Yes, we can if we really need to - we can even get our networking guys to create a vlan just for the test gear. Generally though we just limit exposure by taking data off with USB sticks. My point was more that that is one of the (many) considerations you have in mind when you're buying kit, and one of the things that's a fundamental difference between us as the user and the manufacturer - they're very happy for their gear to become less useful as it ages, as that means you'll buy new stuff sooner. We want their stuff to last forever, as we're tight *****.
Hi Suzy,
But aren't we all? Everyone I know fully expects a 15 ~ 20 year life on new gear. We aren't surprised when a 30 year old instrument is still in common use. Your 3585B is a shining example of that. Mine is even older than yours, being a 3585A.
I have to admit to being slightly hurt when a new acquisition comes up as "obsolete" on the Keysight site. Especially since I have to really stretch myself to buy these things. I would love to be in a position where I could buy some new Keysight equipment!
-Chris
But aren't we all? Everyone I know fully expects a 15 ~ 20 year life on new gear. We aren't surprised when a 30 year old instrument is still in common use. Your 3585B is a shining example of that. Mine is even older than yours, being a 3585A.
I have to admit to being slightly hurt when a new acquisition comes up as "obsolete" on the Keysight site. Especially since I have to really stretch myself to buy these things. I would love to be in a position where I could buy some new Keysight equipment!
-Chris
Just to go slightly OT -- Today's shiny new network audio player/renderer/server with the high-4s or 5-digit price tag will similarly be a has-been in several years.
The audio industry worked really hard to make itself into a commodity market where nothing holds its value. Why would you be surprised? Audio gear holds the same retained value as computers do these days.
I keep waiting for the industry to completely die so it can come back as a real business again. It's dead already, just trundling along out of habit. Die already! 🙂
-Chris
I keep waiting for the industry to completely die so it can come back as a real business again. It's dead already, just trundling along out of habit. Die already! 🙂
-Chris
Its just how the post interpreted to me, I didn`t mean to sound rude or offend. But Dave did a lot of quality reviews on these, I did a lot of research and it just didn`t seem to match so comment sounded to me a bit, well, warped.
Rigols 1000 and 2000 series are said to have very few bugs left (so far I haven`t noticed any indeed but i use only a few features) but Siglent seem to have a lot more issues with software and most notably - post release support. Otherwise on spec they look better.
Hi Mario,
Yes, but the specs can be very misleading, and you need to know how to read between the lines. Personal experience of the lines in question are probably as important as the spec sheet. While the Rigol is a good little 'scope, the Keysight one has a lot of extra functions and I strongly suspect it will last longer too.
Other members have also posted on their own experiences with these products and should be considered as well. As for something sounding like it came from a Keysight / Tektronix employee, that merely means that the product stands up to it's advertising. That is a very good thing.
I've had over 40 years experience with many different 'scope brands, and also direct experience calibrating and repairing oscilloscopes. Other members have also got a lot of experience with various brands of equipment. Why on earth would I spend so much on a certain brand of equipment if it wasn't the best I have seen? I have strong opinions, but they are based on many years using these instruments.
Today you have it really good. My starter oscilloscope was a Stark tube, single trace thing with a bandwidth of about 500 KHz. You could get shocks off the chassis' on these early instruments and a test bench was a carefully laid out mess of power cables that were turned to the least leakage side or you could get a shock between the chassis of one instrument to another. The sweeps weren't triggered either. Each piece was a monster in size too.
-Chris
Yes, but the specs can be very misleading, and you need to know how to read between the lines. Personal experience of the lines in question are probably as important as the spec sheet. While the Rigol is a good little 'scope, the Keysight one has a lot of extra functions and I strongly suspect it will last longer too.
Other members have also posted on their own experiences with these products and should be considered as well. As for something sounding like it came from a Keysight / Tektronix employee, that merely means that the product stands up to it's advertising. That is a very good thing.
