Purchased a new Oscilloscope

[JohnRob]

I got the bug to "upgrade" my home oscilloscope. My old scope was a TEK TDS2022, 200 Mhz, 2 GS/sec, 2 channel. Certainly a great oscilloscope. My issue was I could not capture waveforms to a USB or eq. I could only get a crappy bitmap of the screen via the serial port. So I put it on eBay and when it sold I purchased a Rigol DMO804, 70Mhz, 1.25GS/sec, 4 channel.

So why did I clearly drop down in time performance from the TEK;

• The Rigol has a 12 bit voltage capability while the TEK has only 8 bits.
• The Rigol is "tiny" it easily fits on my desktop without taking up much room.
• Not a huge driver for me, but it does have 4 channels. Will be req'd if I start playing with BLDC motor drives.

And why did I go for the DHO804 instead of the faster DHO814? Simple I don't need and will likely never need the marginally extra bandwidth and memory depth. Yes I know the DHO804 can be hacked to "become" an DHO814 but I don't care. Right now I'm looking at a waveform from my ATTiny84A. The DHO804 is displaying a rise time of approx 8 ns. For a hobby scope this is more than most people can even relate to the significance of.

An interesting observation: The basic controls are very much the same as the TEK, actually almost all the TEK scopes.

The front:

Before purchasing this scope I did look at the Siglent SDS804X HD which I think might have a little more capability, however it was larger than the Rigol and I was willing to give up the difference for the smaller Rigol.

I purchased the Rigol directly from Rigol for $429 with free shipping.

I'll be happy to answer questions for anyone considering a hobby scope.
John

[DaveEvans]

Thanks for the write-up.

[JohnRob]

Your welcome.

Just for background, I've been using "high end" equipment all my career. I'm not impress with capabilities that fall well beyond my needs.

I've since used it on a real project. I found the trigger to be very stable, this is often a weak point in lesser scopes.

Just a note: If you think you might want the DHO814 (the 100 Mhz with more memory). It is exactly the same as I have but with a little better specification. So what I report on on my scope will of course apply to the 814.

[camsysca]

@JohnRob Quick question - how flexible is the triggering? I'm looking specifically for delayed-trigger features, as well as amplitude, slope, that sort of thing.
Thanks for the post, by the way!

[JohnRob]

The triggering is very capable. I'm not sure how to list all the capabilities, but some of the more special capabilities are:

Delayed trigger
Trigger on a pulse that is less than a specified time
Trigger on a pulse that is more than a specified time
Trigger on a slope that is faster than a specified time
Trigger on a slope that is slower than a specified time
Trigger on a pattern from the channels
Trigger on a "runt" value (see below)

Plus: Nth edge, RS232, I2C, SPI, CAN, Video

[mrisco]

There is an alternative UI for that oscilloscope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT4ivaMY7zg

[JohnLincoln]

Whilst that alternative User Interface looks appealing, I'm not happy about loading 3rd party software on my oscilloscope,