Monitor Test Progress by Displaying Sequence Steps (100 Things #61)

SoundCheck includes powerful built-in tools for monitoring and troubleshooting. As a sequence runs, steps highlight with either green or red indicators, either showing a successful run or indicating an error. Display steps can be placed anywhere in a sequence, not just at the end, so you can receive visual data at specific sequence points. For even greater visual feedback, all steps can be configured to display as a sequence runs.

Monitor Test Progress by Displaying Sequence Steps

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Learn more about SoundCheck’s sequence writing capabilities.

 

Video Script:

Everyone knows that you can create powerful test sequences in SoundCheck, but did you know that SoundCheck also has some powerful built-in tools for monitoring the progress of your test sequence and troubleshooting in real time?

In SoundCheck, we create test sequences by dragging and dropping steps from the step template library into the working sequence, then double-clicking onto the step to edit. Using this simple method you can build up complex measurement sequences with hundreds, or even thousands of steps. But what do you do if your sequence doesn’t run as planned? I’m going to show you a couple of useful tools to help you quickly resolve any issues..

First, SoundCheck highlights the active step  in the sequence editor. Green indicates the step has successfully run or passed, red indicates some type of issue- for example, a step in the sequence has failed. This is a really simple check that quickly helps you identify where things are going wrong.

SoundCheck also supports multiple display steps. This is particularly useful in long sequences so you don’t have to wait for the sequence to run completely before viewing data. Here I’ve added a display step directly after the acquisition step to display the recorded waveform superimposed over the test stimulus. For troubleshooting, this assures that the sequence has properly recorded the response, and it can move onto analysis.

You also have the option to display the step as the sequence is running. This is enabled in ‘configure step’, and you can define how long to display the step. I’ll enable this on my acquisition step. Similar to using a separate display step, this option has the desired effect of viewing data in the sequence prior to analyzing it.

I use these 3 simple tricks a lot when I’m writing and de-bugging sequences. How do you de-bug yours? Do you have any tips and tricks to share? Let us know in the comments below.