new killer scope in town - a true game changer from R&S - RTB2002 & RTB2004

[MrW0lf]

A scope with such a feature would have indeed a BIG USP!!!

Mine can do any RGB, incl background, grid etc.

[snoopy]

Being colorblind I have a hard time telling CH1 from CH2 in my Agilent DSO-X3012A, which are Green and Yellow (I can't tell you which is which...). It would be fantastic to have yellow and blue for example, but it can't be adjusted.

I have been unable to find a reference to this on the RTB2000 manual. Can someone confirm if the colors can actually be changed? That would be a great selling point for us colorblinds....

Thank you,
Roberto

Oh yeah. I have the same problem. And as EVERY 20th male is effected, I am wondering for years why nobody ever had the idea of allowing a user defined color for each channel (even a selection list with just 16 entries would be fine). A scope with such a feature would have indeed a BIG USP!!!

Tektronix was ahead then with their TDS500/600/700 series. These allow to set/change all colors for the traces, user interface and hardcopy output.

Another thing these scopes got right was to allow the trigger to be set at 10% and 90% screen locations instead of the default 50%

cheers

[Someone]

Being colorblind I have a hard time telling CH1 from CH2 in my Agilent DSO-X3012A, which are Green and Yellow (I can't tell you which is which...). It would be fantastic to have yellow and blue for example, but it can't be adjusted.

Well, for the correct use of these 4 channel scopes which share (interleave,bond,etc) the adjacent channels you would use channels 1 and 3 (or 2 and 4) when only using 2 channels to maximise the memory depth and sampling rate. This is common across these R&S scopes and from the other majors Tek, Keysight, Lecroy etc

So in normal use the 2 channels of a 4 channel scope would be yellow and blue.

[bitwelder]

Oh yeah. I have the same problem. And as EVERY 20th male is effected, I am wondering for years why nobody ever had the idea of allowing a user defined color for each channel (even a selection list with just 16 entries would be fine). A scope with such a feature would have indeed a BIG USP!!!

For colorblind people, would it work if instead of using different colors for the traces the scope would use different 'pen styles', like continuous line, dotted, dashed, etc. ?
That would be useful also for non-colorblind people with screen hard-copies on colorblind b/w printers.

[JoHr]

Using different shapes to draw a waveform are nice ideas. But you´ll loose a lot of information about noise and your true signal if you just draw the waveform with fat point or a dashed line. And with a min. amount of 10kSa on the RTB this is nearly useless with about 10Samples per pixel column. The effect of a 'dots only' vs. a regular drawn waveform can only be seen if you have around 1Sa/px. Which is done on the fastest timebases.

So in case of color blind people  the changeing of the colors would be the more practical way to support this.

BTW ...  on references R&S offers of full set of colors for each reference waveform.

[Pinkus]

Oh yeah. I have the same problem. And as EVERY 20th male is effected, I am wondering for years why nobody ever had the idea of allowing a user defined color for each channel (even a selection list with just 16 entries would be fine). A scope with such a feature would have indeed a BIG USP!!!

For colorblind people, would it work if instead of using different colors for the traces the scope would use different 'pen styles', like continuous line, dotted, dashed, etc. ?
That would be useful also for non-colorblind people with screen hard-copies on colorblind b/w printers.

That would be too much work load for the display routines and it would slow down the scope. However, most color blind people are having a 'only' a red/green weakness - with all nuances.

And it differs how large an object is and what the shade (color mix / brightness) is. E.g. I cannot recognize a small red object on green gras. I should be lucky, that I am not a bird: I would not be able to find the red berries in a hedge from the distance and would starve to death. Only if I get close enough I am able to realize them. Two 10" papers one pure red and one pure green in front of me are easy to differentiate. A traffic light in front of me is easy - 200 meters away I cannot tell you for sure if it shows red or green - but the brightness for me is usually a good indicator). Same with LEDs: I cannot tell if a LED is red, yellow or green (this is why I HATE this duo-LEDs). If they are side by side I can see a difference, but with a single LED is impossible for me to see if it is red or yellow or green. The lane assist in my car uses a duo LED to show if it is active or now - I cannot see the difference. Now if the manufacturer at least would have made red (or green) a bit brighter or darker I would be able to recognize the difference - but they did not

And indeed on my MSOX3000 I used channel 1+3. However, I did purchase a 4 channel scope, as I often need 3 or 4 channels.
Thus: if a scope would offer the possibility to have a userdefined color for each channel, anybody would be able to select his favourites which would be the easiest to recognize/differentiate for him. It would be no big deal to add this to the software (as I said, a set of 16 different colors would be enough - so no 16 million RGB selector is needed). So developers listen: If somebody is interested, I would be glad to provide RGB colors which are easy to recognize / differentiate for the 5% men with a red/green weakness.
But this has nothing to do with the R&S scope, so lets close this discussion here and focus on the RTB2000 scope.

[Pinkus]

BTW ...  on references R&S offers of full set of colors for each reference waveform.

OH - so they would just need to add this for every channel. Maybe there is a scope god......

[JoHr]

'Pure' colors like yellow / green / cyan are often used cause of their higher contrast to a black background ( and the contrast within the color itself ).
And the color sensitivity to the human eye ... so a pure blue waveforn would be stupid.

