EEVblog #369 - Rigol DS2000 Oscilloscope Playing Around

[EEVblog]

Dave.

[JimmySte]

Hi Dave...
Liked the video...
Just thought I'd comment of some of the issues you had in the video...
Firstly, the green leds on my DS2072 are just as bright as the red start/stop button... so maybe you didn't align something when you put the unit back together...
2nd, the updated firmware must have broken the waveform record... nice find works as you'd expect on mine... No need to change frames to update the screen
So I might wait before updating the firmware... Guess the folks I got mine from will supply it to me...
On a side note... the scope auto adjusted it's time for DLS..., I can't recall setting my location...
Can't wait for the hour+ long review...

[madworm]

Is it just a coincidence, or do these DSO firmware manufacturers ALL make the same errors... The lack of screen refresh in zoom mode brings back not so fond memories.

This again shows that one should NOT buy test gear without elaborate testing and 'playing' with it for at least a week or two. It will be very interesting to see how long it takes them to fix this.

[BravoV]

Is it just a coincidence, or do these DSO firmware manufacturers ALL make the same errors... The lack of screen refresh in zoom mode brings back not so fond memories.

Its called "Copy & Paste Engineering" .. 

[notsob]

One question. Is there a way to backup the existing firmware before upgrading, in case there is problem as dave has found, it would be good to be able to revert to a previous version whilst awaiting a fix from rigol.

[madworm]

Copy & Paste engineering... apparently.

BUT this also shows that they don't do ANY form of testing that is worth to be called that. Any at least half-sane programmer uses version control, so they should know which changes went into the new firmware release and should know which other functions are affected by these. And that allows for selective testing... and they don't even seem to do any of that.

SNAFU.

[nitro2k01]

6:50 "Pleas don't remove the U disk..." I'm wondering why they didn't spell out the word USB.
9:00 The hardware version probably refers to the board revision.
25:08 I'm wondering if this isn't all the captured waveforms overlaid on top of each other.

[PA0PBZ]

About the XY mode and Dave being disappointed that there was no indication on the BNC connectors:

A) You're lucky because they would have no means of swapping it in the firmware update
B) It is clearly indicated on the XY screen itself with the yellow 1  and blue 2

[nitro2k01]

PA0PBZ, I think you completely missed the point.

[PA0PBZ]

PA0PBZ, I think you completely missed the point.

Not unthinkable, care to educate me?

[Monkeh]

PA0PBZ, I think you completely missed the point.

Not unthinkable, care to educate me?

It's XY mode, not YX mode.

[Scarionn]

Please do a full review on this oscilloscope.
Maybe you can compare this oscilloscope with the DS1000 and with your 3000 scope!
 

[nitro2k01]

PA0PBZ, I think you completely missed the point.

Not unthinkable, care to educate me?

He criticized that the X and Y axis used the wrong inputs, not the inputs are unmarked. And this was fixed with the upgrade.

[Psi]

When Dave was talking about the trial features and their timelimit was anyone else thinking..  Hm.. i wonder, if i read out the eeprom/flash ICs before i turned it on for the first time, could i then reprogram it every month to get the features back

It's got to be stored somewhere. If you made a backup of everything before starting you could return it to that state whenever you wanted.

[tom66]

I also wonder if the different procedures might have something to do with it - if you do it the other way around does it reset the trial licences?

[mikeselectricstuff]

When Dave was talking about the trial features and their timelimit was anyone else thinking..  Hm.. i wonder, if i read out the eeprom/flash ICs before i turned it on for the first time, could i then reprogram it every month to get the features back

It's got to be stored in flash somewhere. If you made a backup of everything before starting you could return it to that state whenever you wanted.

I wonder if a simpler method might be to just stop the 32K clock oscillator - very easy to do.
 
Having trials enabled on a new instrument that stop working might raise some conflicts with consumer legislation in some countries - if it isn't made completely clear at the point of sale it could be seen as a fault occurring after purchase...
Would be interesting to see how these actually appear to the user - I think it ought to do something like show a splash screen on first powerup asking the user to confirm that they want a time-lmited free trial.

[Bored@Work]

BUT this also shows that they don't do ANY form of testing that is worth to be called that.

That or their employees have no idea how an oscilloscope is supposed to behave. Or they saw it, but the corporate culture is such that no one dared to mention it. Or it was mentioned, but ignored. All equally worrying.

