AFAIKT the esp add on board is just acting as a fake siglent AWG and relaying commands to the real AWG, so just a command response protocol communicating with the scope. I'd expect results to be as accurate as the AWG being used.
It looks really clever, cheap and easy to make too. Unless you're unfamiliar with the Arduino UI which makes uploading the program a bit of a learning curve. About the only risk to it would be Siglent bricking it with a firmware update.
The video #77 [GUIDE] Siglent SDS1204X-E bodeplot 📈 using FY6900 (Chapterized 🧾) - YouTube demonstrates. But there's too much time spent gobbing solder on the breadboard. It could have been 15 minutes not 30.
Thoroughly impressed.
I have one of those boards. Got it then thought things through and realised I'd not thought things through and needed a scope to know if the thing was working according
So it's sat in it's anti-static bag for the last 6 months.The programming is relatively uncomplicated and from a quick browse of the Scope documentation an arduino with WiFi + this board + battery with a small screen and have a portable free standing generator.
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A couple of people have done this:
Signal Generator AD9833 : 3 Steps - Instructables
Arduino - AD9833 Waveform Generator
I've written USB controlled telescope focusers (using chopper drivers for the servos) on Arduino. So it would be easy enough for the Arduino to handle the I/O via USB and then translate to the AD9833.
For simple audio bode plots that should work.
For my crimes I, like quite a few here, have software engineering backgrounds.
Almost need to take a reference and subtract the two given I suspect the AD933 boards are probably not entirely artefact free.
One may as well move the top end up to 200MHz, it'll be a flatter response at 100Mhz
No real "effort" involved
It doesn't cause "some problems", it just tells the front end amp chips not to restrict the bandwidth....
In the 100MHz version during power up the firmware actually tells the front end IC to restrict bandwidth, to effectively cripple the full performance of the front end.
https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/l...73621&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
With the hack you're just telling the firmware to stop doing that.....
It's a common technique in modern stuff, to build one full performance front end (like this) for all models and then use software to restrict performance in the lesser model variants.
So, there's no danger in breaking the device in any way? Is it 100% safe.
Also, I assume it voids the warranty, right?
Really? That's not good news. I'm pretty annoyed by loud devices.
Loud fans in bench gear are much annoying indeed. Because located very near to the operator. I had changed the fan in my Rigol DS2072 to a far quieter one. Even more annoying is DS1054Z's because smaller thus spinning faster.
I also have a Siglent gen and bench PSU. I changed the fan in the gen too. I worked out both replacements CFM carefully though. The bench PSU's fan is large and quiet, left it as is, not engaging if not long pushing the output current anyway.
The 2072 serves well since 2013 (tweaked to 200MHz and full options). It's PSU caps still looking good, couple of sticking rubber menu buttons with use and age, I teared the scope apart and cleaned them in a soap bath. Also noise haze on the screen right after boot up just before clicking and showing the lines. Sometimes not self clearing if not a knob is turned. Didn't go away with firmware upgrades after it first appeared some years ago. Wondering if an issue developed in this unit's relays, a joint went bad, a small main pcb cap dried, a getting hot filter coil invisibly cracked its ferrite case, not sure what to suspect.
If the 2072 suddenly died and I had the means I would buy a large touch screen scope these days. Four channel 10 bit Rohde & Schwarz which is more responsive, silent, has better build, better FFT and menu ergonomics than any comparable Chinese, or at least a Siglent 2000X plus. Rigol scopes offer less than Siglent scopes currently.
I also have a Siglent gen and bench PSU. I changed the fan in the gen too. I worked out both replacements CFM carefully though. The bench PSU's fan is large and quiet, left it as is, not engaging if not long pushing the output current anyway.
The 2072 serves well since 2013 (tweaked to 200MHz and full options). It's PSU caps still looking good, couple of sticking rubber menu buttons with use and age, I teared the scope apart and cleaned them in a soap bath. Also noise haze on the screen right after boot up just before clicking and showing the lines. Sometimes not self clearing if not a knob is turned. Didn't go away with firmware upgrades after it first appeared some years ago. Wondering if an issue developed in this unit's relays, a joint went bad, a small main pcb cap dried, a getting hot filter coil invisibly cracked its ferrite case, not sure what to suspect.
