard
Suitable for a broad range of applications, including:
Power supply start sequencing
7-channel audio systems
Multi-sensor systems
Multi-phase drives and controls
Predictive/preventive maintenance
Complex embedded system development
Power harmonics analysis
Vibration analysis and diagnostics
Long-duration waveform capture
Lubricant analysis
Acoustic emission analysis
Oil condition sensors
Machine monitoring
Motor condition monitoring overview and motor current signature analysis (MCSA)
Model-based voltage and current systems
Infrared thermography
Complex embedded systems
When debugging an embedded system with a scope, you can quickly run out of channels. You may need to look at an I2C or SPI bus at the same time as multiple power rails, DAC outputs and logic signals. With up to eight channels, the PicoScope 4000A Series can cope with all of this. Choose whether to decode up to eight serial buses, with analog waveforms and decoded data both visible, or a combination of serial buses and other analog or digital signals. PicoScope provides advanced triggering on all channels, so you can search for runt pulses, dropouts and noise as well as looking for data patterns using the 4-input Boolean logic trigger.
Pack contents
PicoScope 4000A Series 2-, 4- or 8-channel oscilloscope
Oscilloscope probes (if purchased)
USB 3.0 cable 1.8 m
Quick Start Guide
PicoScope 4224 IEPE
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sales team will then be in touch to discuss your options.
Most digital oscilloscopes still use an analog trigger architecture based on comparators. This can cause time and amplitude errors that cannot always be calibrated out. The use of comparators often limits the trigger sensitivity at high bandwidths and can also create a long trigger rearm delay.
In 1991 Pico set an innovation milestone by pioneering the use of full digital triggering using the actual digitized data. This reduces trigger errors and allows our oscilloscopes to trigger on the smallest signals, even at the full bandwidth. All real-time triggering is digital, resulting in high threshold resolution with programmable hysteresis and optimal waveform stability.
The reduced rearm delay provided by digital triggering, together with segmented memory, allows the capture of events that happen in rapid sequence. At the fastest timebase, rapid triggering can capture a new waveform every 3 microseconds until the buffer is full.
Advanced triggers
As well as the standard range of triggers found on most oscilloscopes, the PicoScope 4000A Series has a comprehensive set of advanced triggers built in to help you capture the data you need. These include pulse width, windowed, and dropout triggers to help you find and capture your signal quickly.
Measurement of waveform pulses and cycles is key to verification of the performance of electrical and electronic devices.
DeepMeasure delivers automatic measurements of important waveform parameters, such as pulse width, rise time and voltage. Up to a million cycles can be displayed with each triggered acquisition. Results can be easily sorted, analyzed and correlated with the waveform display.
An important specification to understand when evaluating oscilloscope performance is the waveform update rate, which is expressed as waveforms per second. While the sample rate indicates how frequently the oscilloscope samples the input signal within one waveform, or cycle, the waveform capture rate refers to how quickly an oscilloscope acquires waveforms.
Oscilloscopes with high waveform capture rates provide better visual insight into signal behavior and dramatically increase the probability that the oscilloscope will quickly capture transient anomalies such as jitter, runt pulses and glitches – that you may not even know exist.
The PicoScope 4000A Series oscilloscopes use hardware acceleration to achieve up to 100 000 waveforms per second.
All models in the PicoScope 4000A Series have a built-in low-distortion, 80 MS/s, 14-bit arbitrary waveform generator (AWG), which can be used to emulate missing sensor signals during product development, or to stress-test a design over the full intended operating range. Waveforms can be imported from data files or created and modified using the built-in graphical AWG editor.
A function generator is also included, with sine, square, and triangle waves up to 1 MHz, along with DC level, white noise, and many more standard waveforms. As well as level, offset and frequency controls, advanced options allow you to sweep over a range of frequencies. Combined with the spectrum peak hold option, this creates a powerful tool for testing amplifier and filter responses.
Advanced display modes allow you to see old and new data superimposed, with new data in a brighter color or shade. This makes it easy to see glitches and dropouts and to estimate their relative frequency. Choose between analog persistence, digital color, or custom display modes.
Buying a PicoScope is not like making a purchase from other oscilloscope companies, where optional extras considerably increase the price. With our scopes, high-end features such as resolution enhancement, mask limit testing, serial decoding, advanced triggering, automatic measurements, math channels, XY mode, segmented memory, and a signal generator are all included in the price.
To protect your investment, both the PC software and firmware inside the scope can be updated. Pico Technology has a long history of providing new features for free through software downloads. We deliver on our promises of future enhancements year after year, unlike many other companies in the field. Users of our products reward us by becoming lifelong customers and frequently recommending us to their colleagues.
PicoScope performance and reliability
With over 25 years’ experience in the test and measurement industry, we know what’s important in an oscilloscope. The PicoScope 4000A Series delivers value for money by including a wide range of high-end features as standard. The PicoScope 6 software includes serial decoding and mask limit testing, and new functionality is regularly delivered through free upgrades to ensure that your device does not quickly become outdated. All Pico Technology devices are optimized with the help of feedback from our customers.
Zoom in and capture every last detail
The PicoScope zoom function lets you take a closer look at the fine detail on your signals. Using simple point-and-click tools you can quickly zoom in on both axes and reveal every last detail of the signal, whilst the undo zoom function lets you return to the previous view.