I've had over 40 years experience with many different 'scope brands, and also direct experience calibrating and repairing oscilloscopes. Other members have also got a lot of experience with various brands of equipment. Why on earth would I spend so much on a certain brand of equipment if it wasn't the best I have seen? I have strong opinions, but they are based on many years using these instruments.
Today you have it really good. My starter oscilloscope was a Stark tube, single trace thing with a bandwidth of about 500 KHz. You could get shocks off the chassis' on these early instruments and a test bench was a carefully laid out mess of power cables that were turned to the least leakage side or you could get a shock between the chassis of one instrument to another. The sweeps weren't triggered either. Each piece was a monster in size too.
-Chris
Be careful though.
That Tektronix document concentrates on the things that Tektronix still manages, despite Danaher's best efforts, to do well.
The equivalent document from Keysight will emphasize waveform update rates and segmented memory (the reason being that they use an ASIC that gives very high waveform update rates (nice) but limits accessible memory (not nice) - so segmented memory is their way of optimising the use of what little memory they actually have)
Yokogawaw will emphasize memory depth as their standard memory option is massive, because the target audience (traditionally) was a physics lab running long term data collection.
Just saying...
I find that the Keysight 'scopes handle more intuitively than the others do. That's really the big thing for me, I can't waste time fighting the equipment.
-Chris
-Chris
I have looked at the Virtins stuff on the web but never got closer. It looks comprehensive but without actually using it I'm not sure.
Its curious that USB scopes have not gotten much traction. I can say from experience the big screen of a PC and the associated processing power are really great, however a screen either with mouse and keyboard or touch just doesn't work as well as knobs and buttons to control a scope (or similar stuff). I met with the Picoscope guys at a recent show and discussed this issue with them. They told me a customer created an external control box to show the concept. However the boss man strongly feels that the "knob box" is the wrong way and will not support it.
I have tried a number of USB scopes and the Picoscope is still the best software by far among those I have used. Still for troubleshooting its just not that fast. I'm going to switch to the newer version and see what I think soon.
I like the depth of auto measurements they have for many uses and they have worked well as 100 MHz spectrum analyzers.
That's what did it for me too, Chris.
I'm another one that's been using lots of scopes at work for ~40 years.
I hated the early digitals because of low "intuitivity".
For the past 5 years I been using a Agilent/Keysight MSO-X for almost everything and still have never looked at the manual to figure out anything!
At the office, that's worth A LOT of $$ for me. So, it's also even important for my home lab.
mlloyd1
I'm another one that's been using lots of scopes at work for ~40 years.
I hated the early digitals because of low "intuitivity".
For the past 5 years I been using a Agilent/Keysight MSO-X for almost everything and still have never looked at the manual to figure out anything!
At the office, that's worth A LOT of $$ for me. So, it's also even important for my home lab.
mlloyd1
Thank you Demian.
I looked a bit more into that.
I guess, with a Digilent’s Analog Discovery, I can do what I want to.
I’ ll start saving money
As I said my interests is testing and documentation, a low cost USB multi instrument is the obvious choice.
Dirty workbench troubleshooting and repair fits to the knobs and robustness of standalone oscilloscopes.
🙂
George
Another brand is GW Instek from Taiwan (or Good Will as they were called in the past), they have been around for very long time and are definitely not some of the cheap China mainland DSO knock off, perhaps not on par with the big brands but worth keeping in mind.
I got my first GW CRO scope in the end of 80's, I happened to have worked for a company back then that did import GW's instruments to Northern Europe and learned also that GW did already back then produce some of the Hitachi badged scopes too.
http://www.gwinstek.com/en-global/products/Oscilloscopes/Digital_Storage_Oscilloscopes/1
http://www.gwinstek.com/en-global/Page/About_GW
Other than that I admit being a LeCroy sucker since my first experience with their 93** series from the 90's, what a lovely scope.
