PASCO PS-2600A Spectrometer – Native WinUSB Software & Reverse Engineering

In the last few days I have been working a little more intensively with the PASCO PS-2600A spectrometer - originally just to make a few reproducible spectral measurements for my own projects.

As is often the case with such things, it wasn't just a few measurements.

This has now resulted in a complete native software for the PS-2600A, which controls the device directly via WinUSB and completely replaces the original (rather rudimentary) PASCO software:

https://github.com/doctormord/Pasco-PS-2600A-Spectrometer

The entire USB communication was reverse engineered from USB recordings, as PASCO does not provide any public low-level documentation for the protocol.

AGML battery charger

PS-2600A GUI DarkMode

AGML battery charger

PS-2600A GUI LightMode

What the software can do

The application runs entirely in Python and now offers, among other things:

• direct WinUSB communication without PASCO SDK
• Real-time spectral display with high update rate
• Waterfall/heatmap representation
• automatic exposure control
• Peak detection and spectral analysis
• Reference spectra for gas discharge lamps and LEDs
• CSV and PNG export
• persistent configuration
• Light-/Dark-Theme

There is also a complete colorimetry part based on the CIE 1931 standard:

• Chromaticity diagram
• Correlated Color Temperature (CCT)
• Duv
• CRI / Color Rendering Index
• Live evaluation directly from the measured spectrum

This makes the small PASCO sensor surprisingly useful for LED, light source and spectral analyzes in the laboratory or hobby sector.

Detailed documentation can be found on the GitHub.

PS-2600A GUI Waterfall

PS-2600A GUI CRI

Why all this?

On the one hand, of course, from technical interest.

On the other hand, I always find it a bit of a shame when interesting hardware almost completely disappears behind proprietary software stacks - even though the actual hardware often has significantly more potential.

The PS-2600A is a good example of this. With direct access to the raw data, you can get a surprising amount out of it.

Perhaps the project will also be of interest to others who work in the areas of spectroscopy, optics, lighting technology or laboratory automation.