Hi Rich
In the other thread "RTB2000" specific. Mike has done a 55 min. video on serial decodes. For the most part, I am very pleased with the capability & features.
His comments on the framing for UART framing are "valid" in my opinion. It appears for the decode purposes the framing is "1 symbol" as stipulated Baud rate definition. Baud rate = number of symbol changes per sec.
But, the more useful form of framing is as Mike states "is a sequence of symbols".
1) Even the simplistic form of Frame defined as "20 symbols
1 " would be a huge improvement.
2) Frame defined as "arbitrary start symbol"+ "all symbols here" +"arbitrary stop symbol" Would be even more useful.
- Example: (STX) + "Hello World" + (ETX) is a text frame in the ancient world of ASCII
I don't know if this is possible, but it would be a HUGE differentiator for your scope!OOP's when I put the literal 20 in "20 symbols1 " , I meant an unsigned integer variable(1) Symbol is defined as "Number of data bits", symbol frame = databits + stop bits ... etc
Hi Rich
In the other thread "RTB2000" specific. Mike has done a 55 min. video on serial decodes. For the most part, I am very pleased with the capability & features.
His comments on the framing for UART framing are "valid" in my opinion. It appears for the decode purposes the framing is "1 symbol" as stipulated Baud rate definition. Baud rate = number of symbol changes per sec.
But, the more useful form of framing is as Mike states "is a sequence of symbols".
1) Even the simplistic form of Frame defined as "20 symbols1 " would be a huge improvement.
2) Frame defined as "arbitrary start symbol"+ "all symbols here" +"arbitrary stop symbol" Would be even more useful.
- Example: (STX) + "Hello World" + (ETX) is a text frame in the ancient world of ASCII
I don't know if this is possible, but it would be a HUGE differentiator for your scope!
(1) Symbol is defined as "Number of data bits", symbol frame = databits + stop bits ... etc
Hi irakandjii - thanks for pointing this out. My understanding is R&D in Germany has already reviewed Mike's video and has put together a list of answers, enhancements and bug fixes and has provided that to our local person in the UK to pass on to Mike. I actually haven't seen the list yet, so I can't say how this was specific topic was answered, but please stay tuned.
-Rich
Hi Rich
In the other thread "RTB2000" specific. Mike has done a 55 min. video on serial decodes. For the most part, I am very pleased with the capability & features.
His comments on the framing for UART framing are "valid" in my opinion. It appears for the decode purposes the framing is "1 symbol" as stipulated Baud rate definition. Baud rate = number of symbol changes per sec.
But, the more useful form of framing is as Mike states "is a sequence of symbols".
1) Even the simplistic form of Frame defined as "20 symbols1 " would be a huge improvement.
2) Frame defined as "arbitrary start symbol"+ "all symbols here" +"arbitrary stop symbol" Would be even more useful.
- Example: (STX) + "Hello World" + (ETX) is a text frame in the ancient world of ASCII
I don't know if this is possible, but it would be a HUGE differentiator for your scope!
(1) Symbol is defined as "Number of data bits", symbol frame = databits + stop bits ... etc
Framing each byte makes no sense whatsoever and would have no useful purpose. Framing packets would be useful and be consistent with how SPI decode behaves.
I don't think they should bother with STX/ETX etc. as they are wider and there are still all the top-bit set values to deal with - 2 hex digits is just fine.
Hi Rich,
I have a question about the R&S 'scope range. But first a little background.
Five or six years ago, when R&S first entered the 'scope market, I bought (well I selected, my then employer bought) two of your 1GHz four channel 'scopes. I think the list price was close to £30,000 UKP. Unfortunately I don't remember the model number.
As you should expect for that kind of money they were absolutely superb pieces of kit. Very low noise high resolution measuring machines. Typical R&S quality.
Since then, R&S have acquired Hameg. Now all Hameg designs are badged as R&S.
Now I'm sure there were very good business reasons for doing this, but Hameg sold into the high end hobbiest / low end electronics market. They didn't have R&S's attention to detail and they didn't pretend to.
Could you please tell us which of the current lines are designed in house at R&S and which are Hameg 'scopes.
I'm sure you will tell us that R&S have been working hard to bring your quality to the lower end 'scopes. I'd be very interested to know what has been done on that front.
