Siglent SDG1000 (aka LeCroy WaveStation) firmware updates

[Wuerstchenhund]

Hi All!

The Siglent SDG1000 Series AWGs are also sold (albeit for a lot more money) by LeCroy as WaveStation. The only difference between the Siglent original and the LeCroy rebadge is the color (the LeCroy is in black), the numbering of the outputs (Siglent is Ch2 left/CH1 right while LeCroy is vice versa) and the lack of the counter functionality in the LeCroy.

Owners of the Siglent SDG1000 will certainly know that there is no official download for firmware updates on the Siglent website. A firmware update has to be requested by email to Siglent in China, which may or may not yield in a response. Even worse, there is also no mention if a new firmware variant comes out.

On the other side, those that paid an insane amount of money for the LeCroy rebadge can at least find firmware updates on the LeCroy website.

The question so far was if a Siglent SDG1000 can simply be flashed with the LeCroy firmware, and if so, will the AWG still work. Well, as I found out today the answer to this is 'yes' and 'yes'.

I have a Siglent SDG1020 which I have to admit wasn't my best investment, and amidst the disappointment with its performance I thought 'what the hell', downloaded the latest WaveStation firmware from the LeCroy website and flashed it into my SDG1020. My SDG1020 is still grey/beige and not black, but aside from that everything works fine. As expected I lost the counter functionality (which was crap anyways) but the GUI fonts and colors seem to be a bit nicer, and Ch1 is now on the left and Ch2 on the right. The signal output is as good or bad as before (the terrible jitter is still there), but all waveforms work fine and the output levels seem fine, too. The only issue I noticed that in the info pane the model number is now empty, probably because I have an SDG1020 (20MHz) while the Wavestations are SDG1010, SDG1025 and SDG1050 (10MHz, 25MHz and 50MHz) so there is no equivalent LeCroy model number.

The generator is still crap but at least I now have a more reliable source for firmware updates. And I guess reverting to Siglent firmware will be just as easy.

[EV]

Thanks for your info! This is good to know. I have Siglent SDG1025.

[nctnico]

Excellent! I just ordered a SDG1010 last week. Is the PC software from Lecroy any good?

[Smokey]

Does feeding it an external steady 10MHz help the jitter, or is it due to the DDS?

[Wuerstchenhund]

Is the PC software from Lecroy any good?

No, it's exactly the same primitive program as supplied by Siglent.

[Wuerstchenhund]

Does feeding it an external steady 10MHz help the jitter, or is it due to the DDS?

I haven't tried feeding it an external 10MHz signal (I don't have a suitable signal source), however the internal trigger is quite stable so I doubt this will help.

[nctnico]

If I read the other thread correct I understand the jitter only shows at low frequency square waves because the square wave is taken from a comparator which is fed with a sine wave. At low frequencies the edges just get to slow for the comparator. IMHO this is pretty bad but perhaps it can be fixed by putting a wire between the DAC's sign bit (through a resistor) to the comparator instead of using the sine wave output. Another fix is to use the AWG function for square waves.

[nctnico]

I've received my SDG1010 today and the firmware from Lecroy seems to work fine.

[Wuerstchenhund]

If I read the other thread correct I understand the jitter only shows at low frequency square waves because the square wave is taken from a comparator which is fed with a sine wave. At low frequencies the edges just get to slow for the comparator. IMHO this is pretty bad but perhaps it can be fixed by putting a wire between the DAC's sign bit (through a resistor) to the comparator instead of using the sine wave output.

I haven't looked into why the jitter is so bad but it's apparent that this is a design flaw and not just a defective unit, and quite frankly whoever decided that this was good enough to go to market should be shot.

Another fix is to use the AWG function for square waves.

Which is a real joy, considering how crap the software is. And at the moment I'm not even sure that this will not result in bad jitter.

But it shows again that just because it looks somewhat nice and has nice features doesn't make this thing more than a toy (which is what it is). I didn't expect much for that money, but even for that price it should not produce such bad jitter.

And how a company like LeCroy can put their name on such crap is beyond me.

[Bored@Work]

Now, where is that guy who used to tell us that Siglent produces great quality? Ups, forgot, one of his accounts got banned 

[nctnico]

Actually Lecroy specifies the jitter at 0.1% of the period for square waves. I bet it meets that spec 

[Wuerstchenhund]

Now, where is that guy who used to tell us that Siglent produces great quality? Ups, forgot, one of his accounts got banned 

To be far, the hardware quality is quite reasonable. Which of course is no help if the design is messed up.

I also don't think the problem is unfixable, but that should have been done before throwing it onto the market.

[anotherlin]

Lecroy WaveStations have list price over 1000 euros (almost 2000 in fact).
Siglent SDG1000 series are priced less than 500 euros.

