Purchased an oscilloscope but did I make a mistake? (re: newbie + Arduino, etc)

[JS]

As a test in the metrology class we had to setup the scope entirely without triggering and then hit run once to get a perfect, single cycle filling all the screen. It was an easy signal to trigger as a low noise sine wave or something. For many was hard as shit and they were asking in the hall how to do so.

Now, today I was trying to trigger a data bus to identify the traces (many data bus on a single flat ribbon so hard to tell which was which before hand) triggering one of the signals as reference was hard enough with advanced trigger options but I got a reasonable steady signal in the screen and I was able do distinguish the independent sync data lines. Now, learn how to use the scope, know where all the tweaks are and how to use them one by one. Having a signal gen helps (your phone would do, I can recomend an app) so you can trigger the signal when you need it. Edge triggering is usually not enough and auto will have quite a hard time to deal with that. Also, you need to know the acquire mode the scope scope is in or you'll trip more than once thinking your signal is something that isn't. As a rule of thumb I always start with normal and if I see a certain type of consistency and need lower noise I'd switch to a more convenient one. DS1054Z is a powerful modern scope, has almost as many options as there is for one, but learning how they work is useful and pays back quite fast.

JS

[malagas_on_fire]

A good starting point for a oscilloscope learning is using LRC circuits with frequency and a old analog scope, with manual controls and no auto setting button. I remeber using those scopes on college and when i go to university i saw digital scopes that scrambled my mind but there was the auto. Most of my mate would use the auto button but fortunally i used the manual controls.

Nowadays i only use the auto button if i now if the expected signal is stable,  but doing manual ranging helps to leaning how to measure the desired signal, has well perform math operations.

Check the beginner section for scopes here, which is long but good video.

[nfmax]

The OP is far better off having a DSO with an 'auto' button than not having a DSO without one. 

[HoracioDos]

It is also possible to decode many protocols with sigrok/pulseview and DS1054Z if it gets too messy.

[IDEngineer]

The OP is far better off having a DSO with an 'auto' button than not having a DSO without one. 

As noted by JS, he'd be even better with a DSO without an Auto button (or an Auto button that has been disabled). Speaks volumes that the Auto button can be disabled...!

[Karlo_Moharic]

You should have gone with Siglent , same shit as Rigol , but you get more for your money

[nfmax]

A serious question, since I don't own a Rigol: Is there a menu button to 'undo' AutoSet like there is on Agilent/Keysight DSO's?

[rstofer]

A serious question, since I don't own a Rigol: Is there a menu button to 'undo' AutoSet like there is on Agilent/Keysight DSO's?

Yes....

Undo: cancel the automatic settings and restore the parameters set by users lastly.

And it actually works!  I used Auto to get the default trace(s) wiping out all the manual settings given above (500us, 5.0V).  It changed to 5ms, 5.0V.  Then I pressed the Undo button on the menu and got my original trace back.  Pretty cool!

The menu with Undo comes up after having pressed Auto.

[Old Printer]

You should have gone with Siglent , same shit as Rigol , but you get more for your money

I have been studying the new Siglents since they came out, and the 1054 for the last year, in preparation for buying my first non-usb digital scope. It's just not as black and white as that. The huge user-base and maturity of the Rigol can mean a lot to a beginner. I am very curious to see if Rigol updates the 1054 soon to more level the field.

[rstofer]

You should have gone with Siglent , same shit as Rigol , but you get more for your money

I have been studying the new Siglents since they came out, and the 1054 for the last year, in preparation for buying my first non-usb digital scope. It's just not as black and white as that. The huge user-base and maturity of the Rigol can mean a lot to a beginner. I am very curious to see if Rigol updates the 1054 soon to more level the field.

It took a couple of years for the DS1054Z to go through enough firmware revisions to become acceptable.  Siglent is pushing through the curve right now.  By all accounts they are working hard to solve the issues.  And, no, I haven't been following along.

The new SDS1104X-E (4 channel 100 MHz) costs about $500 compared to the unlocked DS1054Z at $349.  The Siglent is newer, purported to have a better UI and might have some other features (I haven't studied the specs) but it costs $150 more for essentially the same number of channels and bandwidth.  The 2 channel variant, SDS1102X-E is just slightly more than the Rigol but only has 2 channels.  The version I want, 200 MHz 4 Channel, is $759 -  a little pricey since I already have the Rigol and a 350 MHz Tek 485.

I'm not sure it pays to be an early adopter.

[sofakng]

I just wanted to say thanks again to everybody for their opinions and advice.  I've watched a few videos on introductions to oscilloscopes (including Dave's) but I could still use more information.  Can anybody recommend any other videos or tutorials/guides?

