[VoltLog] got a hold of a prerelease unit of Joulescope — a DC energy analyzer that promises to make it easy to optimize power and energy usage of your electronic designs. You can find his review in the video below. The device is a very fast ammeter and voltmeter. Given that, it is easy to compute energy and, over time, power.

The device is set to retail for about $400 according to a letter in the video, although the website mentions closer to $800. Both of those seem to be a bit much for a piece of specialty gear that is really just a fast analog to digital converter and some software. To be fair, the device can read ranges between 18 microamps to 10 amps with resolutions as low as 1.5 nanoamps on the lower side of the range. Is it worth it? That will depend on your application and your price sensitivity.

The device has banana plugs but is also set up to handle USB devices with some adapters. The front panel is actually a PCB with a connector so that the panel can change for different applications. The software runs on common platforms and offers a voltmeter-style view and an oscilloscope-like view. The lower the current range, the lower the bandwidth, ranging from 15 kHz to 250 kHz. This isn’t a replacement for a scope but is made to measure DC spikes. [VoltLog] points out that you’ll be most interested in the low range readings when a device is in sleep mode, so the lower bandwidth shouldn’t be a big issue.

The working demo uses a test Arduino provided with the instrument for the review. In other words, if you buy one of these, it won’t have the example board with it. You can see events in the software like LED blinks clearly in the resulting traces.

We’ve seen instruments like this built into an ESP8266 design. We’ve also seen people measure tiny currents using fairly simple techniques.