Hi all! I'm quite near to buy the Rigol DS1102E.
I know what it CAN do... what about the things it CAN'T do?
The highest frequency I came working on is 20Mhz so a 100Mhz oscilloscope for me is ok, but on the rigol website I saw they separate "digital oscilloscope", "mixed signal", and "logic analyzer".
I need to analyze arduino's frequency (even DUE until possible) but I might also like to analyze analog signal. Can I do that? even guitar or radio? where's the limit?
what a mixed signal and logic analyzer can do that the DS1102E can't?
I know that for you experts those could be "stupid" questions but I'm about to invest in a 320€ instrument and I wish to know what's the limitation before buying and discover mysef
Nice plus is that all Rigol DSOs could interface with dll to custom made programs which is a thing I really like being I a c++ / c# programmer ^^. could someone confirm this is easy/doable with this model?
p.s. before someone say that DS1052E can be upgraded to DS1102E there's no more way to do it because the hardware changed with the new release.
I find it works pretty well - 5ns risetime or so is about the best you'll be able to see.
For analog its pretty noisy at low voltages though, so not great for that although setting low
pass filtering will help for lower frequency signals.
Do you have any oscilloscope experience to compare it to?
Nice plus is that all Rigol DSOs could interface with dll to custom made programs which is a thing I really like being I a c++ / c# programmer ^^. could someone confirm this is easy/doable with this model?
I have done this on a Rigol DS1052E in Python.
Ken Shirriff - he of the IR library has some examples on his web site :-
EvIl_DeViL:
what a mixed signal and logic analyzer can do that the DS1102E can't?
Logic Analyzers only look at the digital value of a signal. They return either 0 or 1 and tend to be in 8-bit groups (8, 16, 32, etc). They're useful for looking at digital busses, like an address bus.
Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes combine Logic (digital) Analyzers with the Analog channels. They let you look at analog channels with 8-bit+ resolution, time correlated to digital (logic) channels with 1-bit resolution.
For example.
You might use the analog channel to look at a DAC's output while using the digital channels to look at the DAC's input channels. Allowing you to correlated the digital values being fed into the DAC to their output voltage.
Another (for me, more common) usage is to put the digital channels on logic channels, while watching something else. Such as, I might put a digital channel on VCC and RESET. Then I'll use a trigger to see when both are > 3.5V (HIGH), while using the high-resolution analog channel to look at a regulator's output.
For the stuff you're likely to be doing with an Arduino, the mixed-signal oscilloscope (MSO) is going to be the best instrument. When you've got all the logic channels hooked up and you're looking for a glitch, it's vital to be able to hook up one analog channel to the glitchy digital one and see what is causing interference. I've learned so much about I2C and SPI over long wires using my MSO.
Wow that's a lot of answers! thank you all for your patience in discussing an argument overly-talked on this forum, but you know budget, market and needs are always different...
@MarkT: Thank you for your review; No I don't have any DSO to compare to, except analogical 80's we had at school so I think we're light-years from there...
@Grumpy_Mike: Nice! It seems not so difficult even to port those py stuff... APIs looks quite intuitive at first sight!
@Foggiest: Man... I see what you mean here Do you have it? it's still possible doing it? if so I order it TODAY! (and you'd made this guy really happy XD)
@James C4S: would Bus Pirate be an option for that specific application? (I'm not yet qualified to know if it's crap or gold)
@MorganS: rigol MSOs are very expensive and out of my budget anyway if I keep up with electronics I might think of buy it as my second scope, but for the first oscilloscope I think 350€ is a good budget...
If you are looking at a 20MHz -digital- signal, it is helpful to have a scope that has an analog bandwidth about 10x that. Because a square wave at 20MHz is made up of increasingly smaller odd harmonics, and it takes up to about the 9th to get a reasonable looking square wave.
But that is if you are looking for problems in that 20MHz square wave. Ringing, slow rise time, that sort of thing. If you are only thinking that your Arduino can use a clock up to 20MHz and you'll be looking at signals from the Arduino, that 100MHz analog bandwidth should be fine.