Hi John - thanks for the feedback. While we may not add new features to the RTO1000 (some things can't be done with it), we will of course continue to fix bugs. Please feel free to PM your bugs and I can make sure they are submitted.
-Rich
Thanks. As I mentioned before, the actual measurement capability is excellent, especially the low noise even on the 1mV/div scale. I will reiterate that the support I received was generally very good.
My rant about scopes just means that I would like you to succeed in this market and provide the other scope vendors some serious competition.
John
Hi Rich,
Is the RTB compatible with the Hameg HO3508 logic probe? Got a hmo and probably getting a second scope soon so compatibility would be nice.
Was able to track this down. The short answer is yes, the HO3508 will work on the RTB. The longer answer is you have to be careful with the ZL03 (replacement for the HO3508) going to a Hameg and back to the RTB. If you run alignment on the HMO it will flash those alignment values to the ZL03. The RTB's ZL03s are calibrated at the factory, so there is no alignment routine for them on the RTB and the ZL03 would need to be sent back in to be realigned.
TL;DR: HO3508 works on RTB. Don't use ZL03 on HMO and run alignment and then bring it back to RTB. Best to keep your ZL03 with your RTBs.
-Rich
Hi Rich,
I just got my RTB2004 launch special. Awesome scope. Just one comment: R&S should really supply the correct color probe cable markers.
The trace colors on the scope are yellow, green, orange and blue. The colors of the small clips that come with the probes are: green, orange, blue and pink. So pink is totally wrong and the blue is a darker one compared to the trace on the scope, which probably is not too bad.
Just wanted to mention this.
Michael
Hi,
I wanted to ask about the NGE103 PSU because the broshure does not mention about it. If you can use the PSU as a total of three separated units, can you serialize two channels in opposite order? Let's say to split 30V in +15 and -15 by connecting the ground of one channel to the hot of another and using the bridge as ground?
Thanks.
Yes, you can. The three channels are fully floating and isolated. I'll hopefully get mine today, so if you want to know anything more just ask. Although I have to mention that I'm just building up my lab here, so I don't have much stuff yet to try.
Hi Rich,
I have a question about the R&S 'scope range. But first a little background.
Five or six years ago, when R&S first entered the 'scope market, I bought (well I selected, my then employer bought) two of your 1GHz four channel 'scopes. I think the list price was close to £30,000 UKP. Unfortunately I don't remember the model number.
As you should expect for that kind of money they were absolutely superb pieces of kit. Very low noise high resolution measuring machines. Typical R&S quality.
Since then, R&S have acquired Hameg. Now all Hameg designs are badged as R&S.
Now I'm sure there were very good business reasons for doing this, but Hameg sold into the high end hobbiest / low end electronics market. They didn't have R&S's attention to detail and they didn't pretend to.
Could you please tell us which of the current lines are designed in house at R&S and which are Hameg 'scopes.
I'm sure you will tell us that R&S have been working hard to bring your quality to the lower end 'scopes. I'd be very interested to know what has been done on that front.
^^ Cough ^^
Not sure if you missed this Rich, or declined to answer.
Am really interested to know what has gone on behind the scenes. Are there two design teams? If one team, is it the old Hameg guys, the old R&S guys or a combination?
Why is R&S so secretive about their prices? On a lots of occasions i wanted to buy or recommend your products to the management team and we have no idea what the prices are. R&S should really change this poor marketing decision.
If I visit the Keysight web page all the prices are there for the world to see.
I think R&S promotes the image that their products are the best in the world and if you have to ask the price you not the kind of customer that R&S wants. To me this is poor marketing.
Then theres the general lack of availability of manuals on the web page. Not every manual is published or a available. When I find a company that does not want to release information to a potential customer even if I purchased the unit second hand it makes me very nervous about buying such equipment. R&S seem to be control freaks regarding the release of information.
Dont get me wrong, I love the excellent product range. But R&S seem to be a very elitist company who want to seem to only want to pursue the very top buyers in the market. I could be wrong about this assumption?
Hi Rich,
I have a question about the R&S 'scope range. But first a little background.
