Easiest way to remote control and screen capture my Rigol DS1054Z?

[spiette]

I've read far too many threads and I keep drifting off on tangents before getting this done. I now find myself with a stack of old Multibus hardware I'd like to restore and need to get the scope hooked to a laptop so I can use it along with my LogicPort.

Anyone have a cheatsheet?

I've hacked up a backplane and AT power supply to test with and it works but several of the CPU have issues, I'm not really a HW guy so this is going to be a stretch. The more I can see the easier it will be. The good news is I do have a few working boards to compare with.

[Karel]

There are multiple solutions. The one I use is DSRemote: https://www.teuniz.net/DSRemote/

[imidis]

I'll second DSRemote. It's the most useful imo that I've found so far. Mainly cause you can also use the waveform inspector to download the data for view. (use manual mem depth) It's well worth installing virtualbox for linux if a windows user. edfbrowser seems handy too.

[Fire Doger]

There is also DS1054Z_screen_capture which doesn't require visa, only python and it can only screen capture.

[spiette]

If only the Intronix LogicPort had Linux software this would be the easy choice.

DS1054Z_screen_capture might be a solution for now. I'll try loading it on the laptop and see what it can do.

Otherwise I'll have start looking for a way to make space for two machines or use a bigger system that can host VMs. I've got a hex core AMD deskside at my feet right now that's not really doing anything but the form factor and utility are poor compared to a single laptop on the bench.

This is sounding like as much work to get set up as actually fixing the target hardware.

[sokoloff]

You can also screencap programmatically:
https://rogeorge.wordpress.com/category/scpi/
https://www.theimpossiblecode.com/blog/rigol-ds1054z-screen-capture-linux/

Basically, those methods send a short command to the scope to emit the screen data over ethernet and pipe that to a program that saves it to a file locally on your PC.

(It's probably what the python tool does, but without having to install anything [on a Mac anyway])

[Mechatrommer]

http://www.soasystem.com/download/visadso/

[alsetalokin4017]

If only the Intronix LogicPort had Linux software this would be the easy choice.

DS1054Z_screen_capture might be a solution for now. I'll try loading it on the laptop and see what it can do.

Otherwise I'll have start looking for a way to make space for two machines or use a bigger system that can host VMs. I've got a hex core AMD deskside at my feet right now that's not really doing anything but the form factor and utility are poor compared to a single laptop on the bench.

This is sounding like as much work to get set up as actually fixing the target hardware.

Nah, just install a Linux distro (I like Ubuntu flavors) on the laptop and then use DSRemote. You get nearly full GUI control of the scope's functions, reasonably low latency for the live trace display, plus screenshots.

[Fire Doger]

Thanks to sokoloff's references I just made a C# app to get screenshot over LAN (I didn't like that you had to install python)
Right now its just a button and everything is hard-coded I will clean it up and post the git repo inside the week

[Fungus]

(It's probably what the python tool does, but without having to install anything [on a Mac anyway])

You don't need to install anything anywhere. The DS1054Z can be controlled just by opening a connection and sending ASCII commands. If you have a telnet terminal program you can play around easily.

The programming guide has details of all the commands:

http://int.rigol.com/File/TechDoc/20151218/MSO1000Z&DS1000Z_ProgrammingGuide_EN.pdf

[Gandalf_Sr]

I have a small laptop that runs Ubuntu but I'm not an expert on Linux to put it mildly; how do I get install DSRemote on my Ubuntu laptop?

[sokoloff]

(It's probably what the python tool does, but without having to install anything [on a Mac anyway])

You don't need to install anything anywhere. The DS1054Z can be controlled just by opening a connection and sending ASCII commands.

We're agreeing mostly.

On Windows for example, you'd need to install nc to capture the screencap from the command line to a file to follow the cookbook solution I posted (or python for the python solution).

[spiette]

Nah, just install a Linux distro (I like Ubuntu flavors) on the laptop and then use DSRemote. You get nearly full GUI control of the scope's functions, reasonably low latency for the live trace display, plus screenshots.

I'm afraid that the Logicport is going to be more important than being able to remote control the scope with this project as much as I'd love to run DSRemote. It's not clear that the logicport will run under wine, or for that matter, how well wine would run on the laptops I have available for the workbench. I will install DSRemote on one of the Ubuntu machines to play with but it doesn't look like I'll be able to control both the logic analyzer and scope from the same machine at the same time right now short of sending commands via telnet.

Thanks for the suggestions

[Fire Doger]

SCPI screen capture for windows without python as I promised, tested under win10
https://github.com/FireDeveloper/Fire-SCPI

[rs20]

Sorry for necroposting, but for folks using Linux or other nicely scriptable shells, here's the script I use for screenshots on the DS2000 series:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh

echo ":DISPLAY:DATA?" | nc -q 1 IP_ADDRESS 5555 | tail -c +12 | head -c -1 | bmptopnm 2> /dev/null | convert ppm:- $1
Only requires fairly standard tools like ImageMagick to be installed. If you write that to a file called "oscshot", then you can run a command like this:

Code: [Select]

$ oscshot screencap.png
Obviously it's marginal how useful this is when you only have one thing to capture when there's tool like the one from Fire Doger. I mean, for me personally it's much faster to just pull the command out of my command history than to click buttons all over the place, but that's just me. But my little script above becomes really cool when you write scripts which turn on/off your power supply, producing sequences of images across ranges of input voltages, etc.

[jeremy0]

Sorry for necroposting, but for folks using Linux or other nicely scriptable shells, here's the script I use for screenshots on the DS2000 series:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh

echo ":DISPLAY:DATA?" | nc -q 1 IP_ADDRESS 5555 | tail -c +12 | head -c -1 | bmptopnm 2> /dev/null | convert ppm:- $1
Only requires fairly standard tools like ImageMagick to be installed. If you write that to a file called "oscshot", then you can run a command like this:

Code: [Select]

$ oscshot screencap.png
Obviously it's marginal how useful this is when you only have one thing to capture when there's tool like the one from Fire Doger. I mean, for me personally it's much faster to just pull the command out of my command history than to click buttons all over the place, but that's just me. But my little script above becomes really cool when you write scripts which turn on/off your power supply, producing sequences of images across ranges of input voltages, etc.

This excellent solution can be improved slightly:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh
echo ":DISPLAY:DATA? ON,OFF,PNG" | nc -q 1 IP_ADDRESS 5555 | tail -c +12 | head -c -1 >$1
This downloads the screenshot as PNG, which is considerably smaller (& hence quicker to download) than the default BMP format, and doesn't require conversion.
(Ref: https://assets.tequipment.net/assets/1/26/MSO-DS1000Z_Programming_Guide.pdf, page 2-63)

Also note (in case this ever changes) that the simple 'tail' command works because the Rigol always pads the header to 11 characters.

[rs20]

This excellent solution can be improved slightly:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh
echo ":DISPLAY:DATA? ON,OFF,PNG" | nc -q 1 IP_ADDRESS 5555 | tail -c +12 | head -c -1 >$1

This is really cool! However, the compress-as-png-on-the-scope feature is not available on the DS2000 series (http://sdpha2.ucsd.edu/Lab_Equip_Manuals/Rigol_DS2000_ProgrammingGuide_EN.pdf).

So your solution is faster and more elegant, but only works for DS1000
My solution is slower and clunkier (takes 2.7 seconds to run), but works across DS1000 and DS2000 series. (Or maybe only DS2000?  )