Now that QA40xPlot is stable I wanted a thread for help/upgrade requests and focused discussion. If you missed the thread while I was writing it…
The QA40xPlot application is an open source Windows program that provides a simplified user interface and use mode to the QA403 and QA402. It’s a standalone application (other than requiring .NET 9 and the QA40x REST interface) with a bunch of standard Audio tests, all of which support autoranging.
I think the work @MarkZ is doing here is awesome! I few weeks back I posted a screen shot of the QA40x SPL logger, and it’s Avalonia (similar to WPF used in Mark’s app). Avalonia’s roots are in WPF, with a focus on cross platform and killer performance. And it’s using ScottPlot 5 (same as @MarkZs app) which is showing incredible performance with massive data sets (millions of points).
Mark, I would encourage you to look at the Python code to see how to eliminate the need to have the main app running.
I really see a bunch of different programs emerging from QuantAsylum over the years to focus on very narrow segments and to enable users that aren’t engineers to better use the tools. This gets enabled by the newer wave of software tools like Avalonia that are providing software flexibility that wasn’t really doable 5 years ago. But instead of a generic app that can measure everything, it seems increasingly it makes more sense to have an app purely focused on measuring, say, SPL (for concerts to measuring machinery), and an app purely focused on room acoustics, and an app purely focused on power amps, and an app purely focused on car audio or on speakers. And the apps would have very limited settings because they are narrowly focused on the task at hand. You put a mic in your theater, or in your car, and you push a button. And you get back pages of domain-specific measurements that would take an experienced engineer hours to make.
After you install it and try to run it, if you don’t yet have .NET installed it will run the installation automatically for you as far as I know (it did for me). Is there a reason you don’t want .NET installed? I’m using .NET 9 for one specific feature which, if necessary, I could probably change to a v8 feature.
At the moment I’m only supporting dBv and % but there’s no reason it couldn’t do other units. Since I don’t really personally care, I just haven’t bothered with other units much for input (which is V or W for now) or output. Should I take this as a feature request?
@MarkZ The progress with your software is amazing. I am so impressed as these are skills I simply don’t have.
Feature requests going forward could include watermarking (selectable image/text/opacity/placement) that could show on all plots or just for export?
And dBr referenced to 0dB for the spectrum plot and/or a user input?
I am working on adding dBr, dBu, and some of the other units. REW supports a whole raft of units of measure that I’ll try to support. I’m traveling for the next two weeks but after that I’ll have some free time for upgrades.
I like the idea of a watermark or image overlay option. Let me see how to add a gui for that since implementing it is pretty easy (I’m already doing one with the date/time stamp on the title bar).
MarkZ,
If you have paypal or venmo, would love to donate a few dollars towards your efforts here. If for nothing else than to say it is very much appreciated.
For now, the best thing folks could do is just use the software and report bugs and feature requests. When I transition from fixing my own bugs and adding features I want to fixing other people’s stuff (still a couple of months away) then maybe…
On that note… I just posted the USB support upgrade (# 1 above). It’s a lot of new code that talks directly to the hardware. Please feel free to get the version posted yesterday and try it out. It feels snappier to me though one or two minor issues remain.
Gonna have a good play with it later today- looks good.
One request, can you ensure the analyzer always defaults to maximum attenuation when you shut down/close the program like the QA40x application. The 40x app leaves the Atten light illuminated which is always re-assuring that you won’t accidentally cook the inputs…
Found a slight bug. If you are on the scope tab but don’t select a Generator 1 waveform setting, you get in an endless state of clicking the Ok or X and it just pops back up.
Maybe I’m missing this and the software can already do this, but is it possible to just run a simple frequency response sweep of L & R channels from 0 to 20khz or 30khz (freq vs amplitude)? This was one of my favorite setups of 15 or 20 years ago, sadly running the hardware/software to make all this work today on Win11 is challenging at best. If not, I’d love to request something like this to be added.