As for analog noise on the most sensitive setting, Dave Jones of EEVBlog does a great video demonstrating that it isn't really more noisy than an analog scope, it is just better at showing the noise.
@polymorph: yeah, for now I'm not going for morphological feature analysis of the wave. just debugging line outs for what I need even 5 harmonics is ok (looking at your scheme)
@JimboZA: indeed! yesterday I saw the teardown of the DS1054Z, Apple Lisa and Amiga 500... Old stuff looks so neat and clean compared to todays PCBs...
@James C4S: I was specifically asking if you think that a BUS Pirate could entirely replace a logic analyzer and do a better job
Ok I finally decided for the DS1054Z because of... you know... coff coff...
So what do you think about this final choice? are you all with me?
@Grumpy_Mike: you choosed it for the 25MHz waveform Generator? wouldn't DS1054Z + stand alone generator do a better job? not judging, just asking the expert...
anyway I can't find it on the rigol website... did you mean DS1074Z-S or DS1104Z-S?
I'll wait for your answers/advices until tomorrow 18:00 (GMT + 1) then I'll go for the DS1054Z!
Sorry yes I got a DS1074Z-S last April and I paid £533 for it. It looks like they have gone down in price since then. It is upgradable to 100MHz with a paid for software upgrade or I believe it could be "unofficially" hacked.
wouldn't DS1054Z + stand alone generator do a better job?
It might have I didn't investigate that, I liked the idea of being able to program both the scop and the sig gen with the same connection.
It's handy having the gen in the scope, especially if you do field work/mobile.
In every other respect though, better separate IMHO.
One last thing Evil, I don't want to p!ss on your picnic, but do read and watch the vids on "Jitter" regarding the 1054z(and other) scope/s.
It seems there is either a bug(jitter) or design fault(clock) in the scope, watch the vid to understand the implications of this.
May seem a mean thing of me to bring up, but, it is better that you are fully aware before you buy.
That buyers remorse will really sting if you were to find this out after purchase!
If it's any consolation, I think the bug covers from 1052 up to some 2000 series Rigol, and I still intend to buy a 1054z for myself (time to replace the analogue one!).
Seems Rigol is well aware about it and plan to fix with new firmware updates. (no ETA)
AFAIK these low end DSOs (don't know if this is the case) use multiple ADC synced by an FPGA to keep low the prices.
if the FPGA programming isn't beyond the perfection any strange stuff can happen.
anyway I'm still plan to buy it in the next 40 minutes
OT: where does "p!ss on your picnic" come from? lol never heard it! we in Italy have something similar which sounds like "break the eggs in the hamper" to say "ruin the plans". I asked google but he doesn't know!
edit 18:07: bought! how can I know if it's the latest hardware revision? there's some info menu I can check and compare with a list of codes of the revision history?
Sure you can find out hardware and software versions.
Find Dave's EEVBlog forum, and the very informing thread about this.
Read all 61 pages.
By the time you'll be done with that you will know about all there is to this.
You'll also find out that on January first, a new firmware was released.
Take your time to read this.
Your scope will take a bit to arrive i guess.
I'm also looking into getting one of these.
Where did you end up buying it ?
MAS3:
I'm also looking into getting one of these.
Where did you end up buying it ?
nothing strange... near my city here in Italy there's this local distributor. I did it mainly because I hope for a smooth delivery and an easier law help in case something goes wrong. I don't feel ok spending too much from foreign e-shop
if you're in europe I know Batronix (Germany) is the official retailer.
I'm going to read EVV and the firmware's changelog to see if the AC coupling jittering has been fixed!
if you're interested there's also this thread Test Equipment - Page 1 about hacking/reversing/studing those scopes...
Edit: Dave says it should be fixed with the said update! (Jitter AND 5 uS resonance) http://youtu.be/K1IJH9aJvgE
Do you have it? it's still possible doing it? if so I order it TODAY! (and you'd made this guy really happy XD)
anyway if I keep up with electronics I might think of buy it as my second scope, but for the first oscilloscope I think 350€ is a good budget...
