New Rigol 16-bit function generators DG800/900 series

[Synthtech]

Hats off to Rigol for the innovative case, one less fan running in the room is definitely a very good thing even if that requires a radical looking case. It might look ugly but at least it isn’t as ugly to look at as that wierd mismatched 3 colour logo plate that Siglent sticks on the front of everything.

[bd139]

If you want a Siglent without an ugly logo you can pay through the nose and get an RS Pro branded one 

Ok dug further into this now I have some time. I think my major concern with the DG832 is the touch interface. The current DG1022Z I have muscle memory for. Sure the screen is smaller but it has a metric fuck ton more buttons on it. I may futz an entry and blow up a DUT one day with a touch screen.

Image for comparison:



On DG1022Z, to set say 7030 KHz, you press:

Code: [Select]

[freq soft] [7] [0] [3] [0] [KHz soft]
Dg832 you:

Code: [Select]

[smudge] [squark] [fum] [bib] [flib] [nark] [scrark]
Also the DG1022Z you could clearly beat Hulk to death with it in about 2 minutes flat and it wouldn't even have a dent. DG832 looks like an ebay 69 quid jobby in size and quality.

I might skip this actually.

Edit: recon occuring:



Hey Siglent if you're listening, please don't add a touch interface to your stuff. I'll buy one when my DG1022Z drops dead but only if it has buttons

[tautech]

Edit: recon occuring:



Hey Siglent if you're listening, please don't add a touch interface to your stuff.

Already in some existing and 'to come' models.
WS3000/SDS3000    < resistive and apparently not nice.

Capacitive:
SDG2000X models    < rarely use touch but it seems just fine.
SDG6000X models    < should be equivalent to 2000X models
SVA1015X                < got one and it's touch is excellent !
Coming
SDS5000X

Any others don't jump to mind.

[Wolfgang]

Just from the looks its clear that the DG1022Z is built like a rock compared to the new all-plastic models.

I dont drop my stuff so often, but a full metal jacket has other advantages: resistance to EMI.
I am curious if RIGOL also made compromises here. Has somebody tried this yet ?

[bd139]

Edit: recon occuring:



Hey Siglent if you're listening, please don't add a touch interface to your stuff.

Already in some existing and 'to come' models.
WS3000/SDS3000    < resistive and apparently not nice.

Capacitive:
SDG2000X models    < rarely use touch but it seems just fine.
SDG6000X models    < should be equivalent to 2000X models
SVA1015X                < got one and it's touch is excellent !
Coming
SDS5000X

Any others don't jump to mind.

Joy. Why? Honestly.

I don't get it. It's just bad. People need to stop coming up with this shit. I'll explain why:

1. Your hand obscures half the interface when you're using it.
2. There is no haptic feedback.
3. Everything relies on precise absolute positioning of your hands. They have to iterate the position via visual feedback. Fingers are pretty good little sensors once you get close but there's nothing to feel.
4. It's physically more demanding and tiring than physical controls.
5. The interface elements aren't standardised so every device is a complete context switch.
6. The panels are fragile.

But fuck me, those Chinese capacitive displays lifted off no brand smartphone lines will save us so many dollars on buttons and we can say "look everybody it's got a touch screen".

Edit: this is even a million times worse than the greatest fad ever; touch screen laptops. When you have a touch screen scope for example, the screen is even higher up so when your arms get tired it's even more painful to use it with the above constraints.

Just from the looks its clear that the DG1022Z is built like a rock compared to the new all-plastic models.

I dont drop my stuff so often, but a full metal jacket has other advantages: resistance to EMI.
I am curious if RIGOL also made compromises here. Has somebody tried this yet ?

