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Read more about the article Producing Waveforms using Wave Generator module in the PSLab Android App

Producing Waveforms using Wave Generator module in the PSLab Android App

This blog will demonstrate how to produce different waveforms using the Wave Generator module in the PSLab android app and view them on the Oscilloscope.

The Wave Generator in PSLab android app is simple to use and has a UI which is similar to physical commodity wave generators. It is capable of producing different waveforms like sine, sawtooth and square wave.

Apparatus Required

Before getting started with the wave generator we require the following items:

  1. PSLab device
  2. An android phone with PSLab app installed in it.
  3. USB cable (Mini B)
  4. OTG(On the Go) wire
  5. Some connecting wires having pins at both ends

Understanding the Wave Generator Pins

Figure 1 shows the pin diagram of the PSLab device

Let me briefly explain the use of the pins that are going to be used in the Wave generator module:

S1 and S2 pins

The PSLab device contains two pins (S1, S2) which are capable of producing two independent analog waveforms (sine,  sawtooth) having different frequencies and phase offset. The frequency range is from 10Hz to 5Khz.

SQR1, SQR2, SQR3 and SQR4 pin

The SQR1 pin is used for producing the square waveform and all the SQ pins can be used together to produce four different PWM signal having the same frequency. These PWM signal can have a different duty cycle and phase.

CH1, CH2 and CH3 pin

The CH pins are used by the oscilloscope in the  PSLab android app to monitor waveform signals produced by the wave generator pins. They can be used together to simultaneously monitor multiple waveforms.

Setting up the Device

We need to connect the PSLab device with the mobile phone as shown in Figure 2 which can be done by following steps:

  1. Connect a micro USB(Mini B) to the PSLab device.
  2. Connect the other end of the micro USB cable to the OTG.
  3. Connect the OTG to the phone.
Figure 2 shows the connection of the PSLab device with the smartphone

Producing Waveforms

Now, once the device has been properly connected to the device (which is shown at the top right corner of the app), then in the instruments page scroll down to the Wave Generator card and click on it to open the WaveGenerator activity.

Figure 3 shows the instruments containing card view to all the instruments and icon to show device status

Here you will see a screen like shown in Figure 4 containing two monitors and a controlling panel with lots of buttons. Here the Waveform panel is used to control the S1 and S2 pins whose properties are shown on the left monitor screen and the Digital panel is used to control the SQR pins whose properties are shown on the right monitor screen.

Figure 4 shows the UI of the Wave Generator Activity

For sine/sawtooth wave:

Connect the S1 pin to the CH1 pin using a connecting wire, then in the Waveform panel select the Wave1 button, choose the type of waveform(either sine or sawtooth), then click on the Freq button to change the frequency of the wave, then use the Seek bar or the up/down arrow buttons to change the value of frequency and then press the set button to set the frequency for the S1 pin as shown below:

Figure 5 The GIF shows the setting of the properties of the W1 pin in the UI

Now, click the view button at bottom right corner, this will directly open the Oscilloscope provided by the PSLab android app .

Once the oscilloscope is open, check the CH1 pin from the panel in the bottom and we can see the sine wave in the monitor shown by the screen in Figure 6 and Figure 7

Figure 6 shows the screenshot of oscilloscope showing the sine wave
Figure 7 shows the screenshot of the oscilloscope showing sawtooth wave

Similarly, if you want to see two sine waves connect the S1 pin to the CH1 and connect the S2 pin to the CH2 channel , choose the wave-type for both pin, set the frequencies for both of the waves, here you can also set the phase difference between the two waves, for setting phase difference first click on Wave2 button it will enable the phase button, then click on the Phase button and set the value of phase with the help of the Seek bar.

For Square Wave

Connect the CH1 pin to the SQ1 pin, after making the connection head over to the Digital panel in the Wave Generator, ensure that the mode is selected to square, now click on the Freq button in the digital panel and set the frequency of the square wave with the help of Seek bar, then click on the Duty button and set the value of duty cycle for the square wave as shown below:

Figure 8 The GIF shows the setting of properties for producing square wave from SQ1 pin

Now, once the square wave has been set click on the view button, the oscilloscope will open then select the CH1 pin and you can see the square wave on the monitor as shown by the screen in Figure 9.

Figure 9 shows the screenshot of the square wave as shown in the oscilloscope

Thus we have produced different waveforms using PSLab wave generator module.

Resources

PSLab device pin diagram  – https://github.com/fossasia/pslab-artwork/blob/master/Sticker/pslabdesign.png

Youtube Video Screencast for Wave Generator – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC2T5kElWbE&t=1s

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Read more about the article Implementing Tree View in PSLab Android App

Implementing Tree View in PSLab Android App

When a task expands over sub tasks, it can be easily represented by a stem and leaf diagram. In the context of android it can be implemented using an expandable list view. But in a scenario where the subtasks has mini tasks appended to it, it is hard to implement it using the general two level expandable list views. PSLab android application supports many experiments to perform using the PSLab device. These experiments are divided into major sections and each experiments are listed under them.

