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

[pdenisowski]

I went from Tektronix to R&S, sorry I did, Tektronix treated me a lot better AND it was a more dependable instrument. When I had a problem with my R&S scope they basically told me to get lost.
In fact, I just bought a Keithley bench meter, much better support and even offered to write scripts for my individual applications. GW Instek also treated me a lot better than R&S.

Horrible company, wouldn't buy a pretzel from them ever again. Have fun sitting around your board rooms trying to figure out how to survive China. My guess? You won't!

I'm very sorry to hear that, and that's certainly not the way we want any of our customers to feel.  Please feel free to PM me with details and I would be very happy to look into this.

[pdenisowski]

In my experience, they don't even care if someone points out an error in a document and doesn't even want anything from them

That's very surprising to me.  Can you post (or PM) details? 

[Darkover]

And the “low-cost series” RTB that was released was also not intended for private use, even if some well-heeled hobbyists could/can afford such a scope.

But there is a funny problem for this companys. An expensive scope is normaly not bought from people with the profession of a lawer, dentist or baker. It is very likely that you snub someone you should not. 
Any bad experience I made with R&S are discussed with the 30-40 developer in my company. I pay attention that my colleagues are aware of this.

I am satisfied with Siglent and Batronix, and that is enough for me.

Yes, Batronix is an outstanding company in these times. If you bought something from them, you are very interested to stay with them. The next embedded, I am usualy visit with some colleagues, I will have a deep look to there scope.

Olaf

[hotze]

In my experience, they don't even care if someone points out an error in a document and doesn't even want anything from them

That's very surprising to me.  Can you post (or PM) details?

As far as I remember, that was a reference to a version-number mistake in the RTB2000 release notes that I pointed out to the company a few years ago (unfortunately I am no longer allowed to access the document). Maybe the wording was ambiguous, but I never got a response.

[Robaroni]

However, the bright spot also has only one product and can therefore concentrate on it.

In addition, when manufacturers such as R&S typically equip entire companies with their products, they may not have much time to address the concerns of private individuals in a timely manner.
I don't want to sugarcoat it. I experienced this myself when I wrote to R&S as a private individual and heard nothing. Later, I wrote from work using my official signature as test field manager, and I received a reply within two days.
But this is to be expected, as the support is not intended for private end users.
And the “low-cost series” RTB that was released was also not intended for private use, even if some well-heeled hobbyists could/can afford such a scope.
One could then say, OK, then only offer it to professionals, take your devices out of the stores where private customers can also buy them.
Of course, that won't happen.
Keysight is the same; anyone can buy their products—but as a private individual, you have to accept that their products are not intended for you and therefore you will not receive any support.
That was honest and direct, and as a result, I will not be buying anything else from them.
I am satisfied with Siglent and Batronix, and that is enough for me.

And as for this front-end thing:
I haven't read everything, but I have a pretty good idea how this will turn out.

If you pay your money and buy an instrument from a company than you should be supported regardless where it sits on their food chain. What is it different money? No, it's a different amount of money!

Gee, we think it's swell that you bought our equipment but it's our economy line so don't expect any service from us. I didn't see that in their literature! How about if you're not going to support us, don't sell to us? Works for me.

I bought R&S because I foolishly thought it was a reliable company that supported their products.... for everyone.. Am I being too hard and expecting too much? I guess so, slap me once shame on you, slap me twice, shame on me!

[Martin72]

Of course there is after-sales support...
But how do you imagine what it should look like?
Now, eight years after the model was introduced, if you come up with things you would like to see changed and/or improved, with suggestions for new enhancements, etc., there is a high probability that these will fall on deaf ears, except perhaps for a polite response.
Because the project is actually complete and no one wants to or can devote any more manpower to it.
If it's within the usual boundaries, it won't be a problem.
By usual, I mean repair requests, warranty yes/no, problems that aren't really problems because the manual wasn't read, etc.

I don't want to defend R&S now, I have no connection to them (except maybe because of the SA at work), but...

If we are only talking about the RTB2000 series here, it has been on the market since 2017.
In other words, for R&S, this series is “fully developed,” and no more time will be spent on its development.
This applies to all aspects of development, including documentation, which will no longer be edited extensively.
It is fairly certain that there will be no major firmware updates with new features, and I can also imagine that bug fixing will be given low priority on the to-do lists.
The supply of spare parts will probably remain stable, but things like the front end will certainly not be touched anymore—because it has long since been fully developed.
If something breaks, it will be replaced.
Depending on the warranty conditions, this will be free of charge or treated as a regular repair.
How do I know all this?
We develop our products ourselves.
And as always, there are project milestones for when things need to be finished—and then they are finished, provided there are no major blunders.
We also talked about other brands here, Batronix and Siglent, as positive examples.
The Batronix Scope is still “very young” and, as mentioned, the only project, so you're preaching to the choir when it comes to support.
The same goes for Siglent—ask about devices that are 8 years old or older, and there's still a chance, but if they've been discontinued, there's nothing more to be had except the usual support I mentioned earlier.

[Darkover]

How do I know all this?
We develop our products ourselves.

