new killer scope in town - a true game changer from R&S - RTB2002 & RTB2004

[Rich@RohdeScopesUSA]

Found a bug on RTM3004, presumably same on RTB.
When loading a setup, the annotations are not loaded (they are shown in the thumbnail).
My be classed as a mis-feature, but annotations can be as important as any other setup value - load setup should get you back to exactly where you were when saved.
 
 

Good request - I'll submit it.

-Rich

[Rich@RohdeScopesUSA]

Another minor thing - when you are decoding a parallel bus, you can't turn off the display of the individual bus lines - the only thing you can do to clear some screen space is drag them to the edge of the screen.
A way to turn off display of logic signals used for bus decoding would be a useful addition. 16 logic signals in a zoomed display gets pretty crowded!

You can actually do this today - see the attached pic.

-Rich

[Rich@RohdeScopesUSA]

The dynamic text scaling in decode can give some odd results sometimes - maybe better to decide on a size for the whole screen on each refresh ?
(Lower trace is clocked parallel bus mode)

Definitely strange - can you send me your exact settings?  Thanks.

-Rich

[Hydron]

It's pretty easy to replicate, just get it decoding something then adjust the sweep until it starts changing decoded bytes from vertical to horizontal display or vice-versa. At some point some of the decoded data will be shown in one orientation and some in another, depending on the space in each particular decode-hexagon thing. Still works, just looks messy. Probably would be visually better to default to the space-saving version until everything (on either the whole screen or at least within the same decoder-hexagon) can be shown in the same (wider) orientation then switch, rather than doing it byte-by-byte.

On another note I've been doing some I2C decoding and have seen issues with a device that runs with SCL low during idle periods. This is not really how things should be done (SCL should idle high), but is resulting in completely invalid decoding even during non-idle periods. It looks like a valid start condition is actually be generated (SCL goes back high before SDA does anything) and the devices on the bus seem to be happy with it, but the scope freaks out. I can probably get a screen grab of this if needed. This is on FW 2.101 btw, I'll update to the latest and check for the issue again but it's not mentioned in the change notes (though I do see there is an update to self-alignment, which I had trouble with on 2.101 - seemed to work on hot days but not on cold!).

[mikeselectricstuff]

Another minor thing - when you are decoding a parallel bus, you can't turn off the display of the individual bus lines - the only thing you can do to clear some screen space is drag them to the edge of the screen.
A way to turn off display of logic signals used for bus decoding would be a useful addition. 16 logic signals in a zoomed display gets pretty crowded!

You can actually do this today - see the attached pic.

-Rich

OK but I'd argue  rather non-obvious.
I'd tend to assume that the "Logic" side-menu has everything, and the stuff at the bottom are shortcuts with only a subset of the options, as for most of the other things that appear on the bottom menu.

Having things in the bottom menu but not also the side is inconsistent UI-wise.
 

[mikeselectricstuff]

It's pretty easy to replicate, just get it decoding something then adjust the sweep until it starts changing decoded bytes from vertical to horizontal display or vice-versa. At some point some of the decoded data will be shown in one orientation and some in another, depending on the space in each particular decode-hexagon thing. Still works, just looks messy. Probably would be visually better to default to the space-saving version until everything (on either the whole screen or at least within the same decoder-hexagon) can be shown in the same (wider) orientation then switch, rather than doing it byte-by-byte.

Yes, it's when it's on the edge of two sizes.  e.g. set the pattern gen to UART at 1MBaud, set up serial decode and then adjust the fine timebase- at 9.8uS some bytes flicker between different formats.
It's more pronounced in parallel bus mode as transitions are happenning at less regular intervals 

[Fred27]

Another minor thing - when you are decoding a parallel bus, you can't turn off the display of the individual bus lines - the only thing you can do to clear some screen space is drag them to the edge of the screen.
A way to turn off display of logic signals used for bus decoding would be a useful addition. 16 logic signals in a zoomed display gets pretty crowded!

You can actually do this today - see the attached pic.

-Rich

OK but I'd argue rather non-obvious.

I actually got this trick from one of your own videos! You show that you can hide the digital channels and leave just the little "bit" trace above the serial decode.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Another minor thing - when you are decoding a parallel bus, you can't turn off the display of the individual bus lines - the only thing you can do to clear some screen space is drag them to the edge of the screen.
A way to turn off display of logic signals used for bus decoding would be a useful addition. 16 logic signals in a zoomed display gets pretty crowded!

You can actually do this today - see the attached pic.

-Rich

OK but I'd argue rather non-obvious.

I actually got this trick from one of your own videos! You show that you can hide the digital channels and leave just the little "bit" trace above the serial decode.

Looking back at the video, I think I did this by pressing the "Logic" button, hower that switches display of all logic channels on and off, so no good for what I wanted last time, which was a bus display alongside other loguic channels.
The menu does not allow you to turn off a logic group that is being used for decode.

Pressing "logic" twice actually does something slightly inconsistent - it turns off the display of all logic channels, but only turns off the LED on the probe if the group is not being used for (any)  decode.

Incidentally looking back at the video reminded me of another issue that hasn't been fixed yet - that user labels are not shown in channel lists.



 

[mikeselectricstuff]

Just noticed that the waveform intensity setting also affects logic and decode channels - does this make any sense?