USB connectivity
The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 connection not only allows high-speed data acquisition and transfer, but also makes printing, copying, saving, and emailing your data from the field quick and easy. USB powering removes the need to carry around a bulky external power supply, making the kit even more portable for the engineer on the move.
The Software Development Kit (PicoSDK®) allows unlimited data collection and fast streaming.
PicoScope 4224A & 4424A oscilloscope software
Math channels and filters
On many oscilloscopes, waveform math just means simple calculations such as A B. With a PicoScope it means much more.
With PicoScope 6 you can select simple functions such as addition and inversion, or open the equation editor to create complex functions involving filters (lowpass, highpass, bandpass and bandstop filters), trigonometry, exponentials, logarithms, statistics, integrals and derivatives.
Waveform math also allows you to plot live signals alongside historic peak, averaged or filtered waveforms.
You can also use math channels to reveal new details in complex signals. For example, you can graph the changing duty cycle or frequency of a signal over time.
Custom probes
Definitions for standard Pico-supplied oscilloscope probes and current clamps are included in the software.
The custom probes feature allows you to correct for gain, attenuation, offsets and nonlinearities in probes, sensors or transducers that you connect to the oscilloscope. For example, it can scale the output of a current probe so that it correctly displays amperes. It can also transform the output of a nonlinear temperature sensor using the table lookup function.
You can save user-created probes for later use.
Alarms
PicoScope can be programmed to execute actions when certain events occur.
The events that can trigger an alarm include mask limit fails, trigger events and buffers full.
The actions that PicoScope can execute include saving a file, playing a sound, or executing a program.
Alarms, coupled with mask limit testing, help to quickly validate signal quality in electronic system designs.
High-speed data acquisition and digitizing
The software development kit (SDK) allows you to write your own software and includes drivers for Microsoft Windows and beta drivers for Apple Mac (OS X) and Linux (including Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone).
Example code shows how to interface to third-party software packages such as Microsoft Excel, National Instruments LabVIEW and MathWorks MATLAB.
The drivers support USB data streaming, a mode which captures gap-free continuous data over USB direct to the PC’s RAM or hard disk at rates of up to 20 MS/s. Capture size is limited only by available PC storage. Sampling rates in streaming mode are subject to PC specifications and application loading.
Powerful tools provide
endless options
Your PicoScope is provided with many powerful tools to help you acquire and analyze waveforms. While these tools can be used on their own, the real power of PicoScope lies in the way they have been designed to work together.
As an example, the rapid trigger mode allows you to collect 10,000 waveforms in a few milliseconds with minimal dead time between them. Manually searching through these waveforms would be time-consuming, so just pick a waveform you are happy with and let the mask tools scan through for you. When done, the measurements will tell you how many have failed and the buffer navigator allows you to hide the good waveforms and just display the problem ones. This video shows you how.
Perhaps instead you want to plot changing duty cycle as a graph? How about outputting a waveform from the AWG and also automatically saving the waveform to disk when a trigger condition is met? With the power of PicoScope the possibilities are almost endless.
20 MS/s using PicoScope 6 software, shared between channels
80 MS/s max. for a single channel using PicoSDK. 160 MS/s total across all channels. (PC-dependent)
AC RMS, true RMS, cycle time, DC average, duty cycle, falling rate, fall time, frequency, high pulse width, low pulse width, maximum, minimum, peak to peak, rise time, rising rate.
Spectrum mode
Frequency at peak, amplitude at peak, average amplitude at peak, total power, THD %, THD dB, THD N, SFDR, SINAD, SNR, IMD
AC RMS, true RMS, cycle time, DC average, duty cycle, falling rate, fall time, frequency, high pulse width, low pulse width, maximum, minimum, peak to peak, rise time, rising rate.
Spectrum mode
Frequency at peak, amplitude at peak, average amplitude at peak, total power, THD %, THD dB, THD N, SFDR, SINAD, SNR, IMD
EN 61010 pollution degree 2: “only nonconductive pollution occurs except that occasionally a temporary conductivity caused by condensation is expected”
In the event that this product does not fully meet your requirements you can return it for an exchange or refund. To claim, the product must be returned in good condition within 14 days.
General
What's in the box?
PicoScope 4000A Series high-resolution oscilloscope
USB 3.0 cable
USB Oscilloscope Quick Start Guide
10:1/1:1 switched probes (quantity shown below)
Number of probes included
2
4
4
PC connectivity
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 (USB 2.0 compatible)
Power requirements
Powered from USB
Ground terminal
M4 screw on rear panel
Safety compliance
Designed to EN 61010-1; LVD compliant
EMC compliance
Tested to meet EN61326-1 and FCC Part 15 Subpart B
Environmental compliance
RoHS and WEEE
Total satisfaction guarantee
Oscilloscope – vertical
Input channels
2
4
8
Bandwidth (−3 dB)
20 MHz (50 mV to 50 V ranges)
10 MHz (10 mV and 20 mV ranges)
Rise time (calculated)
17.5 ns (50 mV to 50 V ranges)
35.0 ns (10 mV and 20 mV ranges)