I agree with you, because the same is true for the products of my company. However I think we can expect at least that it is possible to download firmware and manual for everone, because this did not need any effort.
But the funny thing, at least for the RTB2004 it is not 100% true, because of the new RTB2 and we could use FW3.0 on our old scopes. There has to be a developer team working on it.

But the open question for the RTB are the problem with the LMH6516. Do you think it is okay that we all have to worry to destroy our RTB only by measuring something wrong?
So what I expect that someone from there frontend developer team read this thread:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/repair-of-rs-rtb2004-with-offsetprobem-of-toasted-lmh6518/

And than they had to write statement how to avoid the problem in future. If there are some new limititation I expect that they tell us. Oh..and they had probably wrote about something like this in the manual for other user.
And just in case you are thinking about buying a new RTB2, are you not interested if the problem solved there? Is it perhaps solved for everyone with FW3.0? Will it solved with FW3.1 if necessary?
And in case a new firmware is necessary to solve a problem that can destory our scope, is it not a good idea that everyone can download it at the homepage?

Olaf

[Fenstergucker]

On my RTB2004 FW v3.000, when using the edge trigger and external trigger as the source, it triggers on the wrong edge. When set to falling edge, it triggers on rising edge, and vice versa.
Can someone please double-check this?

Peter

[kwass]

On my RTB2004 FW v3.000, when using the edge trigger and external trigger as the source, it triggers on the wrong edge. When set to falling edge, it triggers on rising edge, and vice versa.
Can someone please double-check this?

I can confirm that there's a problem, but not what you describe.....

Using the same firmware, I found that the issue is that edge trigger levels below zero don't work with the external trigger.  Positive trigger level work fine and match the rising/falling edge setting.

[Fenstergucker]

SCPI-Error RTB2004 FW v3.000

The Inside/Outside parameters for the 'width trigger' were forgotten. If you select 'Inside' or 'Outside' for 'Comparison', you will get a timeout error instead of a response with the SCPI command: ‘:TRIGger:A:WIDTh:RANGe?’.
The values for 'Time t1/t2' can also be read out and converted using ':TRIGger:A:WIDTh:WIDTh/DELTa?' However, the value for 'Time t1' seems incorrect to me.

Peter

[Fenstergucker]

SCPI-Error RTB2004 FW v3.000

The parameter ‘EITHer’ for polarity was omitted for the ‘Risetime’ trigger. Reading with the SCPI command ‘:TRIG:A:RIS:SLOP?’ results in a timeout error. The parameter is not documented in the manual.

Peter

[salomonander]

I work in audio and im really struggling to get anything useful out of the fft option. Its a shame as its only the frequency view/range that does not work for such low frequencies. Is there any chance your engineers could offer an „audio“ frequency range (20hz-20k) that looks like my beloved audio precision‘s fft? It would really help anyone working in audio. I was not able to get a similar frequency view within he existing menu. Please correct me if its possible and im too dumb

[bayjelly]

I don't recall if that is possible or not (I think it should be), but doing audio work in the FFT of this scope has at least one other problem: It's unnecessarily slow. I described the reasons in detail in this post, a long time ago: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/new-killer-scope-a-true-game-changer-from-rs-rtb2002-rtb2004/msg2375268/#msg2375268

In any case, consider if you want to be doing audio work with a scope at all. This scope has 10 bit ADC resolution at best. I forgot what high resolution mode does, but even if it counteracts the small samples by capturing them more often and integrating them, I'm not sure how many extra bits you'd get from that.

Using a good sound capture device on the other hand (my old Sound Blaster X-Fi HD seems fine) captures samples with at least 16 bits, usually 24 bits or more these days. This means you have a significantly lower noise floor than when using a scope (again, I don't remember what HR capture mode does). The scope in turn has a massively higher bandwidth which does not matter for audio, so those two device categories are of course designed for vastly different tradeoffs.

[Darkover]

Of course, using a good soundcard is probably much better than a scope for audio. But I also think it is little bit naive to believe a company will do a firmware update with new function so many years after product release. I was very surprised by the release of V3.0! They even try to avoid discussion or probably a new firmware for the frontend problem. So we can not expect to much from them anymore.

For the resolution problem it may be sometimes helpful to think about the AN83 from linear technology that allows you to have a look from 5µVpp to 1mVpp 10Hz to 1Mhz. I used this in the last weeks for some other project and I am impressed by the possibilities that open up by it. (In case you feel to poor for two LT1028 and one LT1224, two OP357 and one MAX4476 will work well at lower power supply)

For the FFT, I also have an Hameg HMO2022 and I think the FFT in the RTB is not as sophisticated compared to the older brother. And I also think this was a design choice to help selling the more expensive R&S scopes. The limits by the older HMO are determined by the cheaper hardware, the limits for the RTB are detemined by the marketing department. 

Olaf

[Fenstergucker]

Hello Olaf,

I briefly tested the FFT function with ‘ngscopeclient’ and the RTB2000. However, I don't know if the driver I created for the RTB is accepted. Attached is a screenshot from my Raspberry Pi 500, but with software rendering. The GPU does not support the FFT function in hardware. The display is about as fast as on the oscilloscope.

Peter

[Darkover]

Looks impressive, like a scope we are to poor to buy it private.

Olaf