To take a break from that stepper business, I thought why not test, if FY6900 that I have, if it's possible to expand it a bit by using it's PC software.
There appears to be very little documentation, or any other info available on the net about that piece of software. I started to wonder, why is that, because these Feeltech's(plus other re-branded ones, I have Dominty) function generators seem to be rather popular among hobbyists for their price.
Anyway, I downloaded software and usb driver from Feeltech website.
Installing that usb driver was not a breeze - I use W7, and had to go to device manager and install it by selecting usb device from the list, and then selecting CH341SER.INF -file.
Installing PC software itself wasn't encouraging either, but finally after some fiddling I got it installed.
So, how about using that software? It seems to have "list of bugs, that is longer than its source code", as someone commented on the net. Can it then be used for anything at all? I think it's possible, once one learns how to not make it crash.
One might say that it's a piece of crap, but as there aren't any other alternatives to transfer custom waveforms from pc to this device - why not test and see, what is possible.
At least in my case, once I draw some waveforms, and click "send data" -button, it transfers just fine to the function generator(haven't tested how the shapes look on the scope yet, though).
Its waveform editor doesn't have any tools to edit waveforms in precise way - it's just for freehand drawing.
And, what's most fascinating, when I save that waveform to .FY -file, and open it in the program - it isn't same anymore. It's just garble. Possible reason for that is, that the program saves all 8192 decimal values using commas. When I open that .FY -file in text editor, and replace commas with dots(or periods or whatever), and save it, open it again in the program, the waveform appears just like I drew it earlier...
What comes to the program's main window, there is a button for opening files. But when trying to open FY -files, it always crashes with a message "Run-time error '6': Overflow".
Is there any ways to open/import data to this program? Yes there is, by first selecting waveform window. then selecting a waveform file from the left side, and clicking "Add waveform" -button and, then "Loading waveform" -button:
And there we have another trap - Cycle and Amplitude values - if one uses dot, instead of comma, when entering the values, it crashes with message "Run-Time error '13': Type mismatch".
Personally I just avoid entering anything in those fields, as I haven't yet found them to be useful anyway.
Control window, where other functions can be adjusted, haven't looked much into it yet, as all that I have so far needed/used, can be done with the device itself:
Another way to insert data is text window, where one can paste copied values, as far as number of them doesn't exceed the 8192 limit, and then click 'Import waveform Window' button, so that the waveform shows in the waveform window(Text_window.jpg)
.
So, to create and/or edit waveforms is preferably done by using other program(s).
An example of custom waveform:
I used Openoffice's Scalc(similar to Excel) to edit values manually. It's kind of easy for simple waveform like that, but also tedious thing to do.
There is also another possible candidate, which I have tested a bit. It saves waveforms in .bkw -ascii format, which contains the data just in same form, that this Feeltech's program accepts:
https://l.bkprecision.com/wavexpress.html I used it to make exact same, chopped sine waveform: