EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: Campus on May 13, 2015, 09:26:22 am
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Hi,
I know that these type of questions come again and again but I couldn't find an answer in the existing topics. I am about to buy a new Scope and these two are currently my favorites. Do you have any comments on these and what would you recommend?
Thanks for the help.
Campus
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I own both of these, they are very different beasts for very different applications. The fluke I use primarily for on site work and datalogging, on the bench it's main application is if working on mains circuits that it's totally isolated from mains earth so you don't have to worry about where you clip your earth leads.
For general bench use the Fluke is a bit clunky to use so I prefer the rigol there.
It really is all application specific, do you need isolation? Do you need 4Ch, Decode options? On site use?........... etc etc etc.
If you detail all your current and expected needs people will be able to give you better advice.
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Thanks for your quick reply. You are right, I should have described my needs much better.
I am a hobbyist and will use the scope mostly for model-train hardware (Bidib: http://www.bidib.org/index_e.html (http://www.bidib.org/index_e.html)) and probably also for some repairs. I know that probably any cheap scope would do it for me but I really do like working with tools of better quality, e.g. I really like my Fluke 289 while any cheap 30$ China-DMM would probably also do the job.
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I don't think the 199C is the job for you at all. Definitely something along the rigol range is what you should be looking at, I'm happy with the rigol and it generally gets a good press. For hobby and low level use it's hard to beat for value. My one criticism is that the decode options are not the best, you can decode RS232 etc (with an upgrade or hack) but I found it unreliable on long strings.
Actually, looking at your link the data bus looks like being one of the key requirements for measuring. If that's the case you will want to research that carefully to see if the Rigol has a good enough decode function, you could go for a seperate logic analyser for that job. Or if you had a budget to blow look at some of the Agilent 2000 or 3000.
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Unless you are crawling around under the track looking at signals anywhere and everywhere, the Rigol will be a much better buy. es the Fluke is high quality but its use is fairly limited with its features compared to the Rigol.
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Actually, looking at your link the data bus looks like being one of the key requirements for measuring. If that's the case you will want to research that carefully to see if the Rigol has a good enough decode function, you could go for a seperate logic analyser for that job. Or if you had a budget to blow look at some of the Agilent 2000 or 3000.
The low-level BiDiB protocol seems to be simple async serial transmission at RS-485 levels, half-duplex, although with somewhat unusual parameters (500 kBaud, 9N1). In principle, any digital scope with serial decoding should be able to handle that. But I agree: If the focus is on analyzing data on the BiDiB bus, and no fast analog signal analysis is required, something like a Salae PC-based logic analyzer might be more convenient than a stand-alone scope.