Low-Cost Four Channel 1GSPS Oscilliscope using Thunderbolt/USB4 to stream data to PC for processing and display.

Join our development discord server

We are now at #thunderscope:matrix.org on matrix or #thunderscope:libera.chat on IRC as well!

Some older long-form documentation is on the Hackaday.io project page

Get the hardware through our crowdsupply page when we launch:

Catch up with these videos on the project:

TEARDOWN 2023 - Open Sourcing the Secrets of Oscilloscope Design

Hackaday Supercon 2023 - A Circuit to Measure Circuits: How do Oscilloscopes do it?

Teardown Session 39: ThunderScope

These are instructions for the XDMA gateware, which is currently the most stable gateware and driver.

1. Install the XDMA driver for Linux or Windows
   • On Windows, first run Bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON in administrator powershell and restart your computer
     • Then use the MSI installer, when asked if you want to use polling, click no
   • On Linux, run sudo make install in the xdma directory
     • Run make in the tools directory
     • Create a udev rule so you don't have to run everything acessing the hardware as root:
       • create /etc/udev/rules.d/70-thunderscope.rules file with the line ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="xdma", TAG+="uaccess"
     • With a TS connected, run sudo ./load_driver.sh in the tests directory
       • Output should be The Kernel module installed correctly and the xmda devices were recognized.
2. Build TS.NET.Engine using the build scripts
   • Dependences for build scripts on Debian/Ubuntu Linux: sudo apt-get install -y dotnet-sdk-8.0 libgdiplus
   • On Windows, should just need Visual Studio with the C# plugins
   • Copy appsettings.json and thunderscope.yaml into the same directory as the TS.NET.Engine application
3. Install ngscopeclient, following the instructions in their user manual
4. Run TS.NET.Engine and ngscopeclient
5. Add ThunderScope in ngscopeclient under Add -> Oscilloscope with "thunderscope" Driver, "Twinlan" Transport and "Localhost:5025:5026" for the Path

If you are getting under ~1000MB/s throughput on Linux, try turning off VT-d (Intel) or IOMMU/AMD-Vi (AMD) in BIOS or using "intel_iommu=off" in GRUB (Intel)

We have two types of firmware, LiteX and XDMA. We are in the process of updating the LiteX firmware to work on the latest hardware, and we will use it moving forward. Until then, use the XDMA firmware if you are not working on LiteX.

TODO: Table of Beta Unit serial numbers with module types and firmware locations

Follow the instructions in the Software/xdma_driver_linux or Software/xdma_driver_win_src_2018_2 folders to install the XDMA linux or windows driver before proceeding with installing the rest of the software.

For LiteX developers, the Linux driver is stable. Windows and Mac drivers are in development.

Our primary software is TS.NET, which takes in data from the hardware, triggers on it, and sends the triggered data over to ngscopeclient