The MSO5000, DS7000 and MSO8000 can all use several different types of cursors to measure the signal. These include manual, Track, XY and Measure. Manual cursors allow you to set the X and Y relationship of the cursors to manually measure the signal. Track cursors allow you to move in the X direction and the instrument keeps the cursor on the signal. XY cursors will be grayed out under normal operations but can be activated and used similar to the manual cursors when the instrument is placed into the XY view. Finally the measure cursor can not be adjusted by the user but show exactly how the instrument is measuring the signal for a given measurement.
To perform the measurements below I have connected one of the instrument probes to the probe compensation port so that we are able to view a square wave signal.
- Press “Measure”, press “Remove” and then press “Remove All” Delete all of your previously set measurements, then add “Frequency” as the only measurement. It should display on the screen. Then press “Cursor”, then set mode to “Measure” and turn on “Indicator”. It should now look like this:
The cursor is locked to the zero-crossing showing the time between consecutive waves.
- You can also show the “Track” and “Manual” modes of the “Cursor”.
- Use the “Intensity Knob” to move the cursor position.
- In “Manual” mode note that you can use the soft keys or touchscreen to highlight Cursor A, Cursor B or Cursor AB. This determines which cursors will change with the “Intensity Knob”. If you haven’t shown the Recording and Playback yet, this is a great time to show the Sinc or Sine wave signals and you can use the cursors on the recorded data. That is a great way to do post-analysis of signals.