Spike 3.5.13 screenshots and annotations

Hi

I recently downloaded Spike 3.5.13 because I use the screenshot function in remote control mode and the release notes for this version mentioned some improvements. However, for me there are some unwelcome changes.

The very large font used for the new annotations above and below significantly reduce the usable area of the image. For me, the timestamp is potentially useful but the other information is not. I’d like the Spike GUI to allow these to be disabled and the font size to be configurable/reduced to match the other on-screen text. I agree with the decision to use a lossless format like PNG and I know it lacks an EXIF block but I feel all this metadata stuff should be embedded into the file rather than burned onto the image.

Also, the timestamp looks suspect – it seems to be when the image was saved rather than when the sweep was acquired. This is already available as the create/modify time for the file. For me, the screenshot is enduring proof of “what was seen at this time” so the current on-image timestamp is very misleading.

Finally, I’d like to be able to specify the resolution of the screenshot if possible. In my implementation, Spike runs on a remote machine with no attached display and no direct user access. As a result the size of the Spike GUI is arbitrary and so is the resolution/aspect ratio of the screenshot. A mechanism to specify the image size would be greatly appreciated…

I note your web site only offers download links for the latest version of Spike. I think you should allow download of at least the previous version, to cater for people who wish to rewind as I have.

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Hi twood,

Thank you for the feedback.

We are looking into the font size issue. It looks like the font size is scaling in ways we didn’t intend. In general, yes we are going for a font size that matches the other text. Looking into that now, once we have a fix, we can get that into the next release of Spike.

The other meta data is something that has been requested often. Hopefully if we can address the font size, the presence of the meta data will have less of an impact on your usable screen real-estate.

I have entered feature requests for your resolution selection and the ability to enable/disable the new on image text. How are you taking images right now? Via SCPI? Or are you logging into the system remotely?

You can download older versions of Spike using this direct link.
signalhound.com/sigdownloads/Spike/Spike(x64)_3_5_12.zip
You can modify the version number. 3.5.12 was the previous version if you wish to go back to this in the meantime. I have mentioned this to our IT dept and potentially we can get an version archive available to users.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Regards

Hi Andrew

Thanks for the prompt reply and the tip about older versions.

I’m using SCPI to remote control. I couldn’t get “SYST:IMAG:SAV xxx” to work so I’m using “SYST:IMAG:SAV:QUIC” instead. I’m not wild about QUIC because I can’t specify the folder to use but it seems to consistently use the last manual save folder, which is good enough.

I’m fine with the metadata and I think having it somewhere in the file would be great, I just want some control over its appearance.

If I could, I’d also like device temperature and voltage via SCPI. I gave up on trying to get this via calls to sa_api.dll intermingled with Spike invocations (Spike occasionally fails to find the device even though I’ve called saCloseDevice() a few seconds beforehand).

Terry

[Andrew]

Terry,

Thanks for the information.

If you still wanted to try to use the SYST:IMAG:SAV function, there is a common issue that might be tripping you up. For file names over SCPI, standard convention is to include quotes around the file name. So in manuals the command looks like this

SYST:IMAG:SAV “C:\Users\AJ\Documents\SignalHound\images\scpi.png”

In your code though, you will need to be sure to put escape characters before the quotes so they are actually part of the string. So it might look something like this. In C++,

std::string msg = “SYST:IMAG:SAV \”C:\Users\AJ\Documents\SignalHound\images\scpi.png\””;

I find this annoying as it has tripped up many of our customers now, but it makes it really easy to parse filename that include spaces, so I imagine that is why people standardized on this.

I can definitely look into retrieving the temp/voltage through SCPI. This would be a very quick and easy add for us. Look for this in the next release.

Regards

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Andrew.

Hi Andrew

I needed to persist more – thought I’d tried all of the permutations but not that one. For me, this one works:
SYST:IMAG:SAV “C:\GDDS\SpikeImages\SpikeImg.PNG”

but these do not:
SYST:IMAG:SAV “C:\GDDS\SpikeImages\SpikeImg”
SYST:IMAG:SAV “C:\GDDS\Mission PC\SpikeImages\SpikeImg.PNG”

Seems it needs the explicit file extension and no spaces in folder names. I’d also replaced the “\” with “/” as per the Spike manual though I’m not sure if it matters…

Thanks for offering the status data via SCPI. My device is outdoors and built into an enclosure so quite difficult to check if it’s still OK.

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