Author Topic: REVIEW - Owon SDS7102 - A look at the SDS series from Owon  (Read 1312731 times)

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Offline marmadTopic starter

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #75 on: August 13, 2011, 11:56:55 am »
Add 10% to price. If one of 10 unit fails. Put it to waste station or evacuate spare parts. And give new one to customer if can not easy repair immediately.

Sounds logical... and I think, as customer, worth that 10% for the first year insurance, since most of us know that electronics tend to fail right near the beginning - or else right near the end - of product life.

Eleshops current price (excl. VAT but including shipping in NL) is approx. $524 (buying $ at 3% credit card rate).  If Sergey's pricing is correct, than single unit from Owon is (with Russian market discount  ;) ) $390 plus $75 shipping = $465.  10% on top of that = $511.50 (not too far from the Eleshop price, which is ~12.5% on top) - cheaper than 2x shipping to Owon if something goes/is wrong.

And I did read in the group buy comments at samenkopen.nl that one or two people got units with malfunctioning fans - so, like any kind of insurance, you take a risk or pay more money.

P.S. No affiliation with Eleshop - other than buying my Owon from them.
« Last Edit: August 13, 2011, 12:09:17 pm by marmad »
 

Offline bertchai

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #76 on: August 14, 2011, 01:11:34 am »
@tinhead: "interessting, Owon told me 450$ per unit (+VAT+ ship.)"

Did Owon told you how to pay? I am located in Hong Kong, and Owon told me it is best to buy directly from them as there is no local distributor here.  I was told to TT $ directly to their HSBC bank.
 

Offline marmadTopic starter

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #77 on: August 14, 2011, 06:21:50 am »
www.messgeraete-chemnitz.de

Thanks for this link... they have a good price on the SDS battery - about € 13 cheaper than Eleshop; I think I will get it from them.
 

Offline marmadTopic starter

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #78 on: August 14, 2011, 06:44:42 am »
Here's the second part - a look at some of the faults and features of the firmware:

Edit: See Page 1
« Last Edit: May 03, 2012, 04:56:50 pm by marmad »
 

Offline rf-loop

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #79 on: August 14, 2011, 08:03:46 am »
@tinhead: "interessting, Owon told me 450$ per unit (+VAT+ ship.)"

Did Owon told you how to pay? I am located in Hong Kong, and Owon told me it is best to buy directly from them as there is no local distributor here.  I was told to TT $ directly to their HSBC bank.

I'm not tinhead but I know and answer "over" tinhead, sorry.

Afaik, payment method is "T/T advanced" directly to bank. You need they send proforma invoice to you and there is total. You pay it as T/T  directly on bank desk in HK or directly from your account using netbank. Write money tranfer note field your order identification what are also stated in proforma invoice. Also remember pay yourr and recipient bank possible fee.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2011, 08:33:42 am by rf-loop »
I drive a LEC (low el. consumption) BEV car. Smoke exhaust pipes - go to museum. In Finland quite all electric power is made using nuclear, wind, solar and water.

Wises must compel the mad barbarians to stop their crimes against humanity. Where have the wises gone?
 

Offline FPGAcrazy

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #80 on: August 14, 2011, 09:16:21 am »
I like this review and I also bought the scope at the eleschop in the Netherlands a few weeks before marmad. Its quite hard to get the Rigol in the netherlands, for a decent price,  only one firm had it but it was not in stock.

I have one question for marmad. I noticed the following if the scope has a probe connected to one of its inputs it picks up the backlight inverters. The signal is approximately 4 to 8 mV. I also read in other threads that almost all cheap scopes suffer from this problem. How, does yours compare in this.

Some remarks.
The BW limit is only active at 1 and 2 mV/div not at 5 mv/div.
Large memory why/why not? Try to solve a power up problem with only 25 kpoints of memory. It is great to see your power supply switch on and capture the whole event.

P.s. Dave keep up the good work.
 

Offline bertchai

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #81 on: August 14, 2011, 10:26:12 am »
very nice review.  this scope looks like one for me.   :)
 

Offline rf-loop

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #82 on: August 14, 2011, 11:09:02 am »

Some remarks.
The BW limit is only active at 1 and 2 mV/div not at 5 mv/div.

My opinion is that it is only default. With all V/div you can shut  BW limit on or off.
1-2mV/div it go on by default but you can shut it off. (Rigol do this, Hantek do this etc)

Personally I do not like these automatic defaulting on the fly.  If I select BW limit on or off, scope need keep it as long as I change it by my self. This is normal in (all) "old" professional scopes, specially old good analog scopes.
User is master, scope is slave. User do settings, scope only follow users. Exept "auto setup".
I do not like that scope change my some settings if I change other setting.
If there come conflict settings scope must not change something itself for avoid conflict, it need only disable conflict setting and/or informate about conflict.
But some like apples some oranges.