You probably don't drop it as often you're right but a lot of equipment in labs is shared and moved around regularly. That thing has zero protection on it at all from corner knocks. I reckon you could drop a 1022Z front on and it'd survive. If you look at the old HP 546xx series scopes, one of the design flaws that I have actually experienced is the BNCs stick out of the front and the entire mechanical load is on the motherboard. One knock and it'll crack the board. No secondary protection on those either. I imagine this is vulnerable too. Butt side of a DG1022Z for reference - it's 90% protection



Good point there. I'm worried about emissions with this. If I put my DG1022Z next to an HF transceiver I can't hear a thing and that is literally perfect. If I did the same with my old plastic cased TG220 function generator you could hear it strongly in the receiver. The transceiver is very heavily shielded as well (cast aluminium chassis, steel panels).

Hmm. I smell a turd I think.

[Synthtech]

I have to agree about touch screens.  I know that they have so many amazing advantages but I bypassed the new Keithley 6 1/2 digit multimeter because of it. I really enjoy using my old Agilent 34401A, it’s as stable as a church pew and I recently replaced the VFD display and the part cost me $70.00. based on how so many of the older HP 34401A’s are still performing it’s not impossible that that I will still be using it in 10-20 years time.

I am not sure how I would fare if in 10 years I went to look for a replacement touch screen for the Keithley. Longevity counts for me, there’s enough scrap electronics in the world as it is.

[Wolfgang]

At the risk of being cursed as too conservative, I prefer buttons to touchscreens as well.
I do have a lot of touchy instruments, though (see profile).
 
Reasons are:

- I hate fingerprints on my screens
- typing or wheeling is faster and has less entry errors than guestures due to haptic feedback
- touchscreens dont last forever. They get numb over the years, especially when used frequently.
  No problem for short-lived junk, but not smart for expensive lab stuff that is supposed to last for decades.

IMHO, touchscreens are a lot cheaper to make and more flexible than a classic panel, agreed.
So if your product is as mature as a green banana you will love a touchscreen because all is done by software
and can be changed weekly if needed.

[bitseeker]

Touchscreens can be useful for some things, but replacing buttons and knobs isn't one of them. Even if you want to have a flexible interface, that's already been done successfully with a combination of screen space (for labels) and physical buttons.

As with many wank (as Dave might put it) features, they'll go to an extreme before (hopefully) finding a reasonable balance.

I really enjoy using my old Agilent 34401A, it’s as stable as a church pew and I recently replaced the VFD display and the part cost me $70.00. based on how so many of the older HP 34401A’s are still performing it’s not impossible that that I will still be using it in 10-20 years time.

I am not sure how I would fare if in 10 years I went to look for a replacement touch screen for the Keithley. Longevity counts for me, there’s enough scrap electronics in the world as it is.

There's been a successful project replacing the 34401A VFD with an OLED display (a TFT LCD shouldn't be much different). Something similar could probably be done for Keithley ones as well.

If all else fails, those meters can also be used remotely. So, they'll be useful until they're dead, regardless how long the displays last.

[Berni]

Touchscreens are a good idea and capacitive ones have no moving parts so should be very reliable. But they are NOT a replacement for buttons!

A touchscreen is useful as a complement to the existing buttons. Would you want the horizontal scale control on your scope on the touchscreen? Hell no! But you could probably do something useful with cursors where you just tap two points and it puts a set of cursors on those spots (While still having a cursor button where the soft knob moves them). Or you might want to enter in a frequency of 2.048 MHz into the built in signal gen. Sure you can do it with the knob but that takes a bit since scopes generally don't have a numeric keypad, but if you tap the setting you could have a big touchscreen keypad pop up where you type it in and it disappears once done.

I do have a touchscreen scope (MSO9000) but the UI requires you to do most stuff on the screen rather than with buttons. It does some things right but not everything. And if im going to use the scope for some time i just use a mouse with it instead as its faster and easier than touch.

[tautech]

Edit: recon occuring:



Hey Siglent if you're listening, please don't add a touch interface to your stuff.

Already in some existing and 'to come' models.
WS3000/SDS3000    < resistive and apparently not nice.

Capacitive:
SDG2000X models    < rarely use touch but it seems just fine.
SDG6000X models    < should be equivalent to 2000X models
SVA1015X                < got one and it's touch is excellent !
Coming
SDS5000X

Any others don't jump to mind.

Joy. Why? Honestly.

I don't get it. It's just bad. People need to stop coming up with this shit. I'll explain why:

1. Your hand obscures half the interface when you're using it.
2. There is no haptic feedback.
3. Everything relies on precise absolute positioning of your hands. They have to iterate the position via visual feedback. Fingers are pretty good little sensors once you get close but there's nothing to feel.
4. It's physically more demanding and tiring than physical controls.
5. The interface elements aren't standardised so every device is a complete context switch.
6. The panels are fragile.

But fuck me, those Chinese capacitive displays lifted off no brand smartphone lines will save us so many dollars on buttons and we can say "look everybody it's got a touch screen".

You're really showing your age now and I'm a good bit older than you. 

A few years back I'd have thought similar but every bit of equipment a has different UI requirement like WTF would you want a 'pinch to zoom' on an AWG for instance.
Placement of the touch screen elements has everything to do with usability and if they're aligned with physical buttons the choice is yours of which to use. For some elements a touch screen is faster and less effort, quite contrary to your misguided beliefs. Other elements of course require user feedback such as indented encoders  and numerical keypads and it's unlikely they'll be replaced anytime soon with touch controls especially in instruments with small displays and/or complex multi-menued UI's.
You comment on the users hand obscuring the display, well yes but in some in some implementations a quick access panel is available to place (drag drop) anywhere that suits.
Like you I've never been a great fan of touch displays but the more I get to use instruments that have them the more I understand their advantages with good implementation.

Panels fragile ? BS, double BS ! 

You really need get out more ! 

Just to wind some of ya's up some more, in not too many years I predict there will be instrument ranges from many manufacturers only available with touch displays and also ranges of instruments with physical controls too but at an additional cost.
Such is the pace of change in the last few decades.

 

[bd139]

Sorry for the length of this.

You're really showing your age now and I'm a good bit older than you. 

It's not age related this. It's actually down to real quantifiable experience.

One of the products I was wholly in charge of in the early 00's was a virtual interface platform that allowed people to prototype hardware and software based interfaces and wire them to the underlying electronics. This consisted of a COTS PC and various standard PCI digital interface cards and numerous Matrox cards connected to physical controls and virtual displays. There was a whole load of VC++ I am not proud of under there ... The result was your avionics module could be tried in situ in simulator platforms and the controls could be moved around and look for HCI related problems with the end users (pilots, military personel etc). This spanned avionics, ground support systems, production line controls, everything.

One of the major findings from this platform was that the important thing is user preference and dividing the control surface into two groups of functions: primary and secondary. Primary functions are things that are critical to the operation of the product. Secondary functions are not so important and are used occasionally.

We found that primary functions MUST be physical tactile controls with haptic feedback and must be comfortable or fatigue builds up over time leading to errors, physical pain and generally low opinion of the products. I've even seen it where people get shoulder problems after having to look around the side of something that their hand is obscuring a hundred times a day. Even little things like this only come from observing the user for days at a time and doing several hardware prototype revisions (which was expensive and why I built the above).

Secondary functions it really doesn't matter as they are used so infrequently. Stick it in a menu somewhere!

Literally everything you have on a standard analogue scope, DMM, signal generator should still be primary physical controls on every piece of test gear unconditionally.

This comes from watching hundreds of people doing real work with hardware for 3 years using this software and building interfaces. This is quantifiable and there's a ton of research out there which backs this up. Go and have a look around.

This is why the TDS210/220, while not having an amazing spec sheet, is such a nice bit of kit to use. It has that functionality clearly divided and clearly implemented. The interface is literally "right".

A few years back I'd have thought similar but every bit of equipment a has different UI requirement like WTF would you want a 'pinch to zoom' on an AWG for instance.
Placement of the touch screen elements has everything to do with usability and if they're aligned with physical buttons the choice is yours of which to use. For some elements a touch screen is faster and less effort, quite contrary to your misguided beliefs. Other elements of course require user feedback such as indented encoders  and numerical keypads and it's unlikely they'll be replaced anytime soon with touch controls especially in instruments with small displays and/or complex multi-menued UI's.
You comment on the users hand obscuring the display, well yes but in some in some implementations a quick access panel is available to place (drag drop) anywhere that suits.
Like you I've never been a great fan of touch displays but the more I get to use instruments that have them the more I understand their advantages with good implementation.