I got my first GW CRO scope in the end of 80's, I happened to have worked for a company back then that did import GW's instruments to Northern Europe and learned also that GW did already back then produce some of the Hitachi badged scopes too.
http://www.gwinstek.com/en-global/products/Oscilloscopes/Digital_Storage_Oscilloscopes/1
http://www.gwinstek.com/en-global/Page/About_GW
Other than that I admit being a LeCroy sucker since my first experience with their 93** series from the 90's, what a lovely scope.
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Perhaps that's because a lot of them suck. 100 mV/div max sensitivity is just not useful for analog work. If you've ever used an actual scope, having an actual knob to turn rather than some UI component that you need to click, drag, whatever is so much better.
It is curious that there doesn't seem to be a USB scope that doesn't suck. Market opportunity? 🙂
Tom
It depends on what you are doing. For multi-gigabit data stuff (sampling scopes) it doesn't seem to make a difference since you are capturing a lot of data to get the info you want. Your waiting more than actively probing.
For general purpose troubleshooting the PC is another layer between you and what you want. The immediate response of an analog scope when poking around a recalcitrant circuit just doesn't happen with a DSO or USB+PC. However for some things analog scopes just don't really work, like bus decoding. . .(Even though I can tell a lot looking at SPDIF or I2S signals on an analog scope)
For general purpose troubleshooting the PC is another layer between you and what you want. The immediate response of an analog scope when poking around a recalcitrant circuit just doesn't happen with a DSO or USB+PC. However for some things analog scopes just don't really work, like bus decoding. . .(Even though I can tell a lot looking at SPDIF or I2S signals on an analog scope)
Hi Demian,
The added benefit of having averaging you can apply to a waveform is a powerful tool as well.
Just as well as my 2465B needs some work. I have to replace the capacitors in it. Not looking forward to this job!
-Chris
I'll agree with you with respect to a USB 'scope. However, the DSO I'm using is immediate, just like an analog scope. Mine is now my "go to" instrument between the analog and MSO on the bench. These days I only fire up the 2465B when I have an eye pattern to assess. The current crop of Keysight 'scopes are much better with eye patterns than the one I'm using (branded Agilent).
The added benefit of having averaging you can apply to a waveform is a powerful tool as well.
Just as well as my 2465B needs some work. I have to replace the capacitors in it. Not looking forward to this job!
-Chris
My Keysight 1000 scope REALLY came in handy last night.
Was doing some work last night designing a magnetic switch for LED lighting. Nothing too crazy, a basic 3-4A 12V load, but it was for a friend to give his custom cabinets an even more custom lighting setup (no visible wires or switches). As a complete aside, the Yuji ultra high CRI LED strips are absolutely worth EVERY penny. They blow everything else I have ever tried out of the water. Back to the discussion at hand, while the design was easy, I thought, my only major worry was that the magnetic sensor had to be mounted around 1.5m away from the circuit board. Knowing these long leads would be very susceptible to noise, I preemptively added some filtering to the leads. It worked, at first. If I kept the leads coiled, the sensor worked decently well. Stretch them out and I would get what appeared to be a heavily fluctuating load, with the magnet only having a minor affect.
Hooking up the scope showed notable noise/hash. It was clear something was wrong and my first thought was oscillation. This made it a perfect time to test out the FRA portion of this scope. I basically injected the signal into the control line of my sensor and left all of the filtering components in place. Ran the Bode Plot and the answer was immediately apparent. I only had around 50-100Hz of control loop bandwidth before the system began oscillating. Turns out, the filtering in combination of the capacitance and inductance in the components made a very nice resonator as well. Remove all but one small cap of filtering and my control bandwidth moved out to the 100+kHz range. One of those random situations where less is more. Likely anyone ACTUALLY skilled in electronics (unlike me) would have spotted my dumb design immediately but it was nice to be able to diagnose the issue myself and have confirmation my new design was NOT unstable too.