I drive a LEC (low el. consumption) BEV car. Smoke exhaust pipes - go to museum. In Finland quite all electric power is made using nuclear, wind, solar and water.

Wises must compel the mad barbarians to stop their crimes against humanity. Where have the wises gone?
 
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Offline marmadTopic starter

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #83 on: August 14, 2011, 12:52:39 pm »
I have one question for marmad. I noticed the following if the scope has a probe connected to one of its inputs it picks up the backlight inverters. The signal is approximately 4 to 8 mV. I also read in other threads that almost all cheap scopes suffer from this problem. How, does yours compare in this.

Do you mean with probe floating - no connection to anything?
 

Offline FPGAcrazy

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #84 on: August 14, 2011, 01:07:07 pm »
Three scenarios.
1. Probe floating (no problem)(not sure though need to check)
2. Probe ground clip connected to the circuit under investigation
3. Probe and ground shorted.

In the last two scenarios the problem arises. The inverter can be picked up easily with the pig tale, ground connected to the tip, just move the probe in front of the operation panel of the scope. I also saw Dave do this with a Tektronixs scope.
 

Offline tinhead

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #85 on: August 14, 2011, 01:28:07 pm »
I noticed the following if the scope has a probe connected to one of its inputs it picks up the backlight inverters. The signal is approximately 4 to 8 mV. I also read in other threads that almost all cheap scopes suffer from this problem. How, does yours compare in this.

this depends on construction and backlight type,  it can be also coming from other components
like PSU here on Hameg HMO3524 (which is actually not cheap model)



Then of course third part EMV, as i tuned PSU on Hantek i had to shut down most everything here
to not pickup something what not produced by DSO itself, therefore only a test in controled EMV save
envoronment is something i trust.
I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter ...
I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me.
 

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #86 on: August 14, 2011, 01:46:51 pm »
If I select BW limit on or off, scope need keep it as long as I change it by my self. This is normal in (all) "old" professional scopes, specially old good analog scopes.
If I select BW limit on or off, scope need keep it as long as I change it by my self. Many analog scopes had less bandwidth at the highest vertical sensitivities, because an extra gain stage was switched in. The BW limit light might not come on, but that's just because the technology for this would be too complex. For example, the Tek 453A had 60MHz BW from 20mV/div, but only 40MHz at 5mV/div. And even less with both channels cascaded for higher sensitivity. The Tek 454 is similar.

Limiting the bandwidth is a nice way to hide your horrible noise performance at low signal levels. Plenty of big boys do the same.
 

Online Thomas

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #87 on: August 14, 2011, 02:20:43 pm »
Hm, my Rigol doesn't turn on BW limit on the highest sensitivities.
I am the Master :)

DS1052E software hacked to 100MHz, firmware 00.02.02 SP2
 

Offline saturation

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #88 on: August 14, 2011, 02:29:11 pm »
You really showcase the usability very nicely.  A technique I use is my forefinger and thumb on my right hand in a kind of reverse "L", so I can use  my thumb for the buttons on the right screen side of the Rigol, while using my pointer finger for the buttons on the main face; I think with the Owon you can do similar between the buttons on the side of the screen and the bottom, this minimizes moving your hand around.

Given the Euro~ 60 difference between both, the Owon is a better deal given that at the very minimum its a match for the Rigol in measurement fidelity, plus natively 100 MHz.



Here's the second part - a look at some of the faults and features of the firmware:
[/url]
« Last Edit: August 14, 2011, 02:30:46 pm by saturation »
Best Wishes,

 Saturation
 

Offline rf-loop

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #89 on: August 14, 2011, 02:36:44 pm »
If I select BW limit on or off, scope need keep it as long as I change it by my self. This is normal in (all) "old" professional scopes, specially old good analog scopes.
If I select BW limit on or off, scope need keep it as long as I change it by my self. Many analog scopes had less bandwidth at the highest vertical sensitivities, because an extra gain stage was switched in. The BW limit light might not come on, but that's just because the technology for this would be too complex. For example, the Tek 453A had 60MHz BW from 20mV/div, but only 40MHz at 5mV/div. And even less with both channels cascaded for higher sensitivity. The Tek 454 is similar.

Limiting the bandwidth is a nice way to hide your horrible noise performance at low signal levels. Plenty of big boys do the same.