I think I've covered the above already.

I will say that if you look at the quantifiable disaster that is metro / UWP on Windows platforms over the last few years, you will see that it has started to move away from the touch focus to a keyboard and mouse focus again. Because it literally didn't work in the real world. It's tough to admit this. People should learn from other people's mistakes. win32 was not a mistake. UWP is.

Panels fragile ? BS, double BS ! 

You really need get out more ! 

I think I did

They are incredibly fragile. If they weren't there wouldn't be at least 100 phone repair shops within a mile of me. And the phones are pretty much the best bits of engineering out there. They have had the highest overall investment in technology and reliability over the last decade. But they still get broken because you don't get to choose the hands in which they are placed.

Same goes for test gear which is pretty much ritually abused. Back when I was at university, someone popped a DMM screen with a flying test lead for example. And that had a layer of Fluke around it. And working for the test gear department of a large company for a bit, I actually saw all the creative ways people fucked up their kit.

Just to wind some of ya's up some more, in not too many years I predict there will be instrument ranges from many manufacturers only available with touch displays and also ranges of instruments with physical controls too but at an additional cost.
Such is the pace of change in the last few decades.

 

This is a side effect known as the feature bell curve. What we have is roughly the pinnacle of feature completeness at the moment. We have decent quality reliable feature load, we have devices which are completely functional and reliable and we have low cost manufacturing. Unfortunately when we get into this state, there is a latent desire to innovate because of fear from other manufacturers innovating first. This results in either two outcomes:

1. Firstly we have negative innovation. Apple are good at this. They start removing things people use and need to build the ultimate clean interface and system. This harms the user by removing established patterns.
2. Secondly we have negative innovation again. This is where established paradigms are broken, simply for the sake of labeling something as innovation.

This is a type 2 failure mode. Thus people are so afraid to do minor revisions of their products and only reinvent them every few years due to the pressure from above and the marketing teams. Also there is a pressure to cut costs. If you tick both boxes you think you have won.

Yaesu are a fine example of sticking a finger up to this. They took the FT-817 platform which is nigh on 20 years old now and released the FT-818. People nearly shit a brick because it was literally almost exactly the same as the FT-817. 20 years of progress?!?!?! What is this?!?!?!? Why should you buy this?!?!?  That was the sentiment. Well it turns out you shouldn't if you have an FT-817. This is shocking to the masses apparently who have been programmed with itchy upgrade dick syndrome (fear of obsolescence) and the manufacturers desire to sell new products all the time to the same people.  What did they do with the FT-818? Well they re-engineered the guts so that Yaesu could provide the same functionality with newer parts. That was it.  The interface for it works. Didn't need changing. You can drive it with your eyes shut.

Same with HP / Agilent / Keysight. Over the last 25 years some of their products haven't changed, like the E36xx platform and the 34401A for example. When you look at their newer lines, taking the E36312A for example, there are still physical controls. Even the high end InfiniVision 6000 scopes with the touch screen still have ALL of the primary controls on the panel with no channel sharing for example. They paid for a user study.

This is simply the bottom end of the market throwing cost cutting fad crap out to outdo each other and not even bothering to do a user study.

I'll throw another "right" user interface on the table:



I'd just like to say that the DG1022Z interface isn't great, especially if you compare to the above, but the thing is an order of magnitude better than the newer touch devices for sure.

[blackdog]

Hi tautech,

The fact that it is "modern" to have a touch control does not mean that this is a good interface for the device to which it is applied.
Almost everything in this world is driven by economics, and I can tell you, that's not a good thing, and I think you are intelligent enough to understand what I mean.