[tautech]

'Pure' colors like yellow / green / cyan are often used cause of their higher contrast to a black background.
And the color sensitivity to the human eye ... so a pure blue waveforn would be stupid.

Not for inverted imagery like on a PC screen. (white background)

[JoHr]

'Pure' colors like yellow / green / cyan are often used cause of their higher contrast to a black background.
And the color sensitivity to the human eye ... so a pure blue waveforn would be stupid.

Not for inverted imagery like on a PC screen. (white background)

Sure ...  have you ever needed a scope with white background? Except printing on paper ...

[TheAmmoniacal]

The RTB2004 is definitely a beautiful scope, but way out of my budget! I do however like the HMO1002, and have messaged the local R&S distributor begging for a discount or package deal  (The logic probe for it is "#¤%/ $445 USD!)

Anyone had a play with the HMO1002? How does it compare to the DSOX1102G? They are the same price here. Damn it's hard deciding on a new scope these days 

[TK]

The RTB2004 is definitely a beautiful scope, but way out of my budget! I do however like the HMO1002, and have messaged the local R&S distributor begging for a discount or package deal  (The logic probe for it is "#¤%/ $445 USD!)

Anyone had a play with the HMO1002? How does it compare to the DSOX1102G? They are the same price here. Damn it's hard deciding on a new scope these days 

The DSOX1102G has only 1 digital input (shared with External Trigger Input)

[JoHr]

[oh2hyt]

Does the RTB2k take measurements using display time frame of sample memory (a bit like Tek) or from displayed data (like KS, requires zoom in to see valid rise time)?

[Octane]

As far as I remember from the last time a few days ago when I played around with it, as long as the sample rate is high enough, it measures the correct rise time. So the answer would be memory. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[agdr]

The BNC connectors on my R&S seem exceptionally "tight", in terms of little clearance between the circular ground barrel and the BNC female plug when pushed on.  These are Pomona BNC to BNC cables from Mouser, which should be about as standard as things get.  I've used these cables with all sorts of other equipment here and haven't had a problem.  The issue does seem to be with the R&S scope's BNC plugs.  They work, but require a bit of force each time to get the BNC cable on and off. 

Is anyone else experiencing this?  On one hand it is probably a good thing in terms of a solid connection.  On the other that gold plating, or whatever it is, isn't going to be on there long at this rate.  Also a bit concerning knowing these BNC plugs and held on by just solder on the PC board, no nut to the chassis.

[Joel_l]

I just tried about every BNC I have, several cable types, a 50Ohm terminator, a BNC to N adapter... everything fit fine. The probes that came with it were the tightest fitting thing I have.

Joel

[agdr]

Thanks for the test!  Hmmm...... might just be a few random ones like this one.  All 4 input BNCs on this one are tight.

[snoopy]

How does this scope handle SPI decodes ? Does it use the whole acquisition memory or just what is being displayed on the screen ? Can you search through the captured record for a certain byte pattern ?

[mikeselectricstuff]

How does this scope handle SPI decodes ? Does it use the whole acquisition memory or just what is being displayed on the screen ? Can you search through the captured record for a certain byte pattern ?

You can zoom in an decode anything in the acquisition memory, as well as showing a simultaneous full/zoomed view.
There is a "Protocol" entry in the "search type " manu but it's greyed out - according to help this should be able to search for trigger events but AFAICS it doesn't appear to work (tried with UART trigger)

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Another thing these scopes got right was to allow the trigger to be set at 10% and 90% screen locations instead of the default 50%

The Agilents let you choose that too, but none of the cheap-ish scopes istm.

[norks]

Mike, an update to the RTB2000 user manual was recently released, the main addition being a chapter on Serial Bus Analysis. In the UART section it said this about the bitrate... <pic>
So I'm optimistic the limit you found was a bug and eventually they'll bring it up to this number.

[eb4eqa]

Being colorblind I have a hard time telling CH1 from CH2 in my Agilent DSO-X3012A, which are Green and Yellow (I can't tell you which is which...). It would be fantastic to have yellow and blue for example, but it can't be adjusted.

Will you be able to pick 4 colors that you can easily tell apart from each other?

Yes, BLUE, RED, YELLOW & WHITE would do it (essentially avoiding colors that differ mostly on green or red component). And I would be happy with just TWO traces thank you

My old Lecroy Waverunner LT342 allowed for selecting the color of the traces. I regret having sold that scope...

Roberto

[mikeselectricstuff]

As the R&S already has a menu  for trace colour, it would be trivial to add a few other colour options, unless maybe it had knock-on effects on FPGA rendering etc., though the existing rainbow and invert intensity modes suggest there is probably a pallette lookup table somewhere.
With the RGB front-panel LEDs they could even make the buttons the corresponding colour. 

[mikeselectricstuff]

How does this scope handle SPI decodes ? Does it use the whole acquisition memory or just what is being displayed on the screen ? Can you search through the captured record for a certain byte pattern ?

You can zoom in an decode anything in the acquisition memory, as well as showing a simultaneous full/zoomed view.
There is a "Protocol" entry in the "search type " manu but it's greyed out - according to help this should be able to search for trigger events but AFAICS it doesn't appear to work (tried with UART trigger)

Looking at the updated manual (P152), it only explicitly mentions search in conjunction with CAN and LIN trigger.
Not sure why they would implement on some protocols and not others.