Tryout: Uni-T UPO1202 200 MHz oscilloscope

What about software?

While the UPO1012 oscilloscope can help you design and test circuits, the software was no help at all. Getting started was confusing, and the software never worked. Here’s what happened:

I went to the Uni-T website, where I found “Software downloads” at the bottom of the page. You shouldn’t have to scroll down the page to find it. Indeed, the website needs a “Support and downloads” link right at the top.

The Software Download section of the website shows a “Device Manager” with a 2024 date, which I downloaded and installed. Doing so also installs NI VISA v5.4 runtime. If your PC runs another version of VISA, you might have compatibility issues, or installing the Device Manager might overwrite your version.

Device Manager detected both the UPO1202 oscilloscope and the Uni-T function generator when they were connected to USB ports. That’s when things started to go awry.

When I ran Device Manager, my Windows 11 PC asked me if I wanted to make changes to the PC. I clicked “yes,” but that window appears every time I start Device Manager. That’s a bug for Uni-T to fix.

With Device Manager running, I clicked on the oscilloscope and function generator, but nothing happened. You need to right-click to bring up the software functions. When you right-click on the oscilloscope, Device Manager gives you three options:

• Open DSO, a virtual oscilloscope for controlling the hardware on a PC.
• Open WaveAnalysis, an app that I’ll discuss below.
• Send Command, which lets you send commands to the UPO1202. That’s helpful when writing your own software.

The onscreen window also has a “More” option, which opens a menu that includes ArbEditor for the function generator and WaveAnalysis for the oscilloscope. You can ignore that with a right-click on any instrument listed.

Using the Open DSO feature brings up a virtual-instrument interactive graphic that lets you remotely control the instrument. Right-clicking on the instrument also provides an option for controlling the instrument through Standard Commands for Programmable Instrumentation (SCPI) commands.

While the Virtual DSO and SCPI functions worked well, The WaveAnalysis app failed for me. In Figure 10, there’s an icon called Real-Time Data that opens a window. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what it does. The text leads me to believe you can get a real-time waveform from the oscilloscope to the PC. It’s possible that this feature is for playing back captured waveforms. Regardless, clicking “OK” caused the app to crash.

I also tried saving waveform data and importing it into WaveAnalysis without success. The oscilloscope provides two options for saving data. One is a .wav file, which the help says is for playing back recorded waveforms in the oscilloscope. It’s not an audio file. I also tried saving a waveform as a CSV file. Trying to open either file caused the same crash of the app. I was, however, able to import a CSV file into Excel and plot it (Figure 11).

Having used the software, all I can say is that it needs work to analyze waveforms. Given that you can import waveform data into Excel or any application that can read CSV files, you’ll probably use that anyway. Uni-T needs to revisit the WaveAnalysis app. It also needs to make downloading easier and eliminate the pop-up window asking if I want Device Manager to make changes to Windows. That pop-up appears whenever Device Manager opened.