Also the Rigol generator is a good example that this is driven by the Marketers, Marketers are a really bad religion... They will demolish this world just by their drive to profit maximization.
Siglent is not different, there are so many companies that take on the bad decisions from their competitors to get 0.1% more profit in the short term...

Lets remove all the buttons! Easy, look how modern we are, look at al the option we put in it! look at al the nice colors we use, bullshit housing,
and you cant put anything on top of it and that for only for 324$!!!

And now some remarks on my Siglent SDG2042 generator.   
It has a touch screen, i almost never use it, why you may ask? (you will problely think it's a nother old fart) yes i am!

I will explain it to you, when I am measuring an object I would like to keep my brain on the object,
the attention should not be drawn away by a too small screen where I have to press exactly on a position to set e.g. the output voltage, its a hell to do that....

The modern scoops and spectrum analyser with their large screens are easier to operate with a touch screen than the standard size housing such as the Siglent SDG 2042, HP 34401A, Fluke 8840A etc.

Another big mistake made by many manufacturers, on LAB power supplies is this,
I want to have a separate button for the voltage and a separate button for the current setting.
For function generators I want to have a separate button for the output level.
It always takes a lot of time to switch to modern generators to switch from frequency settings to output voltage settings and back again.

It is clear to me that the people who determine which buttons are placed on a function generator, take very few measurements themselves...

The Siglent good stuf!
I can also tell you that I am very happy with the Siglent SDG 2042, why? it is not the touch screen witch make's me cry...
This generator delivers the best square wave or pulse if you stay below 1MHz., now happy tears 
If the frequency is exactly 1MHz then the block/pulse response is not so perfect but still very good, at exactly 1MHz or higher something is switched in the generator to make the perfection go away.
It is better in this, than my HAMEG HMF2525 en my Rigol DG4162 generators.

Because of these good features of the SDG 2042 generator, it is regularly used by me for testing broadband amplifiers or adjusting scope probes.
And i can even use it to make reasonable distortion measurements on audio equipment with its lower than 0.01% distortion (< 0.007% measured with my Audio Presision measuringSet)
So its not all bad... 

Kind regards,
Bram

[tautech]

@ blackdog
I don't disagree with anything you've said and it's good to get the opinions out into the open and invite/incite discussion. Of course there will be extremes of views both for and against ............anything.

WRT touch interfaces, they are still in their youth but look how far they have come in just a couple of decades when not long before that, encoders surfaced to replace pots and/or ganged switches when most thought they would be with us for all time. These touch interfaces are becoming very reliable as there no membranes, buttons or encoders to wear or fail. We see them everywhere, even the parking meter where I went to demo scopes the other day had no buttons, only credit card slot and a touch screen. 

It's called progress and not all like it or embrace it, that I very much understand.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Touchscreens are a useful and welcome addition to testgear functionality, but it's an augmentation,  not a replacement,.Things like text entry, annotation, selecting from a long menu and dragging waveforms are genuinely useful enhancements, but gestures like pinch-zooming simply don't work on vertically oriented screens, because fingernails and joint geometry

One issue I've noticed  is that adding a fancy GUI has slowed down the response to hard buttons to near-unusability -e.g. on the  R&S RTB/RTM, the conventional double-presss on a channel button to turn it on/off is rendered essentially nonfunctional because of the excessive time taken to animate the opening the menu.

[mikeselectricstuff]

IMO the arguments for/against touch controls are somewhat different for measuring instruments vs. things like siggens and PSUs.
With a measuring instrument you are always going to be looking at the screen while adjusting, but for generators you may well be looking elsewhere, like looking at another instrument or checking for smoke.

[netdudeuk]

I notice that the channel and memory upgrades are via licenses as with some of the other devices.  I wonder how long it will be before there's an equivalent riglol fix for them.

[bd139]

I notice that the channel and memory upgrades are via licenses as with some of the other devices.  I wonder how long it will be before there's an equivalent riglol fix for them.