If the 2072 suddenly died and I had the means I would buy a large touch screen scope these days. Four channel 10 bit Rohde & Schwarz which is more responsive, silent, has better build, better FFT and menu ergonomics than any comparable Chinese, or at least a Siglent 2000X plus. Rigol scopes offer less than Siglent scopes currently.
I couldn't imagine how you could break it.
If you don't mention it, most likely nobody will care to ask. It isn't like they aren't aware of this "feature" and could easily prevent it in a newer hardware revision or even firmware upgrade. In my opinion it is more a marketing thing among hobbyists. It is only good for them.
Cross your heart and hope to die in a cellar full of rats, safe? No, because nothing ever is.
But. Nothing is connected to the scope physically, it's all through a protocol on TCP/IP over WiFi to an API written by Siglent. The scope is electrically safe. There's obviously the possibility of crashing the scope if it's not doing due diligence on its API as it receives calls. But power off and power on should fix it because the scopes firmware would be loaded from non writeable storage and uncorrupted.
Looking at the code on GitHub the Siglent API isn't complex either.
There's no modification to either the hardware or software of the scope, so I don't see how it would. But without reading the license agreement in full it's difficult to know how it's framed.
But if you sent it back to Siglent of repair for some other fault they'd not see it was any different from the one that went out the factory door
I'd prefer to stick with a TCP/Wireless interface. It works well enough with the Chinese AWG and has the virtue of requiring nothing to be plugged in to the Scope so no risks of damage or warranty being voided.
It's a little more complicated and would require battery power for the arduino but there are Arduino shields or Arduinos with built in WiFi.
IIRC you have to pay to enable WiFi though the USB socket if you can't do a cabled connection. There are dongles that'll take WiFi and push it out on an RJ45 that can be plugged into the scope to get the network connection. About £30.
100% safe , and to void the warranty they'd have to prove releasing the restriction somehow caused your warranty claim.
Say your display failed during warranty - they'd have to replace it (unless physically damaged)... or the power supply gave up prematurely - they'd replace or repair it .... it's a million miles away from a feature unlock.
Most attempted warranty claims are as a result of abuse or accidental damage anyway..... your 21st century product has such a low chance (in general) of failing during warranty anyway ...
A restriction that is removed in a perfectly (technically) legit way.
Normally the feature unlock codes are generated from a known hash key , which is held (secret) by the manufacturers, without that key you haven't a chance in hell of finding the unlock key for your machine...
This company (for one reason or another) didn't keep the key that secret, so armed with the key and your serial number and the feature number you want unlocking, you can unlock it....
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Yup - plenty of the newer maker style embedded boards have WiFi. It did occur to me to optically couple it.. but a wifi is as good.
I have a ODroid C2 that ridiculously powerful, apart from running Ubunti 64bit it has onboard PWM capable of 1MHz. Not sure if it would do AWG/sine etc though but DSD square wave may a starting point for basic testing.
The AD9850 has the benefit of 125Mhz clocking so you're looking at approaching 10Mhz+ with reasonable accuracy but I suspect 24MHz may be pushing it.
I'd like the option of a decent signal strength and DC offset which is something I like about that guy's design with the opamp output buffer. Having differential just by using a differential opamp would also make testing balanced amps easier, the second PWM is limited to 100KHz which would be needed.
Scope should be arriving tomorrow morning
30 mins of scope warmup whilst it gets 'upgraded' then I'll leave it to calibrate and away we go Kind of glad on going 4ch for this type of work but then have the option for switching down for faster work.
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"IF" it's a digital scope. Sorry but that gave me a chuckle.
That's a dead giveaway that as you say above you haven't bought or used a scope for a while, as you basically can't buy analogue scopes anymore.
