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| Digilent Analog Discovery 3 announced (June 14 release) |
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| jasonRF:
--- Quote from: Weston on May 31, 2023, 11:45:52 pm ---At a $400+ price point the AD3 (or the AD2) does not seem like a very good value for the money. Once you throw in the added cost of the BNC adapter board and oscilloscope probes the AD3 costs more than entry level DSO from Rigol/Siglent with a built in waveform generator and is not too much cheaper than a entry/edu level scope from Tek/Agilent. --- End quote --- In the US the AD2 often sold for $419 including the BNC adapter and two probes, and it looks like the AD3 will be about the same. Can you tell me which Rigol/Siglent models have built-in waveform generators and cost less? In any case, I think the AD2/AD3 compete more against other USB scopes than against traditional bench gear. And in that market I think the AD3 pricing isn't bad considering it is in the category of 'nice' USB scopes that work as advertised and have reasonable software with a lot of features. The closest 'nice' device in terms of performance that I am aware of is the picoscope 2205a MSO which sells for $539. It has 2 analog and 16 digital channels, nominally 25 MHz bandwidth, 48 kSamples shared memory, and can use all channels simultaneously at 250 MS/s (500 MS/s with only 1 analog or 8 digital channels). It does have a proper front-end with 4 mV/div sensitivity, and with an 8-bit ADC that makes it twice as sensitive as the AD. But the single-channel 1 MHz function generator (+/-2V, 600 Ohm output impedance) is way wimpier than the AD, it doesn't have true differential inputs if/when you want them, no pattern generator, and no power supply. Do I wish the AD3 was cheaper? Yes! But I think it is priced competitively. jason |
| J-R:
Actually, the AD2 frequently could be bought direct from Digilent with $200 off if you buy a development board, of which a common choice was about $100. So that would be $299 for the base kit. (It currently is being listed for $299 as well.) Then they also have offered 10% off coupons for signing up to their newsletter. Finally, they offer student pricing, which you really just need access to a school/university e-mail address to access that. So add it all up and the AD2 was quite a bit less. |
| Nominal Animal:
--- Quote from: Anthocyanina on June 01, 2023, 05:43:37 am ---i asked them for more information, and they replied, with regards to USB speed, it will still be USB 2.0 --- End quote --- Sad. I was hoping it would be USB 3, so it could stream the ADC data at 14 bits, 125 MS/s (2 Gbit/s + USB overhead), continuously. Many/most Windows machines probably can't handle that kind of USB bandwidth (in an userspace application), but who cares? |
| David Aurora:
--- Quote from: jasonRF on June 02, 2023, 12:17:36 pm --- --- Quote from: Weston on May 31, 2023, 11:45:52 pm ---At a $400+ price point the AD3 (or the AD2) does not seem like a very good value for the money. Once you throw in the added cost of the BNC adapter board and oscilloscope probes the AD3 costs more than entry level DSO from Rigol/Siglent with a built in waveform generator and is not too much cheaper than a entry/edu level scope from Tek/Agilent. --- End quote --- In the US the AD2 often sold for $419 including the BNC adapter and two probes, and it looks like the AD3 will be about the same. Can you tell me which Rigol/Siglent models have built-in waveform generators and cost less? In any case, I think the AD2/AD3 compete more against other USB scopes than against traditional bench gear. And in that market I think the AD3 pricing isn't bad considering it is in the category of 'nice' USB scopes that work as advertised and have reasonable software with a lot of features. The closest 'nice' device in terms of performance that I am aware of is the picoscope 2205a MSO which sells for $539. It has 2 analog and 16 digital channels, nominally 25 MHz bandwidth, 48 kSamples shared memory, and can use all channels simultaneously at 250 MS/s (500 MS/s with only 1 analog or 8 digital channels). It does have a proper front-end with 4 mV/div sensitivity, and with an 8-bit ADC that makes it twice as sensitive as the AD. But the single-channel 1 MHz function generator (+/-2V, 600 Ohm output impedance) is way wimpier than the AD, it doesn't have true differential inputs if/when you want them, no pattern generator, and no power supply. Do I wish the AD3 was cheaper? Yes! But I think it is priced competitively. jason --- End quote --- The issue with the Picoscope alternative has always been the half assed software. Diligent absolutely crushes them on that. I don't know why both companies are so locked into only working on half of the system each. Picoscope T&M 7 could have been a game changer, but after the eternity it took for a "stable" release it wasn't even stable. And at the other end- Diligent could have simply banged on a couple BNCs, done something about the input ranges and made the AD3 an absolute cracker... but they didn't. I really don't know what either of them are thinking with a lot of this stuff. |
| Anthocyanina:
--- Quote from: David Aurora on June 03, 2023, 08:36:23 am --- --- Quote from: jasonRF on June 02, 2023, 12:17:36 pm --- --- Quote from: Weston on May 31, 2023, 11:45:52 pm ---At a $400+ price point the AD3 (or the AD2) does not seem like a very good value for the money. Once you throw in the added cost of the BNC adapter board and oscilloscope probes the AD3 costs more than entry level DSO from Rigol/Siglent with a built in waveform generator and is not too much cheaper than a entry/edu level scope from Tek/Agilent. --- End quote --- In the US the AD2 often sold for $419 including the BNC adapter and two probes, and it looks like the AD3 will be about the same. Can you tell me which Rigol/Siglent models have built-in waveform generators and cost less? In any case, I think the AD2/AD3 compete more against other USB scopes than against traditional bench gear. And in that market I think the AD3 pricing isn't bad considering it is in the category of 'nice' USB scopes that work as advertised and have reasonable software with a lot of features. The closest 'nice' device in terms of performance that I am aware of is the picoscope 2205a MSO which sells for $539. It has 2 analog and 16 digital channels, nominally 25 MHz bandwidth, 48 kSamples shared memory, and can use all channels simultaneously at 250 MS/s (500 MS/s with only 1 analog or 8 digital channels). It does have a proper front-end with 4 mV/div sensitivity, and with an 8-bit ADC that makes it twice as sensitive as the AD. But the single-channel 1 MHz function generator (+/-2V, 600 Ohm output impedance) is way wimpier than the AD, it doesn't have true differential inputs if/when you want them, no pattern generator, and no power supply. Do I wish the AD3 was cheaper? Yes! But I think it is priced competitively. jason --- End quote --- The issue with the Picoscope alternative has always been the half assed software. Diligent absolutely crushes them on that. I don't know why both companies are so locked into only working on half of the system each. Picoscope T&M 7 could have been a game changer, but after the eternity it took for a "stable" release it wasn't even stable. And at the other end- Diligent could have simply banged on a couple BNCs, done something about the input ranges and made the AD3 an absolute cracker... but they didn't. I really don't know what either of them are thinking with a lot of this stuff. --- End quote --- i don't know about Picoscope, but yeah, on Digilent's side, i wouldn't say BNCs would be super important, particularly at the bandwidth offered by the AD3, but even one extra voltage range, a 1vpp full scale range would have made it much more appealing. too late to call this one an AD2.5, lose some money, spend a few months updating the front end to support an extra voltage range, then release a 3 voltage range AD3 at the 400$ the AD2 used to cost lately? of course it's too late :scared: but one can dream :=\ |
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