A couple of hours after the right person gets their hands on them

[thm_w]

I'll throw another "right" user interface on the table:



I'd just like to say that the DG1022Z interface isn't great, especially if you compare to the above, but the thing is an order of magnitude better than the newer touch devices for sure.

DG1022Z interface is a huge improvement over that:
- multiple important on screen info shown at the same time, no need to scroll
- dedicated numerical keys
- dedicated channel output select

[bd139]

To note I wasn’t comparing the interface of the DG1022Z to the 33120A but the 33120A to the DG832.

The 33120A is single channel and none of the buttons are double press contextual like the DG1022Z which is rather annoying. Also with the DG1022Z setting the power reference impedance is a dick no less than about three menus down.

[MrW0lf]

You really need get out more ! 

Do you mean citypersons gathering in coffee bar and touching eachothers screens Then ya... But if one actually gets out eg powersports, ice fishing or whatever that involves mud, blood or negative temperatures then all you want is rugged devices with hard to press buttons eg Garmin 78. And I do (sadly) have high end smartphone with huge touchscreen so I have something to align against.

Just to wind some of ya's up some more, in not too many years I predict there will be instrument ranges from many manufacturers only available with touch displays and also ranges of instruments with physical controls too but at an additional cost.
Such is the pace of change in the last few decades.

 

But you see if we talking about calm soothing lab environment its all been rendered obsolete in 1968 with public demonstration of computer mouse
Progress is not always linear. Now many high end scopes etc get touch interfaces all being stroked with passion in promo videos but afterwards they secretly attach mouse...

So beware, sometimes with age you just succumb to social=media pressure.

[Bassman59]

I’m not a kid any more, and like all of you I have an opinion about capacitive touch-screen displays. For example, in my other life as a live sound mix-person, touch screens have really taken over. And whether that’s good or bad is wholly in how the entire user interface is designed. For example, the new thing about mixing on an iPad as the only interface? It’s totally great for a bar system where it’s set and forget, and it’s a godsend for ringing out monitor wedges. But you can’t mix a show on it for a reason alluded to above. Someone mentioned adjusting the signal generator while watching the result on an oscilloscope, and that’s exactly it. I watch the lead singer with my finger on his channel fader. If I have to look down to find it on a flat screen, I’ve already missed the cue.

But for other things, the touch screen gives me what I need when I need it, like on the Soundcraft Vi series or DiGico consoles. Touch the channel, it all opens up, and the row of knobs lets me adjust something. And faders are always available.

Back to this signal generator. The touch screen is of course the latest cool thing, all the kids like touch screens, blah blah. But it is also a money-saver, or at least allows reallocating BOM cost to where it matters most. So, let me see, I can get a 14-bit generator for $300 with a lot of buttons, or I can get a 16-bit generator with fewer buttons and a touch screen for that $300.

I know what I prefer.

[simone.pignatti]

here are 2 nice pictures

[bd139]

Can you crack one open so we can see the guts?

[blackdog]

Hi simone.pignatti,

Thaks for the pictures, but it is of far more importance how the puls responce is of these generators...
So 1KHZ, 100KHz, 1MHz, 10MHZ 50% duty cycles is ok for the first impression, this all at minimal edge time.
So, what about professional 50 Ohm coax cables, 50 Ohm in line therminators from MiniCircuits or a other good brand.
Whit a fast edge generator you wil see the difference between the 50 Ohm therminator in your scoop or a good 50 Ohm inline therminator.

Check the responce on different frequencys and different output levels, and yes... somtimes your mouth drops open when you see the difference in performance 

If you are using a spectrum analyser, use also inline attenuators, minimal 20 db to be sure your generator sees a relative good 50 ohm load and don't overload your spectrum analyzer!
Most spectrum analysers are not a nice 50 Ohm input over a broad frequency range...

Just some tips, maybe you know this already, then i shut up 

Kind regards,
Bram

[Berni]

And id like to see a jitter test.

Set the generator to a weird non round frequency square wave such as 10.123456 MHz. Trigger on one of the edges then move the time on the scope to the next rising and next falling edge.