(Also, somebody was wondering about my eBay 20% off;  I purchased the scope from eBay but the seller was TEquipment;  eBay themselves pay for the 20% discount and TEquipment receives the full sale price before discount so I should have a valid warranty, etc).

[rstofer]

Tequipment is a great place to do business, no worries there.

There is a 'sticky' thread at the top of this forum "Oscilloscope training class (long)" by w2aew.  His tutorials are excellent!  I haven't watched this particular series but I imagine it will be quite helpful.

Google for 'how to use ds1054z' and you will turn up a lot of videos.

[mtdoc]

I just wanted to say thanks again to everybody for their opinions and advice.  I've watched a few videos on introductions to oscilloscopes (including Dave's) but I could still use more information.  Can anybody recommend any other videos or tutorials/guides?

Tektronix XYZs of Oscilloscopes

[JS]

The OP is far better off having a DSO with an 'auto' button than not having a DSO without one. 

As noted by JS, he'd be even better with a DSO without an Auto button (or an Auto button that has been disabled). Speaks volumes that the Auto button can be disabled...!

Just a pain having the spare button which only displays a function blocked sign on the display when pressed. It should be resigned to a more useful function, at least when user disables the auto.

A serious question, since I don't own a Rigol: Is there a menu button to 'undo' AutoSet like there is on Agilent/Keysight DSO's?

Yes....

Undo: cancel the automatic settings and restore the parameters set by users lastly.

And it actually works!  I used Auto to get the default trace(s) wiping out all the manual settings given above (500us, 5.0V).  It changed to 5ms, 5.0V.  Then I pressed the Undo button on the menu and got my original trace back.  Pretty cool!

The menu with Undo comes up after having pressed Auto.

I haven't seen the undo button, but as said, before I pressed I went and disabled it... Even having the undo is a pain to miss and press that after being quite a while getting descent triggering on an odd signal. And when the signal is easy enough so the auto works, might be faster to do it manually as auto takes a while.

JS

[rstofer]

I haven't seen the undo button, but as said, before I pressed I went and disabled it... Even having the undo is a pain to miss and press that after being quite a while getting descent triggering on an odd signal. And when the signal is easy enough so the auto works, might be faster to do it manually as auto takes a while.

JS

The Undo is a soft button, the bottom button on the right column of soft buttons.  It only appears after activating Auto.  There are six buttons (bottom to top): Undo, Back, Falling Edge, Rising Edge, Increase Time/Div, Decrease Time/Div.  You get to press exactly one button before the menu goes away and you're back in the Channel menu.

[JS]

One thing I forgot to mention and comes to this topic theme, learning how to correctly use a scope and all the advantages it has not only helps to learn how to use the device and being able to do measurements but it helps a lot to understand signals in the time domain, which is even more useful than knowing how to use a particular device. Something similar happens with spectrum and network analyzers but in the frequency domain.

JS

[Old Printer]

(Also, somebody was wondering about my eBay 20% off;  I purchased the scope from eBay but the seller was TEquipment;  eBay themselves pay for the 20% discount and TEquipment receives the full sale price before discount so I should have a valid warranty, etc).

That was me. Thanks for the response. I think that is a great opportunity backed by a good dealer. You should be as safe buying from them as anybody.

[tggzzz]

I just wanted to say thanks again to everybody for their opinions and advice.  I've watched a few videos on introductions to oscilloscopes (including Dave's) but I could still use more information.  Can anybody recommend any other videos or tutorials/guides?

General principle: if X is a mistake then you will be able to define the reasons it isn't sufficient. If you can't define reasons, then it is OK for your current purposes.

As with any instrument, don't trust what you see at first. Play around, experiment, look at known signals to make sure that what you see is what you expect. Perturb things, and make sure the new measurements correspons to the perturbations. When, not if, you find something unexpected, work out whether it is a peculiarity of the instrument, your understanding or your experimental technique.

With a scope, the probes and probing technique are at least as important as the instrument. Use the right probes for the job, and assess how they will affect the circuit you are testing.

[rbm]

Tektronix XYZs of Oscilloscopes

Some other resources for beginners:
NJARC Oscilloscope School a.k.a. "Scopes For Dopes"  video on Youtube.  Search for its identifier  8ZKMrzTGxLQ

Tektronix "Concepts" Series Books

[mathsquid]

Buying an oscilloscope, especially a 1054z for $300, is a great move. I put off buying an oscilloscope for a long time. The thing that pushed me over the edge was when I was using an atmega328 to control my TV by IR, and I just couldn't get it to work. An hour after the scope was delivered I knew exactly what the problem was. (Fuse settings affecting clock speed and thus the IR signals.)

