Teardown Session 39: ThunderScope

***Big shout out to this Teardown Session sponsor: AMD!** In this episode of the Teardown Sessions, we're speaking to Aleksa Bjelogrlic, creator of ThunderScope, an open source software defined oscilloscope. ThunderScope is the first oscilloscope designed for Thunderbolt I/O, allowing real-time sample data to be streamed to your computer at speeds exceeding 1 GB/s. By leveraging the powerful processing capabilities of modern devices this design removes all the limitations of traditional oscilloscopes. Measurements are made quickly and easily, and the cramped UI is replaced with a multi-window layout that supports modern accessibility features. Sample memory is increased from megabytes to gigabytes and the fixed list of protocols and trigger types is replaced with a constantly expanding repo. ThunderScope is also open source, so you have complete control of the data from the moment it is sampled. You can easily add your own custom features and benefit from new features built by the community. *Key Moments* 00:21 Crowd Supply News and What's New 02:35 About the FPGA Playground program from AMD 03:15 Introducing Aleksa and the Thunderscope project 05:05 Update on the Thunderscope project 05:30 How the project was saved by open source 07:20 Pricing the project 08:18 This episode's prize giveaway: a Thunderscope prototype! 11:01 Nerding out about hard cases 12:01 A sneak-peek at a completed Thunderscope and its retail packaging 16:55 Latest pricing info 18:47 Audience Question (AQ): Is the Thunderscope good for beginners? 19:11 How the project approached docs and education 20:18 The latest technical specs for the Thunderscope 23:03 Thunderscope's real-time display relies on GPU acceleration and CPU-based triggering 26:10 The role of LiteX in the FPGA development 28:11 AQ: Can it run Doom? (ahem) 28:58 AQ: Is there any planned support for USB-4 or 3.2? 31:24 AQ: An expected advantage of Thunderscope is it has a reprogrammable FPGA. Is that feature accessible to "normal" users or should everything be done in software? 33:15 AQ: Can you upgrade or replace the FPGA SoM? 35:30 AQ: What about using the Thunderscope for spectrum analysis? 37:09 AQ: Aleksa, have you ever worked in the protection space? 39:10 AQ: Can we use PCIe RDMA to move data to a GPU or another FPGA? 41:53 AQ: Are there any performance requirements for the GPU or CPU? 44:46 About using the open source community for software dev, plus shout-outs to contributors and a tour of some repos 52:42 Prize giveaway winner! 58:16 Checking out a Thunderscope competitor, the PicoScope 5000 1:01:35: Finally, it's Demo Time! Putting the fun in oscope fundamentals, a deep dive into a sweep, GUI wrestling and more! 1:14:10 Some RF parlor tricks for SDR fans 1:19:01 AQ: NGScope Client distinguishes between devices it supports "directly" vs. those via a bridge. What are the implications of the different approaches, given that Thunderscope uses a bridge? 1:21:03 AQ: If you measure two channels, can you reference them to each other? 1:24:08 AQ: Does the software have serial protocol decoding *About Our Guest* [Via Hackaday] Aleksa is an electrical engineer who loves test equipment and open-source hardware. For the last several years, he combined those two passions to design an open-source oscilloscope from the ground up to be faster, more flexible, and accessible to all. *Links & Resources* * EEVengers: https://www.eevengers.com/ * Thunderscope GitHub repo: https://github.com/EEVengers/ThunderScope * NG-Scope Client: https://www.ngscopeclient.org/ * LiteX FPGA dev tool: https://www.litex.dev/ * The Open Hardware Summit conf: https://2024.oshwa.org/ * Hackaday Prize 2021 Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIc-xa1BUYk * Hackaday project page: https://hackaday.io/project/180090-thunderscope * Thunderscope on Crowd Supply: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eevengers/thunderscope * AMD's FPGA Playground: https://www.crowdsupply.com/amd/fpga-playground * AMD-Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA: https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Xilinx/XC7A35T-2CSG325C?qs=rrS6PyfT74epuZxLpm8mMg%3D%3D *About the Teardown Sessions* Welcome to The Teardown Sessions, a series of interviews and hands-on learning sessions with Crowd Supply creators, staff, and lots of special guests. Crowd Supply is the crowdfunding platform of choice for engineers, hackers, designers, and idealists. We help them with the funding and support they need to deliver respectful, thoughtfully crafted, open source hardware to their delighted backers. Come on by and see what our creators are making: https://www.crowdsupply.com. Don't forget to Like, Link, and Subscribe! #opensourcehardware #hardwarehacking #opensource #hardware #teardown #maker #hacker #electronics #crowdsupply #crowdfunding #manufacturing #electronicsrepair #oscilloscope #thunderscope #electricalengineering #thunderbolt #xilinx #artix #fpga #amd #PCIe #oscope