Pico Technology

Pico Technology was established in 1991 ^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]} and began developing PC-based oscilloscopes at a time when most electronic test and measurement equipment relied on self-contained analogue or digital hardware.^[5] Early products focused on using personal computers for waveform display, data storage, and analysis, allowing measurement hardware to be smaller and modular.^[9]

During the 1990s and 2000s, the company expanded its product range to include USB-connected oscilloscopes, data loggers and diagnostic equipment for the automotive sector. Pico Technology operates primarily within the low to mid-range electronic test and measurement market and is one of several manufacturers producing PC-based oscilloscopes in Europe.

Pico Technology’s 'PicoScope' range consists of oscilloscopes that connect to a host computer via USB. These instruments are intended as alternatives to traditional bench-top oscilloscopes and are used in electronics development, education, automotive diagnostics, and field testing.

All PicoScope models include an integrated function generator or arbitrary waveform generator, triggering, automatic measurements with statistics, a Fast Fourier transform spectrum analysis mode, waveform math, mask limit testing and serial decoding for I2C, SPI, UART, CAN, LIN and FlexRay.^[10]

USB 3.0 SuperSpeed oscilloscopes f^[10][11] Pico Tech has been variously credited for developing the world's first USB 3.0 PC-based oscilloscope.^[11]

The PicoScope product line includes:

• The PicoScope 3000E Series is a generation of PC-based oscilloscopes developed by Pico Technology, designed to replace traditional benchtop instruments with a compact, USB-powered form factor. Utilizing the USB 3.0 interface for both data transfer and power, these devices offer bandwidths up to 500 MHz and deep capture memory up to 2 GS, enabling high-resolution analysis of complex electronic signals without an external power supply. The series features a hardware-accelerated architecture that supports advanced functions such as serial decoding, mask limit testing, and spectrum analysis through the PicoScope software suite. By offloading display and processing tasks to a host computer, the 3000E series is widely utilized in portable field diagnostics, academic laboratories, and embedded systems engineering.^[12][13]
• The PicoScope 6000E Series is considered a "Deep-memory oscilloscope", and uses hardware acceleration to provide fast display update rates on the PC.^[14][15] The 6000E Series hardware acceleration engine can process up to 5 billion samples per second, approximately two-orders-of-magnitude faster than what could be processed on a typical PC CPU.^[15]
• The PicoScope 9000 Series of "sampling scopes" support upto 33 GHz bandwidth and are often used for analysing electrical communications standards and mainstream signal integrity (SI).^[15][16][17] Such oscilloscopes work in conjunction with the PicoScope PC software that supports 70+ serial standards including RapidIO, PCI Express and Serial ATA.^[18][17]

Pico Technology develops diagnostic equipment for the automotive industry under the PicoScope Automotive product line.^[8] These diagnostic kits are used by vehicle technicians to test electrical and electronic systems such as ignition circuits, fuel injection systems, starter and charging systems, batteries, and in-vehicle communication networks.^[19][20]

The '''PicoLog''' range includes data loggers designed for long-term measurement and recording of electrical and environmental parameters, including voltage, temperature, and power consumption.^[21][22] These devices are used in applications such as industrial monitoring, laboratory research, and education.

Pico Technology offers passive and active oscilloscope probes, high-voltage and high-bandwidth differential voltage probes, current probes, thermocouples, accelerometers and pressure transducers.^[15]

Pico Technology provides proprietary PicoScope software with its hardware products. The software enables real-time signal acquisition, waveform display, triggering, automated measurement, and spectrum analysis on Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems.^[10][23][24] PicoScope software enables analysis using FFT, a spectrum analyser, voltage-based triggers, and the ability to save/load waveforms to disk.^[10][24] PicoScope is compatible with Parallel port oscilloscopes and the newer USB oscilloscopes.

Independent coverage has also noted ongoing PicoScope software updates in the mid-2020s, reflecting continued development of the PC-based measurement platform.^[25][26]

The software supports all USB-based PicoScope models. Versions have also been released for use on ARM-based platforms such as the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black.^[27]

PicoScope software enables real-time scope display with zooming and panning, and buffers captured waveforms on the PC to enable engineers to view previous measurements.^[28] PicoScope uses configurable triggers, which are available for digital and analogue waveforms.^[28] Triggers include pulse width, interval, window, window pulse width, level drop-out, window drop-out, runt pulse, variable hysteresis, and logic.^[29][28] Mixed signal variants combine digitised analogue triggers with edge and pattern triggering on the digital inputs.^[29]

Screen size and resolution are unrestricted, and depend on the PC connected.^[29]

Pico Technology provides a software development kit (SDK) intended to allow integration of its hardware with third-party software applications. The SDK supports a range of programming environments C#, VB.NET, C++, Microsoft Excel, LabVIEW or MATLAB and is used in research, industrial, and educational settings.^[29][30][31]