Having used this scope extensively last night in an entirely new way, the integrated function generator just proved its real worth. Before this point, I considered it a bit of a gimmick useful at certain times but not worth the extra $200 in cost. It was certainly nice to have both in one from a space saving aspect but $200 could but a decent used function gen too. Last night ENTIRELY changed my mind, the FRA feature is what REALLY justifies the price difference. Being able to analyze control loop stability with an automatic Bode Plot creator was a huge time saver and information generator. It gave me a certainty that my final design would be stable for use in my friends place, without issue or error. Beyond this aspect, the rest of the scope is also/still a dream to work with. It was constantly responsive, the menus were overall intuitive, and performance was butter smooth (especially after going from firmware 1.01 to 1.10). Even when I hooked up my Micsig differential probe; it was a piece of cake to setup, ran the probe check and it correctly identified the 50x attenuation and adjusted it accordingly. I can thoroughly say I do NOT regret my decision to get this scope.
On another note, my scope was still on the original version of the firmware 1.01 when I started yesterday. After my first run saw the instability, I remembered I had never upgraded my firmware. If you have not updated your scope the firmware is currently on 1.10 and that had huge improvements in Bode Plot generation for FRA. In the original version you were limited to a low number of points per decade in the Bode Plot which could not be changed. The original value was considered the optimal trade-off between run speed and resolution (I think it was WAY too low). Now you can select up to 50 pts per decade and get a VERY nice resolution bode plot. Additionally, it made a number of other moves and on-screen renders with FFT WAY more smooth and rapid.
Was doing some work last night designing a magnetic switch for LED lighting. Nothing too crazy, a basic 3-4A 12V load, but it was for a friend to give his custom cabinets an even more custom lighting setup (no visible wires or switches). As a complete aside, the Yuji ultra high CRI LED strips are absolutely worth EVERY penny. They blow everything else I have ever tried out of the water. Back to the discussion at hand, while the design was easy, I thought, my only major worry was that the magnetic sensor had to be mounted around 1.5m away from the circuit board. Knowing these long leads would be very susceptible to noise, I preemptively added some filtering to the leads. It worked, at first. If I kept the leads coiled, the sensor worked decently well. Stretch them out and I would get what appeared to be a heavily fluctuating load, with the magnet only having a minor affect.
Hooking up the scope showed notable noise/hash. It was clear something was wrong and my first thought was oscillation. This made it a perfect time to test out the FRA portion of this scope. I basically injected the signal into the control line of my sensor and left all of the filtering components in place. Ran the Bode Plot and the answer was immediately apparent. I only had around 50-100Hz of control loop bandwidth before the system began oscillating. Turns out, the filtering in combination of the capacitance and inductance in the components made a very nice resonator as well. Remove all but one small cap of filtering and my control bandwidth moved out to the 100+kHz range. One of those random situations where less is more. Likely anyone ACTUALLY skilled in electronics (unlike me) would have spotted my dumb design immediately but it was nice to be able to diagnose the issue myself and have confirmation my new design was NOT unstable too.
Having used this scope extensively last night in an entirely new way, the integrated function generator just proved its real worth. Before this point, I considered it a bit of a gimmick useful at certain times but not worth the extra $200 in cost. It was certainly nice to have both in one from a space saving aspect but $200 could but a decent used function gen too. Last night ENTIRELY changed my mind, the FRA feature is what REALLY justifies the price difference. Being able to analyze control loop stability with an automatic Bode Plot creator was a huge time saver and information generator. It gave me a certainty that my final design would be stable for use in my friends place, without issue or error. Beyond this aspect, the rest of the scope is also/still a dream to work with. It was constantly responsive, the menus were overall intuitive, and performance was butter smooth (especially after going from firmware 1.01 to 1.10). Even when I hooked up my Micsig differential probe; it was a piece of cake to setup, ran the probe check and it correctly identified the 50x attenuation and adjusted it accordingly. I can thoroughly say I do NOT regret my decision to get this scope.
