Teardown of the UNRELEASED Digilent Analog Discovery Pro ADP2230
It will be released on the 29th Feb 2024 for US$695
Featuring the AvE Widlarizer!
00:00 - Mystery Mailbag - The Analog Discovery Pro ADP2230
02:24 - Turns out this won't be released for 2 months!
02:58 - Product comparison with Analog Discovery 3
03:59 - Not even the Beta software has support yet
04:33 - Lower cost Pro model
06:01 - First impression
08:31 - Teardown
10:09 - This calls for the AvE Widlarizer!
11:19 - PCB
14:08 - PCB comparison with AD3
15:57 - Oscilloscope Front End
18:18 - Conclusion
Analog Discovery 3 Review:
Proper tooling applied @10:27
Not too shabby design.
(The current price of the XC7S50 is completely nuts. About $87 per 1. Never seen something like this. The Spartan-7 is kinda the "entry-level" FPGA at Xilinx. And the -50 version is not the smallest for sure, but still relatively modest. Sure you may have better deals buying direct, but still. Expect about twice what it would have cost a couple years ago...)
Looks a bit mechanically flimsy to me for that price. Those funny looking rounded BNC jacks seem to be soldered to the PCB. I have the AD2, which is nice and useful but doesn't pretend to be some kind of benchtop instrument, unlike this unit which is probably so light that it will go flying across the room as soon as you pull a coax.
Hard to know as Digikey FPGA pricing is always off. Grey market has XC7S50 as low as $20 each: https://octopart.com/search?q=XC7S50¤cy=USD&specs=0
You can safely ignore FPGA pricing from all the vendors, it has nothing to do with the real pricing of the ICs.
Case in point, NVidia Gsync module for ~100 EUR with a "700 EUR" FPGA on it.
Looks a bit mechanically flimsy to me for that price. Those funny looking rounded BNC jacks seem to be soldered to the PCB. I have the AD2, which is nice and useful but doesn't pretend to be some kind of benchtop instrument, unlike this unit which is probably so light that it will go flying across the room as soon as you pull a coax.
Not only that, the case is also like out of a mom-and-pop shop. When i saw it , i was like "really?".
Just like in cars, use plastic pieces to cover the engine. Does Digilent think their customers are incompetent at electronics, so it's best to hide the screws?
Maybe they believe that the buyers are fashion designers who only care about the looks?
A tip for removing stuck metal screws in plastic is to slightly heat the screwdriver and letting the heat transfer to the screw. Also good for removing screws with threadlocker, although with more heat.
How do people think of the ADP2230 versus the AD3 (Analog Discovery 3), for somebody learning/starting out?
I did watch the teardown video above (although ), and also the only other video about the ADP2230 I could find from @knitronics (
). However, a lot of it probably went over my head.
From what I can gather:
- They're both 2 channels - if I want 4 channels, I need to go up to the Analog Discovery Pro 3000 line
- The ADP2230 has slightly higher bandwidth at 50Mhz versus 30Mhz
- the ADP2230 has physical BNC connectors already built in (versus needing to use a BNC breakout for the AD3)
- the ADP2230 programmable power supply has slightly higher output (1A versus 800mA)
The AD3 is $379 ($249 with a student discount)
The ADP2230 is $749 ($636.65 with a student discount) - so there is a bit of a jump in price.
Is the ADP2230 worth the extra money here (even at the student discount)? What do people think?
Hello,
I suspect that the bandwidth difference between Analog Discovery [,2,3] and ADP2230 is not significant.
I am disappointed with the ADP2230. The large memory is nice, and USB 3 is nice.
But you can no longer use the Curvetracer application. You lose the differential inputs. It still works with digital zoom.
The advantage of the Analog Discovery [,2,3] for me is that it's a small lab. The flywire is ideal for working with breadboards. The differential inputs are useful for analyzing circuits in teaching.
With the new WaveForms and two AD3 you get an oscillograph with four differential channels and four generators and I think four voltage sources. That's nice.
Somehow the ADP2230 is neither meat nor fish. Where is the area of application?
A funny effect. The AD [,2,3] has 30 pins and there are five 6 pin male headers to change the gender.
The ADP2230 has 32 pins and also five 6 pin male headers to change the gender. Nobody seems to have noticed this yet. But maybe you don't need ten ground connections.
What also bothers me, is that many computers have few USB-C sockets. The ADP2230 and AD3 comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable. Why is that? Many therefore need an additional adapter and I know from experience that many of these adapters are only capable of USB 2, even if they are offered as USB 3.
I also find it very frustrating, when you have bought an ADP2230 and when you get it and are already looking forward to it, you realize that you can't connect it at all and have to wait until you get an adapter.
Why not get a new, affordable 12-bit oscillograph?
Perhaps one AD3 and one Siglent SDS804X HD brings very much more benefit for a little more money.
Best regards
egonotto
Perhaps one AD3 and one Siglent SDS804X HD brings very much more benefit for a little more money.
...............
That would not be bad idea.
Real scope and AD3 for what AD3 does best.