The last time I was seriously using oscilloscopes was in the early to mid 2000's and even as recently as that analogue scopes were still available and useful, but they are dead and buried now except as vintage nostalgia.
I needed a scope again recently for the first time in over a decade and after doing a bit of research I picked up the Siglent SDS1104X-E and I'm totally smitten with it. For a few hundred £ it does things my analogue scope of 15 years ago couldn't dream of. It's totally overkill for what I need but I don't care. Almost any conceivable use case I can think I'll need in the future it can do - even things like serial decoding.
There are still a couple of disadvantages with digital scopes unless you pay big money - most entry level models are 8 bit ADC's, and X-Y mode doesn't work as well as an analogue scope, but aside from that its no contest with any analogue scope of comparable bandwidth.
In the case of the SDS1104X-E yes a number of bugs were fixed, but a LOT of new features have been added in updates. Only a few months ago an update added some brand new data logging features. Despite releasing in 2018 the firmware for this model is still being actively maintained and new features added.
Good choice, you won't regret it.I've just ordered a 1104X-E
As mentioned above I'm smitten with mine, apart perhaps from the somewhat noisy fan. And I've hacked it to 200Mhz even though I don't really have any need for that.. I agree - the fan is quite noisy. Not a noisy motor, just a noisy airflow due to the airflow rate and the path the air is forced through. It's the one thing that lets it down a bit. It's roughly as noisy as my desktop tower PC that sits near it which also has somewhat noisy fans.
Of course you can switch it off when you're not using it which is what I tend to do as I only use it sporadically. But if you use it all day long in a quiet room it could be a bit annoying. From reading and watching a lot of scope reviews it seems a loud fan is a common "feature" of many digital scopes in this form factor, not just Siglent.
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It's funny that they could have simply used plastic as part of the back mould to create a duct for the fan - then they could have simply blown the air out (or in) and the heat transfer would have been more efficient.
I suspect given the cost, it's likely to have been cheaper to simply stick a fan blowing in and hope that enough gets cross the acquisition heatsinks without spending time designing it.
A bent thick cardboard duct could also allow the fan to be rotated blowing out - only issue is resonance in the ducting vs ceramic caps etc.
I remember getting Papst fans for my desktop tower builds years ago. I tried a 6000rpm Delta fan. Powerful but so noisy. Now my desk has the background noise of the Mac mini's external mechanical hard drive (not in a case). That reminds me.. I should really clear my desk
I suspect given the cost, it's likely to have been cheaper to simply stick a fan blowing in and hope that enough gets cross the acquisition heatsinks without spending time designing it.
A bent thick cardboard duct could also allow the fan to be rotated blowing out - only issue is resonance in the ducting vs ceramic caps etc.
I remember getting Papst fans for my desktop tower builds years ago. I tried a 6000rpm Delta fan. Powerful but so noisy. Now my desk has the background noise of the Mac mini's external mechanical hard drive (not in a case). That reminds me.. I should really clear my desk
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So it's been updated to 200MHz but my AWG/MSO/WiFi is still showing the 30day temporary period, as it's been running a while I've just kicked off the recalibration - however I just noted 'quick-cal' is on. *facepalm*
I'd tried compensating the probe at 100MHz as accuracy as possible (ie maximum zoom) then did the same at 200MHz. It shows a little rounding on the front of the square wave but nothing that can be compensated using the screwdriver:
The noise is the USB drive on an extension cable (it's actually a SDcard) hence the shielding is rather bad.
Oh and the fan IS noisy!
So I'm happy so far, although the Mrs is concerned she'll not see me for a month! Anyway.. off to make lunch.
I'd tried compensating the probe at 100MHz as accuracy as possible (ie maximum zoom) then did the same at 200MHz. It shows a little rounding on the front of the square wave but nothing that can be compensated using the screwdriver:
The noise is the USB drive on an extension cable (it's actually a SDcard) hence the shielding is rather bad.
Oh and the fan IS noisy!
So I'm happy so far, although the Mrs is concerned she'll not see me for a month! Anyway.. off to make lunch.
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