On another note, my scope was still on the original version of the firmware 1.01 when I started yesterday. After my first run saw the instability, I remembered I had never upgraded my firmware. If you have not updated your scope the firmware is currently on 1.10 and that had huge improvements in Bode Plot generation for FRA. In the original version you were limited to a low number of points per decade in the Bode Plot which could not be changed. The original value was considered the optimal trade-off between run speed and resolution (I think it was WAY too low). Now you can select up to 50 pts per decade and get a VERY nice resolution bode plot. Additionally, it made a number of other moves and on-screen renders with FFT WAY more smooth and rapid.
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Happy to know you also find it so handy and effective because I originally suggested and encouraged Bix to get this as his first but more complete and better lasting scope although its in a price range beyond his initial target.
By the way, what max dynamic range it offers for FFT in practice?
By the way, what max dynamic range it offers for FFT in practice?
Hi,
I don´t know if all the bashing of chinese scopes holds true especially as all big-names´s low- to middle-range series scopes are manufactured by chinese OEMs anyway.
Yes, there may or may not be long-term hardware issues, and yes may there be firmware/handling issues, but it seems that Rigol and Siglent at least have learned their lessons well (at least seem good enough for Keysight and Teledyne/LeCroy) and sort out issues quite fast.
Anyway I took the ´risc´ and bought me the brand-new Siglent SDS1204X-E 4-channel 200MHz scope and must say that I and my colleagues at work are very impressed.
Apart from the bandwidth limitations it compares very well with a older 4ch 600MHz LeCroy WaveRunner (made by Iwatsu) and a 4ch 500MHz RTH1004 ScopeRider by Rohde&Schwarz.
It offers more memory and more built-in functionality than both, reacts very responsive and is relatively intuitive in handling (which is difficult by itself regarding the sheer amount of functions).
The RTH for example costing several thousand bucks is a PitA to work with.
Without manual you´re simply lost (try to find the invert channel button!) and quite often the tactile switches stick ... what a mess! Nobody likes to work with that thing.
From teardown vids at youtube one can see that the build- and parts quality is very good ... better than one might expect from the price tag anyway.
The 4-channel Siglent offers special functions which come quite handy for audio, like Bode-Plotting and 1Meg FFT (up to 500MHz!)
I can have it calibrated and/or repaired over my distributor Batronix (whom I can recommend).
You won´t find a big-name scope offering similar (just less) for less than a couple of thousand Euros/Dollars.
So even if the Siglent would break down earlier than say a Keysight scope, I could buy a new one and still save money.
jauu
Calvin
I don´t know if all the bashing of chinese scopes holds true especially as all big-names´s low- to middle-range series scopes are manufactured by chinese OEMs anyway.
Yes, there may or may not be long-term hardware issues, and yes may there be firmware/handling issues, but it seems that Rigol and Siglent at least have learned their lessons well (at least seem good enough for Keysight and Teledyne/LeCroy) and sort out issues quite fast.
Anyway I took the ´risc´ and bought me the brand-new Siglent SDS1204X-E 4-channel 200MHz scope and must say that I and my colleagues at work are very impressed.
Apart from the bandwidth limitations it compares very well with a older 4ch 600MHz LeCroy WaveRunner (made by Iwatsu) and a 4ch 500MHz RTH1004 ScopeRider by Rohde&Schwarz.
It offers more memory and more built-in functionality than both, reacts very responsive and is relatively intuitive in handling (which is difficult by itself regarding the sheer amount of functions).
The RTH for example costing several thousand bucks is a PitA to work with.
Without manual you´re simply lost (try to find the invert channel button!) and quite often the tactile switches stick ... what a mess! Nobody likes to work with that thing.
From teardown vids at youtube one can see that the build- and parts quality is very good ... better than one might expect from the price tag anyway.
The 4-channel Siglent offers special functions which come quite handy for audio, like Bode-Plotting and 1Meg FFT (up to 500MHz!)
I can have it calibrated and/or repaired over my distributor Batronix (whom I can recommend).
You won´t find a big-name scope offering similar (just less) for less than a couple of thousand Euros/Dollars.
So even if the Siglent would break down earlier than say a Keysight scope, I could buy a new one and still save money.
jauu
Calvin
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