The best way to implement this functionality in the android application is using a multi layer treeview implementation. In this context three layers are enough as follows;


This was implemented with the help from a library called AndroidTreeView. This blog will outline how to modify and implement it in PSLab android application.

Basic Idea

Tree view implementation simply follows the data structure “Tree” used in algorithms. Every tree has a root where it starts and from the root there will be branches which are connected using edges. Every edge will have a parent and child. To reach a child, one has to traverse through only one route.

Setting Up Dependencies

Implementing tree view begins with setting up dependencies in the gradle file in the project.

compile 'com.github.bmelnychuk:atv:1.2.+'

Creating UI for tree view

The speciality about this implementation is that it can be loaded into any kind of a layout such as a linearlayout, relativelayout, framelayout etc.

final TreeNode Root = TreeNode.root();
Root.addChildren(
       // Add child nodes here
);
// Set up the tree view
AndroidTreeView experimentsListTree = new AndroidTreeView(getActivity(), Root);
experimentsListTree.setDefaultAnimation(true);
[LinearLayout/RelativeLayout].addView(experimentsListTree.getView());

Creating a node holder

Trees are made of a collection of tree nodes. A holder for a tree node can be created using an object which extends the BaseNodeViewHolder class provided by the library. BaseNodeViewHolder requires a holder class which is generally static so that it can be accessed without creating an instance which nests textviews, imageviews and buttons.

Once the holder extends the BaseNodeViewHolder, it should override two methods as follows;

@Override
public View createNodeView(final TreeNode node, ClassContainingNodeData header) {

}

@Override
public void toggle(boolean active) {

}

createNodeView() which inflate the view and toggle() method which can be used to toggle clicks on the tree node in the UI.

The following code snippet shows how to create an object which extends the above mentioned class with the overridden methods.

public class ExperimentHeaderHolder extends TreeNode.BaseNodeViewHolder<ExperimentHeaderHolder.ExperimentHeader> {

    private ImageView arrow;

    public ExperimentHeaderHolder(Context context) {
            super(context);
    }

    @Override
    public View createNodeView(final TreeNode node, ExperimentHeader header) {

            final LayoutInflater inflater = LayoutInflater.from(context);
            final View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.header_holder, null, false);

            TextView title = (TextView) view.findViewById(R.id.title);
            title.setText(header.title);

            arrow = (ImageView) view.findViewById(R.id.experiment_arrow);
        
            return view;
    }

    @Override
    public void toggle(boolean active) {
            arrow.setImageResource(active ? arrow_drop_up : arrow_drop_down);
    }

    public static class ExperimentHeader {

            public String title;

            public ExperimentHeader(String title) {
               this.title = title;
            }
    }
}

Creating a TreeNode

Once the holder is complete, we can move on to creating an actual tree node. TreeNode class requires an object which extends the BaseNodeViewHolder class as mentioned earlier. Also it requires a viewholder which it can use to inflate the view in the tree layout. The viewholder can be a different class. The importance of this different implementation can be explained as follows;

TreeNode treeNode = new TreeNode(new ExperimentHeaderHolder.ExperimentHeader(“Title”))
       .setViewHolder(new ExperimentHeaderHolder(context));

In the Saved Experiments section of PSLab android application, all the three levels shouldn’t implement the toggle behavior as a user clicks on the experiment (last level item), he doesn’t expect the icon to change like the ones in headers where an arrow points up and down when he clicks on it. In this case we can reuse a holder which has the title attribute while creating only a holder which does not override the toggle function to ignore icon toggling at the last level of the tree view. This explanation can be illustrated using a code snippet as follows;

new TreeNode(new ExperimentHeaderHolder.ExperimentHeader(“Title”))
       .setViewHolder(new IndividualExperimentHolder(context));

Creating parent nodes and finally the Root node

The final part of the implementation is to create parent nodes to group up similar experiments together. The TreeNode object supports a method call addChild() and addChildren(). addChild() method allows adding one tree node to the specific tree node and addChildren() method allows adding many tree nodes at the same time. Following code snippet illustrates how to add many tree nodes to a node and make it a parent node.

treeDiodeExperiments.addChildren(treeZener, treeDiode, treeDiodeClamp, treeDiodeClip, treeHalfRectifier, treeFullWave);

Setting a click listener

Click listener is a very important implementation. Each tree node can be attached with a click listener using the interface provided by the library as follows;

treeNode.setClickListener(new TreeNode.TreeNodeClickListener() {
   @Override
   public void onClick(TreeNode node, Object value) {

   }
});

The value object is the class attached to the holder and its attributes can be retireved by casting it to the specific class using casting methods;

String title = ((ExperimentHeaderHolder.ExperimentHeader) value).title;

Resources:

Continue ReadingImplementing Tree View in PSLab Android App