[james_s]

A scope is one of those things where when you need one, there is no substitute. In most cases *any* scope is better than none at all, without one you are flying blind. As I think I mentioned already, the most important thing is learning how to use it, great things have been accomplished with rather terrible scopes and a little creativity. The modern low cost DSOs are massively better than just about anything on the market a few decades ago.

[tggzzz]

As I think I mentioned already, the most important thing is learning how to use it, great things have been accomplished with rather terrible scopes and a little creativity.

Precisely; as per the aphorism in my .Sig

[IDEngineer]

great things have been accomplished with rather terrible scopes and a little creativity

An excellent observation! Remember, what we scoff at as "junk" today would have been witchcraft even as recently as the 70's and 80's. Yet we were building microwave communication gear, landing men on the moon, etc. despite the "limitations" of the test equipment of those eras. Ever look into what they called "storage scopes" back then? Camera hoods on CRT scopes... hyper-complex CRT bottles with lots of weird grids, strange phosphors, etc. A minor miracle some of that stuff could even be physically manufactured, let alone in any volume, but that was the only option back when they didn't have ultrafast monolithic flash A/D's and ASIC/FPGA to handle the resulting bandwidth to memory - or even that much memory, at the necessary speeds!

If someone handed you a spec sheet for one of those scopes today, you'd dismiss it as worthless. Yet much of what we take for granted technologically today is BASED on things accomplished with such tools. That's why I'm slow to say that an older, or less capable, piece of R&D equipment has no value. Most of us don't usually work on projects where we need, or can tell, the difference between an 8-bit and a 10-bit A/D scope... or a 0.001% DMM... or a power supply with under 50uV of noise.

I have an Agilent Cell Test unit, a sort of all-in-one box that includes a scope, spectrum analyzer, sweep signal generator, demodulator, etc. Everything tops out at about 1GHz because it was meant for the days of analog cell service. Its original price was $40-60K depending upon configuration, it was state of the art, and my HP buddies tell me they sold thousands of them. Today its specs are dated but guess what - physics hasn't changed so it can do just as good a job today as when it was SOTA. I'm not tossing it out just because there's something better out there.

Back in the late 70's while in high school I paid $1400 for my Phillips PM3214 25MHz dual trace delayed timebase scope. Thanks to inflation a dollar then was worth a whole lot more than a dollar today, and yet today the OP purchased twice the bandwidth, twice the channels, with storage and memory, far more flexible and better triggering, probably 2/3rds less weight and volume, for about one-fifth the numeric dollars and even fewer adjusted dollars. And 50MHz probably covers 75% of the projects discussed on this site! Freakin' remarkable.

What I'm trying to say is "terrible" is a relative term. "Terrible" today was the bleeding edge a few years ago!

[rstofer]

And 50MHz probably covers 75% of the projects discussed on this site! Freakin' remarkable.

And there probably isn't a DS1054Z that hasn't been unlocked to 100 MHz.  The OPs scope will come with all the features except bandwidth and it won't be long before he Googles 'riglol' and fixes that.

It's an amazing piece of equipment for the price.

[IDEngineer]

And there probably isn't a DS1054Z that hasn't been unlocked to 100 MHz.  The OPs scope will come with all the features except bandwidth and it won't be long before he Googles 'riglol' and fixes that.

Another good point. Seriously, four channels of 100MHz for $300. The rest of the specs almost don't matter at that price. I've spent far more for a portable scope, for business trips, that has FAR less bandwidth, much poorer user interface, and frankly isn't all that much smaller. Toss this sucker in a TEquipment padded shoulder bag and away you go.

I wonder what the power supply looks like, and how difficult it would be to power it from a LiPo pack for truly portable operation. Would be nice to skip the whole AC inverter stage and just present DC to the scope. Maybe its power supply is (semi) modular and could be removed to make room for a LiPo right in the case, perhaps with a one-off PCB to generate the original output voltages. Cut an XT30 connector into the side for recharging.

I might have to pick up one of these things just to tear into it and turn it into the ultimate road warrior scope. How can you go wrong for $300?!?

EDIT: Just checked Dave's teardown at to get a view of the power supply, and sure enough at 12:00 he openly wonders if the power supply could be swapped out for some sort of battery replacement. There's MORE than enough room in there, far more than I expected. Has anyone pursued this? I'd much rather buy than build if someone has already taken the trouble....