EEVblog #847 - Mailbag

[ercapoccia]

I'd be very interested in seeing a comparison of the two USB scopes.

Are there any other directly competing ones? Not talking no-name ebay ones.

Another competitor could be one from the PicoScope's range.
https://www.picotech.com/products/oscilloscope

[Jacko]

My first car had a mechanical vibrator in it...  or rather the AM radio did.  The car had a 6v battery and the chopper pulsed the dc voltage so that it could be stepped up to power the vacuum tubes in the radio. Even though I was a teenager, I can remember this because the radio went out, and my Dad traced it down to the vibrator. He bought a new one, plugged it in, and I was back on the road with tunes blaring.

The vibrator had lasted close to 15 years, which was a long life for those mechanical devices.

regards, Jacko

[djQUAN]

There was a cap (or was that a MOV?) that looked like split in half in that Fluke multimeter.

These are sliced with a saw. I think this was the airgap the sender was asking for Dave to have a closer look.

[SilverSolder]

I loved Sagan's map for finding the chocolate - "To get rid of it, we just eat it" - Classic! 

[Helix70]

My WDTV also overheats, and is now in pieces in the drawer. The RasPi2 does a better job and cost a third the price too. POS.

[axismundi]

Just learned that my copy of The Art of Electronics is a counterfeit. Now I'm used to fake products as these became ubiquitous these days unfortunately, but I did not see this one coming!

Bought from Amazon UK (seller booksnesence). Filed a complaint and asked for refund.

[Vgkid]

Thanks for the video. I got a chuckle about Sagan talking about the chocolate.

[Howardlong]

Red Pitaya is indeed an interesting device. it can do a 0-50MHz SDR Transceiver! No mention of scope, signal generator and many, many others

I'd like to see a comparison between the Analog Discovery and the Red Pitaya also.   

I just bought the Red Pitaya fm Mouser but as it turns out the hardware is NOT open sourced, just the software.  You can't get a schematic. 

Ken

I'd be very interested in seeing a comparison of the two USB scopes.  I've given a bit of thought to replacing or at least supplementing my old CRT scope with a USB one, and seeing some of the various options compared would be helpful.  I like my old CRO fine and all, but once in a while it would be really nice to have direct frequency or voltage readings, or be able to easily snag a graphic of output without trying to take a picture of the screen.

FWIW, I have an Analog Discovery (first version, almost identical functionally to the new version bar the variable power source and different enclosure) that I've had for about a years, and a Red Pitaya that I've been using pretty solidly for three days.

They are two very different beasts. With the Analog Discovery, you can expect it to work out of the box right away. The Red Pitaya, not so much. As an instrument, the RP is left in the dust by the AD. The RP as it stands is for tinkering by dedicated propellerheads looking for nerdgasms, whereas the AD is primarily a real, valuable and working instrument from the get go. I think anyone proposing to use the RP as a bench instrument as it stands will be pretty disappointed.

The secret is in the software. The AD has the best software I've seen on any USB scope, plus you can run multiple instruments simultaneously. The RP apps look very threadbare in comparison, and you can only run one at a time. As an instrument, the RP also seems to like to phone home a lot as part of its vendor/customer tie in. The AD works without any need to phone home: I use it extensively when travelling, on planes, trains etc. The RP would be nigh on useless for travelling, it needs its Ethernet setting up and needs substantial power.

Personally I feel that in its current state, marketing the RP's current instrument capabilities as anything other than a development platform with a very rudimentary instrument for beginners is bordering on the disingenuous. If RP invested the time spent on the slick website into the product's software instead, I might have a different opinion.

In short they are very different beasts, for different markets, the AD is a true instrument for end users out of the box, whereas the power of the RP is as a development platform for hard core developers wanting to fulfil point solutions.

[mtdoc]

FWIW, I have an Analog Discovery (first version, almost identical functionally to the new version bar the variable power source and different enclosure) that I've had for about a years, and a Red Pitaya that I've been using pretty solidly for three days.

They are two very different beasts. With the Analog Discovery, you can expect it to work out of the box right away. The Red Pitaya, not so much. As an instrument, the RP is left in the dust by the AD. The RP as it stands is for tinkering by dedicated propellerheads looking for nerdgasms, whereas the AD is primarily a real, valuable and working instrument from the get go. I think anyone proposing to use the RP as a bench instrument as it stands will be pretty disappointed.

The secret is in the software. The AD has the best software I've seen on any USB scope, plus you can run multiple instruments simultaneously. The RP apps look very threadbare in comparison, and you can only run one at a time. As an instrument, the RP also seems to like to phone home a lot as part of its vendor/customer tie in. The AD works without any need to phone home: I use it extensively when travelling, on planes, trains etc. The RP would be nigh on useless for travelling, it needs its Ethernet setting up and needs substantial power.

Personally I feel that in its current state, marketing the RP's current instrument capabilities as anything other than a development platform with a very rudimentary instrument for beginners is bordering on the disingenuous. If RP invested the time spent on the slick website into the product's software instead, I might have a different opinion.

In short they are very different beasts, for different markets, the AD is a true instrument for end users out of the box, whereas the power of the RP is as a development platform for hard core developers wanting to fulfil point solutions.

Thank you for the comparison/review.     Your experience with the AD mirrors mine but I've never tried the RP and have always wondered how the 2 compare.

[broz]

I, too, am looking forward to the comparison of these "scopes" can't quite afford the DS1054Z yet, but I could afford the $99 USD student price for the Analog Discovery, even if it's just to get me by until I can afford the Rigol. Interested to see if it would be worth it to pick one up now, or wait until I can afford the Rigol.