Yes. Example 2465 give (-3dB) 400MHz  5mV to 5V but "only" 350MHz with 2mV/div
Also temperature affect to BW.

But there is 20MHz (actually littlebit under) BW limiter button, user selectable setting. It follow My selection. I'm master and scope is just slave. This is scope settings. Amplifiers natural BW you can not select as user.
I mean user settings what user made as he use instrument. These need no change by scope,  I still keep right to think that people is more clever than oscolloscope who is designed with some peoples who have lot of lack of enough experience.
But this is my opinion just as I like more oranges than apples.
I drive a LEC (low el. consumption) BEV car. Smoke exhaust pipes - go to museum. In Finland quite all electric power is made using nuclear, wind, solar and water.

Wises must compel the mad barbarians to stop their crimes against humanity. Where have the wises gone?
 

Offline marmadTopic starter

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #90 on: August 14, 2011, 02:42:31 pm »
Quote
Are there some posibility in Owon that you set example 1us/div, 1k memory and then you can adjust samplerate somehow keeping other settings fixed.

No, the sample rate is fixed by formula.
Some examples:
---------------------------------------------
1ms/div1ch2ch
---------------------------------------------
1k50kSa/s50kSa/s
10k500kSa/s500kSa/s
100k5MSa/s5MSa/s
1M50MSa/s50MSa/s
10M500MSa/s500MSa/s
---------------------------------------------
10ns/div1ch2ch
---------------------------------------------
1k500MSa/s1GSa/s
10k500MSa/s1GSa/s
100k500MSa/s1GSa/s
1M500MSa/s1GSa/s
10M500MSa/s1GSa/s

Quote
Is it possible to "zoom out" so that whole memory is on the screen? (useful in clitch hunting and extremely amazing if it is implemented)  I know it can do of course  in stop mode only changing timebase.

Not quite - no fine control for timebase. At 50ms/div, with 10Mpt depth, you are sampling at 10MSa/s, so memory = 1.0 second of time, but screen is ~15 div wide - so display = 0.750 second.

Quote
maybe waveforms/s can calculate using trig out and knowing samplerate ans memory depth it mey give good image for "dead time" what ALL digital oscilloscope have less or more.

Yes, I thought last night about whether this might be possible myself. With 1kpts length, trigger out (no pullup - directly connected to CH2 - triggering itself) is producing something between ~17 - 25Hz on the trigger frequency counter (depends on sec/div, on-screen menus, etc); with 10MPts, between ~13 - 20Hz.  What's interesting is that the duty cycle is ALWAYS displayed as +38.6% and -61.4%, regardless of anything else - even though it's perfectly 50/50 on the screen - so perhaps an indication of "dead time"?  I don't know enough about this subject to comment intelligently - I just post this data and let you guys do the hard work  ;)
« Last Edit: August 14, 2011, 03:25:36 pm by marmad »
 

Offline marmadTopic starter

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #91 on: August 14, 2011, 02:57:00 pm »
The inverter can be picked up easily with the pig tale, ground connected to the tip, just move the probe in front of the operation panel of the scope.

Sorry, this doesn't seem to be happening on my scope. I only pick up inverter noise if put the probe (ground to tip) at the back of the scope directly near the inverter - but then I also start picking up PSU noise as well.  Perhaps you have a shielding/ground problem inside?
 

Offline marmadTopic starter

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #92 on: August 14, 2011, 03:17:20 pm »
You really showcase the usability very nicely.

Thanks, saturation... and for your comment at youtube  :)

Quote
A technique I use is my forefinger and thumb on my right hand in a kind of reverse "L", so I can use  my thumb for the buttons on the right screen side of the Rigol, while using my pointer finger for the buttons on the main face; I think with the Owon you can do similar between the buttons on the side of the screen and the bottom, this minimizes moving your hand around.

He, he... yes, I started to develop this technique naturally (evolution?) because of the menu system.  It's just a shame that it seems the people who often design interfaces are not the people who use them.

Quote
Given the Euro~ 60 difference between both, the Owon is a better deal given that at the very minimum its a match for the Rigol in measurement fidelity, plus natively 100 MHz.

It would be great if someone who has the right test equipment (Dave?) could do a rigorous comparison of the Rigol DS1102E, Hantek DSO5102B, and Owon SDS7102.  The Owon is using a single chip ADC08D500 clone - so no interleaving at 2ch-500MSa/s (or overclocking) - thus the possibility of better signal fidelity (less distortion caused by clock jitter or interleaving) than the competitors exists.

Edit:  Added italics to avoid trouble with the various camps  ;)
« Last Edit: August 14, 2011, 03:20:07 pm by marmad »
 

Offline rf-loop

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #93 on: August 14, 2011, 03:58:59 pm »
marmad: Thank your nice rewiev and work with this scope.