Five or six years ago, when R&S first entered the 'scope market, I bought (well I selected, my then employer bought) two of your 1GHz four channel 'scopes. I think the list price was close to £30,000 UKP. Unfortunately I don't remember the model number.
As you should expect for that kind of money they were absolutely superb pieces of kit. Very low noise high resolution measuring machines. Typical R&S quality.
Since then, R&S have acquired Hameg. Now all Hameg designs are badged as R&S.
Now I'm sure there were very good business reasons for doing this, but Hameg sold into the high end hobbiest / low end electronics market. They didn't have R&S's attention to detail and they didn't pretend to.
Could you please tell us which of the current lines are designed in house at R&S and which are Hameg 'scopes.
I'm sure you will tell us that R&S have been working hard to bring your quality to the lower end 'scopes. I'd be very interested to know what has been done on that front.
^^ Cough ^^
Not sure if you missed this Rich, or declined to answer.
Am really interested to know what has gone on behind the scenes. Are there two design teams? If one team, is it the old Hameg guys, the old R&S guys or a combination?
Hi vealmike - sorry I hadn't responded to this. I believe I responded in the RTB2000 thread to a similar question, but that thread is massive so it is easily missed.
In general, the teams have been together for some time (Hameg joined R&S back in 2005), but up to this point the HMO scopes have used the same architecture. The RTB2000 is one of our first scopes that has been designed by a combination of our development teams from the ground up with new R&S ASICs, SW, etc.
So short answer - it is a combination.
-Rich
Why is R&S so secretive about their prices? On a lots of occasions i wanted to buy or recommend your products to the management team and we have no idea what the prices are. R&S should really change this poor marketing decision.
If I visit the Keysight web page all the prices are there for the world to see.
I think R&S promotes the image that their products are the best in the world and if you have to ask the price you not the kind of customer that R&S wants. To me this is poor marketing.
Then theres the general lack of availability of manuals on the web page. Not every manual is published or a available. When I find a company that does not want to release information to a potential customer even if I purchased the unit second hand it makes me very nervous about buying such equipment. R&S seem to be control freaks regarding the release of information.
Dont get me wrong, I love the excellent product range. But R&S seem to be a very elitist company who want to seem to only want to pursue the very top buyers in the market. I could be wrong about this assumption?
Hi charliedelta - it's actually a lot less sinister than that
For decades we've been an engineering company run by engineers. Marketing was not top of mind. But we are trying to get better (without losing our focus on creating the best products possible). Unfortunately, many of our processes do not support this yet (and because of that, combined with a worldwide sales) it makes it difficult to implement today. But, you'll see things like prices start to show up (hopefully soon in North America). It's just taking time. And almost all of our manuals for newer products (I say almost because I'm not involved with all our products - I'm sure there is an exception - but things like our scopes have all their manuals on the web) are on the web today and we also have a customer portal called "gloris" (gloris.rohde-schwarz.com) that owners of products can register at and get manuals from as well.
Hope this helps and sorry for the challenges.
-Rich
Hi Rich,
I received my RTB2004 this week and I'm loving it so far
Before getting my hands on it I didn't think much of the touchscreen (been fine without it up to now) but I really like it. It's very quick and user friendly for some types of inputs and adjustments. The physical controls and touch complement each other to great effect.
Mainly I wanted to report a bug I found where the channel that the cursors are active for doesn't always update properly as channels are being turned on and off. For example, with cursors on CH4, turn on CH1 and turn off CH4 -> cursors instantly switch to CH1. Do the same but starting with CH1 on, and cursors don't auto-switch to CH4. I noticed this when I was only using CH4 and I turned on cursors to play around and get a feel for things, but the cursor measurements were reading from CH1 oddly. See screenshot...
(exception: if the cursor menu is open and SOURCE is the active field, the auto-switching works)
I have FW 1.204
Also, they missed a typo in the current user manual, search "Troggering"
Thanks Norks - I've submitted these to the team.
-Rich
Hi Rich, some more issues I encountered....
1. When using the general purpose knob to change trigger sources, the highlighted selection in the menu doesn't update until the scope fully switches to the new trigger source which takes ~1 second. So it's a clunky wait time before you get visual feedback on which source is currently selected. For example, if you want to move 3 spaces down you can't really zip the wheel down the list, you kinda have to repeat the delay 3 times. Yes, using touch can get around it but the knobs should work well too ideally.
