Rigol DS1102E

[avrfreaks]

What is the difference between the Rigol DS1102E 100MHz Digital Oscilloscope and the Instek GDS-1062A 60 MHz Digital Storage Oscilloscope?
Are there other brands out there to consider in the Digital or Analog Oscilloscopes?

[saturation]

There a bit of discussion on both but the single biggest difference was summed by Dave:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=734.msg8840#msg8840

That thread has more details.

Note, that refers to the 1052E, the 50MHz version, but the specs are identical to the 100Mhz except for the bandwidth.  The Instek has more memory for sampled and captured waveforms, so its represented waveforms more accurately.

No other scope has come into view with this performance/price range.  The Instek is a good buy up to 150 MHz but in terms of dollars, the 60 Mhz is a better deal over the Rigol on paper, except the Rigol can be hacked to 100 MHz while so far the Instek can not.

[indago]

I have obtained a new Rigol DS1102E.  While making the probe adjustment using the internally generated square wave, I noticed a static noise on the horizontal part of the trace.  I am a novice concerning the use of oscilloscope.  I contacted a tech rep at Rigol and tried to work through eliminating the noise so that a clean trace could be generated on the screen to no avail.  Disconnecting the probe and feeding the scope no signal, the flat horizontal trace on the screen still has the noise on it.  Is this inherent in the Rigol scopes?

[cellularmitosis]

Can you post a screenshot so we have an idea of how much noise you are seeing?  The answer is yes, you will never see a totally flat noise floor, but you should be able to get it under a millivolt with a DIY faraday cage.

[indago]

I haven't figured out how to get an image from the scope to the computer yet.  I have attempted using a flash drive in the USB ports of the scope and computer and as far as I got was to create a file on the flash drive that I can see with the computer.  I don't know what kind of application will open the file on the computer.

I have an image of a square wave from the Web:



And, I have an image of a square wave from the User Manual disk:



I had expected to see a square wave on the Rigol like the first image, but it is more like the second image with the ringing on the horizontal part of the trace.  If this is what the Rigol shows on the screen, then it is not a clean signal, and would be a distortion of an actual signal.

[cellularmitosis]

Hi indago,

Probably the part you are stuck at is that the Rigol is saving a waveform file, not a bitmap image, which is configurable using the little scroll knob.

After you take a few hundred screenshots the whole sequence turns into muscle memory

I just started creating youtube videos, so I'll try make a video about how to make a screenshot when I get home from work.

(a project on my todo list is to have a micro pretend to be a flash drive to both the Rigol and my laptop at the same time, so I save a screenshot, and it just magically shows up on my laptop...).

[cellularmitosis]

Hi indago,

Here's the video.

http://youtu.be/CnwVdxLuIk4

I'm still very new at this, so constructive feedback is welcome

The dark exposure settings are the result of trying to capture video of an LCD screen without totally washing out the text.  Turns out that's a hard thing to do...

[indago]

Thank you for your response.  It is most helpful.  I couldn't help but notice, concerning the square waveform on the screen in the video, the static noise on the horizontal part of the waveform.  That is what has concerned me.  Why is there static on the horizontal, and not a clean line like the vertical?

[cellularmitosis]

That is because the tip of the scope and the ground clip form an antenna, and pick up nearby noise.

You can read about my efforts to chase this issue in these threads:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/90-mhz-noise-on-scope/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/the-$20-desktop-faraday-cage/

[granz]

Thank you for your response.  It is most helpful.  I couldn't help but notice, concerning the square waveform on the screen in the video, the static noise on the horizontal part of the waveform.  That is what has concerned me.  Why is there static on the horizontal, and not a clean line like the vertical?

When you see a vertical line on a digital scope it is actually the software drawing a line between a few points at different voltages.  The data the scope has to work with is really a set of discrete voltage points spaced out in time.  For example, if you have a much faster rise time than the time between data points, the scope might have two adjacent points at say 0V and then the next at 5V.  The scope firmware will then connect this with a vertical (or almost vertical) line to display a continuous trace to the user, but there really is no information in that vertical line.  I don't have your particular scope, but you should be able to put it in a mode where you only see the actual points.

This concept of sampling is pretty important, and is the reason that a low sampling rate may deceive the user about the true nature of the waveform in question.  Aliasing can make high frequency waveform appear like a much lower frequency waveform on a digital scope.

[indago]

That is because the tip of the scope and the ground clip form an antenna, and pick up nearby noise.

You can read about my efforts to chase this issue in these threads:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/90-mhz-noise-on-scope/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/the-$20-desktop-faraday-cage/

Well that explains a lot.  Thank you for your response.  I was thinking that the noise that I was seeing on my scope was internally generated, but now I can see that most of it is from an external source.

Again, thanx.