[artelse]

Don't know if someone noticed a wiring problem with the logic probes. What is supposed to be right to left (D7-D0) is in actuality (D0-D7). Attached a few photo's to point out this wiring or labeling problem, pay attention to the green mark it flips over from right to left. QA should have caught this one in manufacturing.

[nctnico]

Don't know if someone noticed a wiring problem with the logic probes. What is supposed to be right to left (D7-D0) is in actuality (D0-D7). Attached a few photo's to point out this wiring or labeling problem, pay attention to the green mark it flips over from right to left. QA should have caught this one in manufacturing.

It doesn't really matter because you have to use the logic POD anyway. The actual connections on the connector may even be in a completely random order.

[artelse]

True, just find it inconsistent and therefore a gotcha at first. No real problem of course.

[PolarCrew]

Running into a bug on the RTB2004 where the scope locks up when you try to save to USB with multiple channels visible and the "Vis. Channels" options selected as the Source.  See attached image for an example.  The scope is locked up hard and requires power cycling to get anything to work again.

I've observed this with firmware versions 2.101 and 2.121, using three different USB sticks (all of which work fine using other waveform save options, including History Data which successfully saves multiple files for a single channel).

Funny thing is that I was going to post a request to add the "Vis Channels" source and "History Data" points options to the web-based Save/Load interface since that would be my first choice for pulling data from the scope.  But if it doesn't work...

Hello,

I'm running 2.121 and i have 'lock up' when trying to save SPI bus table (same thing with internal or usb memory). It's not case with all captures, for example some small i2c/uart captures are working.

I have reset to factory defaults, secure erase and reloaded firmware but no help.

Edit: After failed saving of bustable i can see new zero size BUSXX.CSV in memory


Edit: 7.12.2018  With fw upgrade 2.202 it's working nice!! Thank you R&S

[Rich@RohdeScopesUSA]

Hi Polarcrew - this is a known issue and is being worked.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

-Rich

[eetechTom]

We purchased 20 R&S RTB2000 series scopes at the university I work at. I have found that the web interface will not work with Chrome on our Windows 10 machines. It does however work with Firefox and Edge. Has anyone else had this problem?

[KaneTW]

Works fine for me on Chrome/Win 10.

[skench]

Also works fine with Chrome on Ubuntu 18.04

[Hydron]

Works with everything I've tried (all reasonably modern browsers), including Chrome/Win10

[malagas_on_fire]

One of these days they make a scope wtihout knobs or buttons... an entire touch screen 

Maybe the transition is starting ....

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/new-2ghz-touchscreen-scope-from-tek-june-6th/msg1212386/#msg1212386

[nctnico]

One of these days they make a scope wtihout knobs or buttons... an entire touch screen 

These already exist: the MicSig TO1000 series. No knobs at all except an on/off button.

If the UI is designed for touch like on the RTB2000 and the RTM3000 then it works very well. I have an RTM3004 on my bench and the touch screen works like a charm. I'm only using the rotating knobs for horizontal and vertical positioning.

[Rich@RohdeScopesUSA]

We purchased 20 R&S RTB2000 series scopes at the university I work at. I have found that the web interface will not work with Chrome on our Windows 10 machines. It does however work with Firefox and Edge. Has anyone else had this problem?

Hi eetechTom - like others have said, W10 and Chrome works well for me.  Having said that, please call our technical support team to see if they can help you:

https://www.rohde-schwarz.com/us/service-support/customer-support/customer_support_107711.html

That link will give you the right place to call based on your country.

-Rich

[eetechTom]

Thanks to all who relplied.

We did call customer support, but they couldn't solve the issue.
Sounds like it's an issue caused by the configuration we use here on our PC's. IE: it's our fault.

I didn't mention that we are using an ethernet/usb adapter because we are unable to do a direct ethernet connection here.

[LaurentR]

Quick question on the serial decode bus table.
It seems that the protocol decode and the bus table works on what is displayed (albeit at the full sampling rate). The only odd thing is that there seems to be ~20% extra being decoded to the left and right of the screen. Is this expected? Is this settable somewhere?
It is somewhat annoying as aligning the horizontal position to start the decode exactly at the trigger is completely blind (one has to move the trigger off-screen about 20% to the left).

On the screen, there is even a small serial diamond on the top left indicating that there is more stuff on the left.
In the example attached, the screen goes from -2ms > 22ms, but the decode seems to be -7ms > 26ms.
It seems that this does not happen at all horizontal settings. For instance, at 20ms/ (41.7Msa/s), there is no extra. At most other settings I tried, there is.

[nctnico]

AFAIK the entire memory is decoded (which is what you want. Trust me!). Depending on your memory depth setting and samplerate there can be a lot of decoded data outside the screen. All in all it is not really avoidable to have decoded data off-screen as there will also be a part of the trace which isn't shown. You could use the fine time/div control to squeeze all the data and traces on screen but then the decoder information may not be readable.

[malagas_on_fire]

One of these days they make a scope wtihout knobs or buttons... an entire touch screen 

These already exist: the MicSig TO1000 series. No knobs at all except an on/off button.

If the UI is designed for touch like on the RTB2000 and the RTM3000 then it works very well. I have an RTM3004 on my bench and the touch screen works like a charm. I'm only using the rotating knobs for horizontal and vertical positioning.

Yeah i was not aware of that model of micsig. I only knew the portable ones with rubber buttons. The transition might go to the bench ones but it would have some robust screen layer of plexiglas / lexan.