Quote
At 50ms/div, with 10Mpt depth, you are sampling at 10MSa/s, so memory = 1.0 second of time, but screen is ~15 div wide - so display = 0.750 second.

Can you really do this with scope capturing all time (not only in stop mode)?
I mean that 75% of 10M captured data is all on the screen and scope is capturing (example with 50ms/div?)

Later (i'm quite sure) I can also test this scope with professional  High-end test equipments. Also compare with Hantek but not anymore with Rigol becouse I stop totally with this brand.
But before I get first Owon's to my desktop it takes maybe 2 - 4 weeks.

I drive a LEC (low el. consumption) BEV car. Smoke exhaust pipes - go to museum. In Finland quite all electric power is made using nuclear, wind, solar and water.

Wises must compel the mad barbarians to stop their crimes against humanity. Where have the wises gone?
 

Offline marmadTopic starter

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #94 on: August 14, 2011, 04:30:20 pm »
Can you really do this with scope capturing all time (not only in stop mode)?
I mean that 75% of 10M captured data is all on the screen and scope is capturing (example with 50ms/div?)

Well, it appears it does - but two things to note:

1) I just assumed "dead time" means the time during which the scope can't capture new data, because it's otherwise preoccupied.  Is this correct? If so, I don't know how long this dead time is when putting 75% of 10M to screen.

2) I don't know how the scope is translating 7,500,000 horizontal points to 800 - certainly a lot of data gets lost - so I'm not sure how useful this is.  If looking for glitches, I think it would be better to use pass/fail - either real-time or on recorded waveform - or else upload data to PC and post-process there.
 

Offline marmadTopic starter

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #95 on: August 14, 2011, 08:38:40 pm »
A couple of further findings perhaps of interest:

I was just watching Dave's review of the Agilent 2000 X Series Infiniivision - where he shows the Rigol aliasing on a 20MHz sine wave.  I thought I'd see what the new Owon did under the same circumstances.   Owon also aliases when the sample depth is set 1k, 10k, 100k, or 1M (on lower sec/div settings), but interestingly, it doesn't alias the 20MHz sine on any sec/div setting when the sample depth is set to the full 10M.

Also playing around with slow sweep times - if you set the depth to 10M and, for example, 5s/div - you get 100 seconds of samples (each full sweep) spaced 10us apart - in fact, when you stop sampling and zoom in, the Owon switches from vectors to dots when you reach the range (or below) that corresponds to sample speed (i.e. 10us in the last example).  Since the Owon can do up to a 100s/div sweep, that means you can use the 10M of samples over 33.3 minutes, spaced 200us apart - which makes it a kind of nice, alternative frame recording (although sample points instead of full frames).  Another reason to like a lot of sample memory  ;)
« Last Edit: August 14, 2011, 10:51:59 pm by marmad »
 

Offline tinhead

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #96 on: August 14, 2011, 09:30:17 pm »
i've just tested the PC software, and hmm (i just don't like java crap), for some reason something simple
like 1khz sine wave can be show but the FFT is useless (testing it with the example waves from the PC software).

Can you do something for me and export 1khz sine wave data let say sampled with 1k, 10k and 100k memory depth?
I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter ...
I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me.
 

Offline marmadTopic starter

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #97 on: August 14, 2011, 11:00:14 pm »
i've just tested the PC software, and hmm (i just don't like java crap)

Yes, I don't like their PC software at all... I can see I have some work for me there sometime in the future.  The good thing is USB 2.0 speeds - so there is the possibility of doing something real-time and nice (at lower sample depths).

Quote
Can you do something for me and export 1khz sine wave data let say sampled with 1k, 10k and 100k memory depth?

No problem... any particular timebase (sample speed)?
 

Offline tinhead

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #98 on: August 14, 2011, 11:42:49 pm »
Yes, I don't like their PC software at all... I can see I have some work for me there sometime in the future.  The good thing is USB 2.0 speeds - so there is the possibility of doing something real-time and nice (at lower sample depths).
yeah, but they should really change the driver from libusb to something more efficient.

No problem... any particular timebase (sample speed)?
let say 200us/div
I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter ...
I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me.
 

Offline marmadTopic starter

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Re: Review of Owon SDS7102
« Reply #99 on: August 15, 2011, 11:22:16 am »
yeah, but they should really change the driver from libusb to something more efficient.

There is this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/owondriver/files/  but I haven't tested to see if it works for the SDS line yet.  Another thing on the pile of things to do  ;)
 


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