An oscilloscope is a device that many of us use, and which we often have to use while our hands are occupied with test probes or other tools. [James Wilson] has solved the problem of how to control his ‘scope no-handed, by connecting it to a Raspberry Pi 3 running the snips.ai voice assistant. This is an interesting piece of software that runs natively upon the device in contrast to the cloud service provided by the likes of Alexa or Google Assistant.
The ‘scope in question is a Keysight 1000-X that can be seen in the video below the break, but looking at the Python code we could imagine the same technique being brought to other instruments such as the Rigol 1054z we looked at controlling via USB a year or two ago. The use of the snips.ai software provides a pointer to how voice-controlled projects in our community might evolve beyond the cloud services, interestingly though they do not make a big thing of it their software appears to be open-source.
Oscilloscopes do not have to be remotely controlled by voice alone. It seems to be a common desire to take measurements no-handed — one project we’ve featured in the past did the job with a foot switch.
Via Hacker News.
Author here, thanks for the feature! Since I shot this clip, I’ve made some updates to the software and Snips has also released a platform update, making the voice assistant much more responsive. No more long pauses between commands and after saying the “hey Snips” wake word! This update is live in the ready-to-use Raspbian image linked from the Github page.
I tried connecting this to a Rigol 1054Z, but I found many of the commands from Rigol’s programming manual made the scope freeze, so I stuck to the more reliable Keysight 1102G for this work.
Just for info, in the video I’m probing the FET turn-off in a switching power supply I built for Nixie tubes. The current sense node is low-level and next to an inductor, so there’s no way to obtain good signal integrity without carefully holding the probe and using a short ground spring. With my hands full, the voice control really helps when I need to stop the scope or change the view.
Try updating the firmware on your Rigol. I’ve been doing some scope control stuff recently. My updated 1054z worked just fine, but the one at work with older firmware would constantly crash and wouldn’t respond to several commands. An update fixed everything.
Really cool!