Having trials enabled on a new instrument that stop working might raise some conflicts with consumer legislation in some countries - if it isn't made completely clear at the point of sale it could be seen as a fault occurring after purchase...

But Rigol is sitting in China. They wouldn't be the first Chinese company giving a flying fart about legislation outside of China. It could hit a few distributors who would then probably have to refund customers. But that requires that a consumer complains.

[DarkPrince]

Great video Dave. Would be nice to grab one of these (do like the screen). Maybe once classes are done I could save up some and get one. Give them time to work out the kinks in the firmware.

[PA0PBZ]

PA0PBZ, I think you completely missed the point.

Not unthinkable, care to educate me?

He criticized that the X and Y axis used the wrong inputs, not the inputs are unmarked. And this was fixed with the upgrade.

I know, but listen around 4:45...

[tom66]

That or their employees have no idea how an oscilloscope is supposed to behave. Or they saw it, but the corporate culture is such that no one dared to mention it. Or it was mentioned, but ignored. All equally worrying.

Or, the third option: The design people knew how the scope was supposed to operate, but the software engineers didn't. They were told to write software to a specification. If you do that,  you could easily make a simple mistake like swapping X and Y.

[ejeffrey]

Or, the third option: The design people knew how the scope was supposed to operate, but the software engineers didn't. They were told to write software to a specification. If you do that,  you could easily make a simple mistake like swapping X and Y.

Anyone could have made the software bug.  The failure is where testing failed to catch it, or caught it but failed to lead to a fix.  There are a number of plausible ways this could have happened.  Some are more troubling than others, but none of them are a good sign.  That said, the big three tend to not pay much attention to XY mode, I would be surprised if one of them let something like this slip through the cracks, especially if it was a result of a last-minute fix for a more "important" feature (rather than defective from day 1).

[mikeselectricstuff]

But Rigol is sitting in China. They wouldn't be the first Chinese company giving a flying fart about legislation outside of China. It could hit a few distributors who would then probably have to refund customers. But that requires that a consumer complains.

Rigol has a presence in Europe and USA and are pushing hard to get into these markets - There was an interview with one of their European managers in one of the trade mags recently - I think he said that only half their sales are to China.

[Bored@Work]

But Rigol is sitting in China. They wouldn't be the first Chinese company giving a flying fart about legislation outside of China. It could hit a few distributors who would then probably have to refund customers. But that requires that a consumer complains.

Rigol has a presence in Europe and USA and are pushing hard to get into these markets - There was an interview with one of their European managers in one of the trade mags recently - I think he said that only half their sales are to China.

I have some doubt about the "pushing hard" thing when it comes to Europe. Unless they have changed things my understanding is their "push" in Europe consists of said manager sitting somewhere in an office in Germany giving interviews, plus some administrative staff and a single tech to support the whole of Europe. Rigol's main web site, when switched to Europe http://eu.rigol.com/ doesn't even give a support phone number.

My understanding is the European Rigol company is more concerned with managing some inventory for distributors than with selling to consumers. And as long as they don't sell directly to consumers they wouldn't have to deal directly with consumer claims. They might probably have to hold a distributor harmless, or not, depending on the contracts they have. But would the decision makers in China care?

[Rosendorfer]

Hi Dave,  gals and guys..

If I may apart from firmware flaws and quirks.....

I'm interested in that low noise thing of DS2000 series, and have to say that I'm left with bit of disappointment, from Dave "playing with"....

Noise at 500uV being 1 division is hardly good achievement, just by simply comparing to that what DS1052e is doing in that regard, I was clearly expecting much better noise figures.
Just for reference I will attach screens from my DS1052e with bandwidth limit at 20MHz and at full 100MHz.
Any chance Dave, or somebody else with DS2000 could investigate that, bit more, Is 500uV real thing or just marketing number... without real backup.

Rosendorfer

[T4P]

You're talking 100MHz input bandwidth. This is a 200MHz And that can dependent on a boatload of issues at that level
The key thing is the resolution ... 500uV gives you lots of resolutions of mV signals and it doesn't matter if the DS1052e could do about the same noise floor or not, does it have the 500uV range? It doesn't.

6:50 "Pleas don't remove the U disk..." I'm wondering why they didn't spell out the word USB.
9:00 The hardware version probably refers to the board revision.
25:08 I'm wondering if this isn't all the captured waveforms overlaid on top of each other.

U disk ... the chinese translated to english equivalent of a USB flash drive