The ADI IIO Oscilloscope is a cross platform GUI application, which demonstrates how to interface different evaluation boards from within a Linux system. The application supports plotting of the captured data in four different modes (time domain, frequency domain, constellation and cross-correlation). The application also allows to view and modify several settings of the evaluation board's devices.
Latest releases (goto this page to download the file):
To build on an embedded target (e.g. aarch64), we recommend using the Kuiper Linux update scripts. This is a tried/proven method that does everything in a quick script.
To build on a development host (e.g. x86 laptop or desktop) do the following:
$ apt-get -y install libglib2.0-dev libgtk-3-dev libgtkdatabox-dev libmatio-dev libfftw3-dev libxml2 libxml2-dev bison flex libavahi-common-dev libavahi-client-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libjansson-dev cmake libaio-dev libserialport-dev
libiio-dev
package in Debian or Ubuntu or build and install the libiio library from source, by following these instructions. Make sure you do the final make install
.$ git clone https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/iio-oscilloscope.git $ cd iio-oscilloscope $ git checkout origin/main
$ wget https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/iio-oscilloscope/archive/main.zip $ unzip main.zip $ cd iio-oscilloscope
$ mkdir build && cd build $ cmake ../ && make -j $(nproc) $ sudo make install
make install
of the libiio, the libiio install location needs to be set in your path (i.e. PATH=/usr/lib:$PATH“
or else an error “Package libiio not found..”
will occur. make install
, you will need to make sure that the most recently built shared libraries can be found, by setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environmental variable. export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=./
otherwise you may get an error like: $ ./osc ./osc: error while loading shared libraries: libosc.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Or, worst case, when you are debugging things, you will see your modified source code, but it will be running/executing the older shared shared object which was loaded (since it didn't find things in the library path).
While compiling the IIO Scope for Ubuntu 20 and other older Linux distributions, you can face issues with the library gtkdatabox. To overcome this problem DON'T install the library using apt install/ other package managers. Instead download the sources from https://sourceforge.net/projects/gtkdatabox/files/gtkdatabox-1/ file gtkdatabox-1.0.0.tar.gz and compile and install it using commands below. This will ensure that gtkdatabox is compatible with GTK3
./configure make make install
Please not that in case some other gtkdatabox version is present in the system remove it using sudo apt remove. This action can solve error message GTK 2.x symbols detected. Using GTK 2.x and GTK 3 in the same process is not supported Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)
If you'd like to build the previous version of IIO-Oscilloscope, which is based on GTK2 you will need to install the following packages:
> apt-get -y install libglib2.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgtkdatabox-dev libmatio-dev libfftw3-dev libxml2 libxml2-dev bison flex libavahi-common-dev libavahi-client-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libjansson-dev cmake libaio-dev libserialport-devMake sure that you have libgtkdatabox v0.9 installed, which was compiled with GTK2. In addition, you will need to clone a specific branch of the IIO-Oscilloscope repository, which still uses GTK2 widgets:
git clone https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/iio-oscilloscope.git --branch 2021_R2
The other prerequisites and build steps are identical.
The recommended method is to use brew with tfcollin's tap:
git clone -b fix-gtk-upgrade https://github.com/tfcollins/homebrew-formulae.git cd homebrew-formulae brew install --build-from-source ./gtkdatabox-prev1.rb # if necessary: brew link --overwrite gtkdatabox-prev1 brew install --build-from-source ./iio-oscilloscope.rb
The application can run locally which means it runs on the same platform where your device is connected.
To start the IIO Oscilloscope open up the start menu of your system and search for “IIO Oscilloscope”. E.g. if you are using a Ubuntu Linux system move your mouse cursor to the left side of your screen and “Dash home” button and type “IIO Oscilloscope” into the search box.
The application can be used to connect to another platform that has a connected device in order to configure the device and read data from it. You can connect in 3 different ways:
This specifies any shell prompt running on the host or target - Run IIO Oscilloscope in remote mode
> export OSC_REMOTE=IP address of the remote platform (old) > export IIOD_REMOTE=IP address of the remote platform (new) > osc
The application can be used to connect to another platform that runs no-OS software: https://wiki.analog.com/resources/tools-software/no-os-software/iio
Each plugin (or tab) can be detached from the main window simply by clicking on the button placed on the right side of the name of the plugin. Close the detached window to attach the plugin back to the main window.
The Main Window is designed to display a configuration panel (plugin) for each device recognized by the system. Additional plugins will be loaded for device debugging and monitoring purposes such as:
The DMM Plugin: The Digital Multimeter continuously displays device specific data once the start button is activated.
Debug Plugin: Is a tool for device debugging. Since “normal” users should not be doing this, features on this tab may not work unless you have started the osc
application as root (try sudo osc
in a terminal).
There may be hardware specific plugins/tabs, specific to the platform you are running on. Here are a few:
The Capture Window is where device data is displayed.
Markers are used for plot data measurement in when looking in the frequency domain or cross correlations. To activate the markers right click on the plot and select from the marker menu the type of marker you want to enable. Make sure the capture process is running and the appropriate domain is selected in order to enable the markers properly. The following types of markers are available:
The enabling of a marker will display a set of 5 markers by default. You can add more markers by selecting Add Marker from the marker menu and remove some by selection Remove Maker.
Fixed markers are designed to have their position moved by the user. Once the fixed markers are visible on the plot right click on the marker symbol and while holding the right button pressed move the mouse to the desired location on the plot and release the right button.
To disable the markers select Markers Off from the marker menu.
Once the data is captured, it can be saved using one of the following formats:
Click on File→Save As to open the dialog needed to save the data.
The settings can be applied only in Time domain.
In time domain, it is possible to select a capture channel as the trigger source of the oscilloscope. To do so, right-click on the name of the device used for capture, and select Trigger settings. The pop-up window that will open will allow you to configure the channel used for the trigger, as well as the trigger level and edge.
Several waveforms are provided with the application for demonstration purposes, which can be loaded into different devices. However, these are generally not meant for transceiver characterization or demodulation. If you want to do such tasks, we would recommend creation of your own waveforms from tools such as MATLAB.
The source code for the entire application is at github. You can ask questions about it on the EngineerZone.
If you want to make your own plugin, please refer to the Internals page.