ASA Introduces Animation and Unattended Fault Detection to M1 OT™

ASA is taking yet another pioneering step towards creating interface consistency across all oscilloscopes by announcing the company's release of two new major functionalities: scope animation and unattended fault detection. Animation provides users with added insights by converting the usual static ScopeView into an active screen, rapidly changing the data it displays. This feature provides the customer with an interface that looks similar to a screen that is continuously acquiring data on a scope. "One of the problems that post processing software has always had is that it looks at each acquisition as a whole," said Mike Williams, President of ASA. "This, of course, has a lot of utility for various kinds of analysis, especially if you have a good set of exploratory tools that allow you to easily navigate over the surface of the analysis. In my own debug work I have always used this post processing in conjunction with an active scope display because sometimes the dynamics of the way the voltage versus time display presents provides additional insight into things I am trying to understand in a versus time display. So while scope animation is redundant if you're using M1 at the oscilloscope, one of the greatest features of the M1 portfolio is that it allows you to see what happened at the oscilloscope when you and your collaborators are away from the oscilloscope."

Unattended fault detection lets customers continuously take scheduled acquisitions using the M1 software. Users can now run M1, unattended, at full speed and be assured they are capturing every failed acquisition, as well as timed, normal acquisitions to compare the behavior of the device. "If you've got a signal that's really screwed up you don't need fancy software sitting there doing a suicide watch on it," said Williams. "You can probably track that down with a volt meter, but if your failures occur more on the order of hours or days or longer, this feature can help capture the offending behavior for detailed analysis without your having to sit there and get a suntan from the CRT."

Animation and unattended fault detection are set to launch around January 15^th, 2007. The updates will be available to current subscription holders by accessing the download page.

Scope Animation will be available to current subscription holders on January 15th.

Mike Williams Launches His Blog Announcing ASA's New Compliance Test Strategy

"My blog will be a way to more frequently share commentary about our company, our products and our industry, in a more timely way with those who want to hear about it."

Mike Williams, President of ASA Corp, launched his first official blog on January 2^nd, 2007. "As someone who holds a certain level of pessimism about new and trendy things I don't know how I feel about being associated with the word blog," said Williams. "However, ASA has become so busy in the past few months that the demand to be in contact with our customer has significantly increased. I intend to address some of the industry's top issues as well as customer concerns with this blog."

Building Up a Base of Compliance Tests

Williams announced on January 3^rd, that ASA would continue to work swiftly on creating compliance tests to be made available to customers free of charge. "The need to perform compliance tests is one of the main reasons customers purchase oscilloscopes, but currently purchasing these tests from the scope manufacturer tends to be expensive, proprietary to only that company's hardware, and require other expensive software to operate," said Mike Williams, President of ASA.

"One of our principal goals in creating all the automation capability that we have put into M1 Oscilloscope Tools (TestScripts, ScriptBuilder, Measurement Builder, etc) was to shift the place where the creation of these kinds of things happen from the hands of a few programmers at the scope companies to the customer's hands. This allows engineers to have exactly what they want long before the scope companies decide to write it. You can 'click together' just about any test or sequence of measurements you wish." More information regarding compliance tests ASA already provides can be found by accessing the company's Scope Applications site.

Further increasing customer awareness, ASA's Marketing department has initiated an "ASA's Latest" blog to keep customers updated on the most current features and promotions being offered by the company. Additional information on what's happening at ASA can be found by accessing the ASA newsroom.