As they are "rebadge", they are made in same factory, with same components ?

[Wuerstchenhund]

Lecroy WaveStations have list price over 1000 euros (almost 2000 in fact).
Siglent SDG1000 series are priced less than 500 euros.

Yes. Ridiculous, isn't it?

As they are "rebadge", they are made in same factory, with same components ?

Most certainly. Of course no-one can say for sure as LeCroy won't admit that they are selling this junk at ridiculous prices, but they are suffering from the same issues (I got reliable notice that the LeCroy WaveStation suffers from the same jitter problems as the SDG1000). And the LeCroy WaveAce (their rebadged version of some Siglent scopes) also shows identical issues to the Siglent originals, and the same poor overall quality.

[nixxon]

You are bold flashing the Siglent with the Lecroy firmware. If you didn't mind bricking the Siglent, I guess it's worth taking the risk, just to find out if the hack works. Could anyone please try reverting to Siglent firmware and see if it works & restores everything to normal, including counter and model number identity crisis?

[nixxon]

Could anyone tell us all how the Lecroy firmware compares to the Siglent firmware? I the user interface improved a lot? Does it look nice? More logical or user friendly buttons operation?

[Wuerstchenhund]

You are bold flashing the Siglent with the Lecroy firmware. If you didn't mind bricking the Siglent, I guess it's worth taking the risk, just to find out if the hack works.

Well, the SDG1000 is a toy, as a reliable tool it's really crap. The only thing it's really good at is to create a jittery signal, which is nice for playing around with the jitter analysis tools of my scope, but that's about it.

The money I pad for the SDG1020 was not money well spent. So even if I had 'bricked' the damn thing this would not have been a huge loss (and I'm sure even then it could be revived by removing the flash and flashing it externally). So there was nothing bold in what I did.

Could anyone please try reverting to Siglent firmware and see if it works & restores everything to normal, including counter and model number identity crisis?

I did flash the LeCroy and back to the Siglent firmware multiple times today, no problem. The reason I went back to the Siglent firmware is that I wanted to try something with the useless counter function that the LeCroy doesn't have.

[Wuerstchenhund]

Could anyone tell us all how the Lecroy firmware compares to the Siglent firmware? I the user interface improved a lot? Does it look nice? More logical or user friendly buttons operation?

It's essentially the same. The LeCroy firmware has a different UI color set (IMHO a much nicer one than the one of the Siglent firmware), but it lacks the counter (which is utterly useless anyways so I guess LeCroy didn't want it in their firmware). And the left output which is labelled 'CH2/Cnt' on the Siglent becomes Ch1 and the right output becomes Ch2, which is much more logical.

The biggest benefit of the LeCroy firmware however is that it can simply be downloaded from their website, while for the Siglent firmware you have to beg their 'support' for the file. I remember that someone in this forum has once claimed that this is because Siglent wants to be sure that the firmware is for the correct hardware version but that is bollocks (there's only one firmware set for all SDG1000).

[Wuerstchenhund]

I've received my SDG1010 today and the firmware from Lecroy seems to work fine.

Since you have a SDG1010 (the 10Mhz version) for which a WaveStation equivalent (WaveStation 2012) exists, can you please go to Utilities -> EditInfo (it's on page 2) and check what is listed as model no? Mine says nothing but then I have a SDG1020 for which no WaveStation equivalent exists.

[nctnico]

Mine thinks its a Wavestation 2012.

[nixxon]

Mine thinks its a Wavestation 2012.

You should update to the most recent 2013 Version

[commongrounder]

Interesting to note that Siglent has begun to post firmware updates on their web site as of April 3, 2013.  A serious customer service improvement!

[commongrounder]

I am now an owner of a SDG1005.  I checked over some of the functions and immediately found what I think are a couple of bugs.  When set up in sweep mode, it appears that the LOG sweep function is not correct.  It behaves more like an exponential rise, rather than an equal power log10 low to high sweep.  The only way I can get a close approximation of the proper frequency distribution is to reverse the direction of the frequency sweep (high to low rather than low to high).
Can someone who has the Lecroy firmware on their machine check if this is true with that version as well?  A 20 second audio sweep (20hz to 20khz) works well as a test, to allow monitoring of the frequency.
Also, the DB level indication seems way low for the actual output.  An actual measured zero dbm (into a high-z input millivolt-meter) level is shown as something like -32dbm on the generator screen.  The maximum settable dbm level is -13 on channel 1, and I know the maximum open circuit voltage is 20 volts pk-pk.  Am I missing something? 
I plan to forward my concerns to Siglent.  I think this unit has the potential to be very useful, when a few of the bugs are ironed out!

[nctnico]

Afaik some of these bugs are fixed in the latest firmware.

[commongrounder]

Sorry, I neglected to mention that my unit is running the version....27 firmware.