2. When you open the Horizontal menu, tap the Horizontal Position field, and use the general purpose knob to adjust it, The sensitivity of the knob doesn't scale, it only moves by the smallest increment. So even with a long time base or a large initial setting (e.g. +1 sec), turning the adj knob only changes it by nanoseconds at a time. I think the sensitivity should be tied to the time base. Granted you'll usually use the dedicated H-POSITION knob for this but again, other controls should still behave sensibly.
3. The 2nd time I played around with the logic pods they got into a funky state that showed lots of noise across all channels, both logic ports and both pods in any configuration. It looked like noise-induced false edges all over the signal lines. I had 4 lines hooked to the pattern generator but the noise was on all 16. I tried pod grounding, individual line grounding, clearing the bench of other cabling, disconnecting USB, no change. I went through the full range of threshold and hysteresis adjustments, again only insignificant effects. After giving up, I soft power cycled the scope and that restored clean signals. I haven't been able to recreate it so far.
4. In the Pattern Gen modes SQUARE, COUNTER, ARB, and MANUAL I don't think I like the behavior when the PATTERN STATE toggle switch (on/off switch) is turned off. It acts like a pause button where the last state (e.g. P0-3 = Hi Lo Lo Hi) is held at the output, rather than all lines going low which is what I expected. I haven't given it that much thought so I can believe the designers had their reasons for doing it that way.
5. In Pattern Gen - Arbitrary, after tapping INDEX the touchscreen control to slide the index has weird behavior when you're already at the very beginning (i.e. index -1 is on screen). The index moves opposite your finger motion. The motion is correct when viewing somewhere in the middle of the pattern, but when it can't scroll further left you see the weird behavior.
6. I think the protocol decode function for "Parallel" bus should have the option for a user defined virtual clock rate. As it works now, if 2 or more consecutive symbols are the same they all get interpreted as 1 instance of that symbol. So when I generated this 4-bit hex stream: [F E E D F E E E D F E E E E D] the decode yielded: [F E D F E D F E D].
The user could use the "Parallel Clocked" bus but must have an external clock signal to feed it. You can't just tell it what clock rate or bit width to use to interpret the bus. The non-clocked Parallel mode doesn't seem useful as it currently works.
Thanks norks - I'll submit these to our enhancements/defects tracker.
-Rich
Hello Rich,
what is that in the middle of the first row in the picture ?, looks like a newer version of the HMC 8012 ?
Rich,
I found some bugs in the pattern generator on the new RTB2004:
1) When the output BNC is set to 10Mhz or Trigger Out the P3 (pattern output) does not work. However when output BNC is set to OFF or Generator, it does work.. P0, P1 and P2 are unaffected by the output BNC setting, very weird.
2) The pattern can run at 50Mhz, which implies a 20ns bit rate. However the pulse edges among P0, P1, P2 and P3 vary by several nanoseconds. So at high pattern rates it's sort of useless. Not sure how hard it would be to get these pulse edges lined up better, but it would make the pattern generator a lot more useful.
Thanks,
Katie
Rich,
I found some bugs in the pattern generator on the new RTB2004:
1) When the output BNC is set to 10Mhz or Trigger Out the P3 (pattern output) does not work. However when output BNC is set to OFF or Generator, it does work.. P0, P1 and P2 are unaffected by the output BNC setting, very weird.
2) The pattern can run at 50Mhz, which implies a 20ns bit rate. However the pulse edges among P0, P1, P2 and P3 vary by several nanoseconds. So at high pattern rates it's sort of useless. Not sure how hard it would be to get these pulse edges lined up better, but it would make the pattern generator a lot more useful.
Thanks,
Katie
Thanks Katie - I'll submit these bugs.
-Rich
how many ENOB does RTB2000 have at 70,100,200 and 300mhz?
does it have rectangular/boxcar or gaussian/eres window in high resolution mode?
Not really a question,more like loud thinking,the boxcar window function have perfect time domain response,no ringing,but it have ripple in freqency domain instead of the smooth curve of gaussian window.Does that mean that if I am using FFT while in high resolution boxcar mode,that the FFT will give distorted reading caused by the freqency domain ripple of the boxcar window?