Oscilloscope

Archive
1

I think I’m going to push the “buy” button on a bench scope this week. My current decision is to go with the same one that Gus recently bought, an ATTEN ADS1102CAL. Anyone want to suggest an alternative with similar specs and in the same <$400 price range? Gus, any complaints about the scope yet?

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Rigol scopes get great reviews for their price point. Check out 1 GS/s 50MHz Digital Storage Oscilloscope - Rigol DS1052E [Rigol DS1052E] : ID 681 : $394.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits . I’m saving up for one!

3

I’ve heard the guy over at EEVBlog praise the Rigol’s in some of his videos and I’ve been thinking about them. However, two big differences keep jumping out at me on those two similar priced scopes:

  1. 50Mhz (Rigol) vs. 100Mhz (Atten) bandwidth. I’m not sure how important this number will actually mean to me but if you can get double for the same price then why not? Of course, how accurate are these numbers…

  2. 5.7" (Rigol) vs. 7" (Atten) screen. Bigger is definitely better here.

I’d definitely love to hear opinions from anyone that may have experience with both.

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I have had one of these: http://www.saelig.com/PSBEB100/PSSA002.htm for a couple of years now. I have found it to be a very good scope for the money. I recently purchased the battery pack for it as well so now I can use it in a portable manner. Sometimes when working in the shop testing things on CNC machines it is not always convenient to plug a scope in.)

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@ Jeff - Well, that’s certainly drops us down into a whole different price bracket. The big price differentiator seems to revolve around that Mhz bandwidth number (assuming we’re only comparing 2 channel scopes). Right now I’m not measuring anything that even comes close to 1Ghz much less 100Ghz… What sort of projects might I actually need more than 25Mhz bandwidth? I’d like to not have to upgrade this tool again for a long time.

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Maybe not a realistic example for your use, but I believe a 25MHz square wave would look badly attenuated/distorted, considering the many higher frequency harmonics it carries.

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When looking at digital scope specs it is important to look at the sampling rate as well. A lot of scopes will claim a high bandwidth but have a low sample rate. (If a 50 mHZ scope has the same sample rate as a 25MhZ then which spec do you think is more accurate?)

8

Well, I guess that’s the question… The Atten & Rigol both claim 1Giga samples (500M if using both channels) and the Saelig claims 500M. Either seems plenty sufficient to show a 50 Mhz wave. However, I still can’t figure out when I would ever need to see a 50Mhz signal much less 100Mhz. Has anyone ever had a time when working on NETMF projects that this has been necessary?

EDIT: Just took another look at the Saelig model. I was looking at the specs for the wrong model. The one referenced above actually only has a 100MS/s sample rate.

9

I have a project here where I needed to measure an SPI bus clocked at 32MHz. My scope is a Tektronix TDS 2002, 60Mhz dual channel.

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And Gus is talking Ghz FEZs in the near future… Who knows what we’ll start seeing come out when that happens.

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I have a Rigol DS1052 hacked to 100Mhz and have been very happy with it.

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Thanks, Bob. The screen size is the only thing holding me back from the Rigol. For the same price there are a couple other models that appear to be equal in features but have much bigger screens.

I just found the OWON SDS6062. Features look similar and it has a nice 8" display. Does anyone have any experience with it?

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For years I have been working with a GREAT 100Mhz analog tektronix scope with “only” a 6" monochrome screen :wink: Scopes are not iphones, laptops or big screen tv, the usefullness of it doesn’t obsiously relate to its beauty :stuck_out_tongue: So if I have an advice, maybe look better at the reviews from experiences users and actual specs of the stuff, better that the look :smiley:

Well, to be fair, my personnal experience with digital scopes is very limited (with some big dispointements…) and you can’t always apply simples rules to say, for an example, 1000Ms/s == 100Mhz bandwidth, that’s hardly true if you make analog electronics. However, if you make a lot of digital electronics, a good logic analyser is much more usefull (such as the saleae brand…). And if you want to watch high speed digital signals on a scope, sometimes the most important things… is to have good quality 10x probes ! using crapy 1x probe with signals over 10Mhz is useless…

Good luck and have fun :slight_smile:

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The Atten scope looks nice with very similar specs to the Rigol. For hobby work I’d think you wouldn’t have many problems with it. I’ve worked with scopes many times the price of a Rigol or Atten that were junk.

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@ Nicolas3 - That’s why I asked for your input. The specs on the ones that I’m considering are so similar that the main differentiator is the screen size and your opinions :slight_smile: Thanks!

I think I’m going with the Atten…

16

The atten scope you mentioned has 40Kpts memory whereas Rigol has 1Mpts(apparently at 500Msamples/s). Have you seen this http://www.saelig.com/PSBE100/PSPC017.htm? Does anyone know if there is any catch with saelig’s prices?

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I must admit that’s a number I hadn’t paid much attention to. I assume that number represents how long of a “history” that can be captured and reviewed? That does seem like a huge difference. At 500MSa/s, 40K doesn’t seem like much.

Yes, I’ve been looking at the Saeliq prices. They seem inline with what I’m finding elsewhere for the same scopes.

18

Rigol have posted info on their new line of scopes, http://www.rigol.com/prodserv/DS2000/, but I don’t know if they’ve made much of a song and dance about it (and it doesn’t appear linked from their main website yet)

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@ Brett - Those look really nice. I can’t find them for sale anywhere though. That would definitely be worth waiting for if I knew there was going to be a model in my price range. Have you seen prices anywhere or when they plan to go for sale?

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no, but I knew that you’d have a reaction to it :slight_smile:

I somewhat suspect they are VERY new to market these, like within the last week. I only spotted the link ~24 hours ago IIRC. They haven’t even made an announcement on their website about them - they do seem that new :slight_smile:

I haven’t seen anything else, but like you I can see the features they’ve tweaked (that you probably thought were limitations in the 1xxx series)