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

[analogRF]

emitted pulse bursts from RTB2004 as captured by my Agilent 3034A
it seems there are three different timings for the bursts.

Just to be sure, as soon as I turn the RTB off everything goes quiet.

[2N3055]

Well, it is capacitive touch screen..
Nobody liked resistive ones... Now we have a electric field generator..

But I doubt that is a biggest problem with all the led lights and switchers and WiFi and GSM signal around the lab.

It should be mostly near field.  EMC is being measured from the distance..

But I agree it seems too much. On my touch screen scopes, i have to be at 5mV/DIV to detect something with largest near field probe from TekBox.

[analogRF]

Well, it is capacitive touch screen..
Nobody liked resistive ones... Now we have a electric field generator..

But I doubt that is a biggest problem with all the led lights and switchers and WiFi and GSM signal around the lab.

It should be mostly near field.  EMC is being measured from the distance..

But I agree it seems too much. On my touch screen scopes, i have to be at 5mV/DIV to detect something with largest near field probe from TekBox.

I agree with the normal EMI pollution around the lab but until today I dont remember picking up
anything as strong as this on my "oscilloscopes" in the lab. On my spectrum analyzers, sure, and they are very weak, but on my scopes, not really, just some elevated noise at 1mv/div-5mv/div. The bigger issue is that it is fairly low frequency and with very strong harmonics up to about 2-3MHz
(I didnt post a picture of the FFT screen)

yes, it is the capacitive touch that is responsible for this and I actually noticed that I can only strongly pick it up by a wire antenna which dominantly reacts to the electric field. However, with a loop antenna, I can only pick up a very weak signal. On the other hand, I cannot detect absolutely nothing when I do the same test with my tablet or phone.

[mikeselectricstuff]

What's odd is the RTB doesn't turn off the touch screen when you press the "touch lock" button. The KS MSOX touchscreen miodels do disable the scanning ( and hence any noise) when the touchscreen is disabled
 

[analogRF]

What's odd is the RTB doesn't turn off the touch screen when you press the "touch lock" button. The KS MSOX touchscreen miodels do disable the scanning ( and hence any noise) when the touchscreen is disabled

yes, turning off the TS does not affect the pulse bursts at all even though the touchscreen does not work anymore. It;s just a software thing 

[analogRF]

What's odd is the RTB doesn't turn off the touch screen when you press the "touch lock" button. The KS MSOX touchscreen miodels do disable the scanning ( and hence any noise) when the touchscreen is disabled

Mike, does the RTM3000 behave the same way?

[mikeselectricstuff]

What's odd is the RTB doesn't turn off the touch screen when you press the "touch lock" button. The KS MSOX touchscreen miodels do disable the scanning ( and hence any noise) when the touchscreen is disabled

Mike, does the RTM3000 behave the same way?

I tested on the RTM - I assume the RTB is the same

[analogRF]

I just checked with the touchscreen on my Tek DPO7254 and I cannot detect anything at all with the same setup.
I am not too familiar with touchscreens, is it because the DPO perhaps uses resistive touchscreen?
that scope is big and loud but I can hardly detect any EMI around it. at least not with a scope, maybe with a SA....

[bayjelly]

Does anyone know what the RTB-B1 (mixed signal option, includes the logic probes) license key is actually for?

I received my RTB-B1 logic probes a while ago and just plugged them into my RTB2004, which I already upgraded with the RTB-PK1 package that includes pretty much all non-bandwidth software options. Despite RTB-B1 not being part of RTB-PK1, the scope accepted the logic probes immediately and I was able to use the digital channels.

I didn't see the license keys envelope, so I assumed usage of the mixed signal option is just tied to the hardware (which seemed sensible).

Now, months later when getting rid of the shipping material, I discovered that the envelope with the key was actually in there, I just had missed it before. So I typed the license key into my RTB2004, which added the mixed signal option to the list of options and... I don't know what else changed. The logic channels worked before, and still work of course.

Am I missing something, or is it useless, as long as you have the probe hardware itself? The scope is not hacked or anything, it's just a regular RTB2004 with RTB-PK1, and no bandwidth upgrades.

[skander36]

Funny automatic google translate for Rohde & Schwarz (attached pic). 

[skander36]

A short comparison of channel noise, maybe not quite correct, but if you have some suggestions...
Some constraints:
2 mv because Rigol cannot go under this value without BW filter(automatic)
2 ns because Keysight cannot go more.
Also touch screen noise of RTB2002 compared with Rigol's touch screen noise.
For Hydron: Now I have attached 2 more pics that include Std. Dev values. For Keysight it was std. dev from the beginning, because it was not capable to correctly measure RMS value(no edges).

[Hydron]

Maybe measure std-dev rather than RMS if you're looking at noise - RMS will include the DC offset component too!

[2N3055]

(Attachment Link) A short comparison of channel noise, maybe not quite correct, but if you have some suggestions...
Some constraints:
2 mv because Rigol cannot go under this value without BW filter(automatic)
2 ns because Keysight cannot go more.
Also touch screen noise of RTB2002 compared with Rigol's touch screen noise.
For Hydron: Now I have attached 2 more pics that include Std. Dev values. For Keysight it was std. dev from the beginning, because it was not capable to correctly measure RMS value(no edges).

Few suggestions:

Always use same timebase, timebase will influence frequency content of the noise, and noise is not same for all frequencies. 2ns/div is too short, I would measure at 1ms/div, that would grab most of the spectrum and filter out 1/f noise..

Also, you need (like Hydron well said) to measure Stdev (or AC RMS in Keysight talk) to filter out DC component from RMS measurements.

I suggest allways measuring Mean (DC average, DC component, offset in this case), RMS (full), AC RMS (Stdev, only AC component), and P-P.
That way you have quick sanity check, because all those numbers must cross check..

When in doubt, you can always compare P-P as quick check for order of magnitude comparisons.

Also, always compare with same bandwidth settings, and same vertical sensitivity settings.

Measure at several vertical sensitivity settings, and pay attention how S/N ratio changes and some scopes are better at some settings than others that might be better at some other settings.

Make a table ( on paper or Excel ) and write down all measurements. Than you can really compare.

[skander36]

Thing to be mentioned: my post was not intended to be an in depth comparison, but just a very quick view of how those three scopes show their noise at first glance. For a more detailed measure of SNR I will need an anechoic room, and different signals at different frequency in various scenarios, as 2N3055 say.
I will leave this to the engineers.

[2N3055]

Thing to be mentioned: my post was not intended to be an in depth comparison, but just a very quick view of how those three scopes show their noise at first glance. For a more detailed measure of SNR I will need an anechoic room, and different signals at different frequency in various scenarios, as 2N3055 say.
I will leave this to the engineers.

No, it wasn't a critique.. just simple pointers as to how you can get more useful data and comparison by simple method.

You don't need anything special, maybe a BNC short plug or BNC 50 Ohm terminator to "quiet down" inputs from something getting induced directly.

Doing this is not needed for average user, but it might prove interesting and useful, as a tool to get to know your instrument better, to get to know it's "sweeet" spots etc.
Just doing quick (but systematic) note of noise floor at different sensitivities might be useful to know, for instance, so I can (or cannot) measure ripple on this PSU without preamp.

[marcopolo]

Does anyone know what the RTB-B1 (mixed signal option, includes the logic probes) license key is actually for?

I received my RTB-B1 logic probes a while ago and just plugged them into my RTB2004, which I already upgraded with the RTB-PK1 package that includes pretty much all non-bandwidth software options. Despite RTB-B1 not being part of RTB-PK1, the scope accepted the logic probes immediately and I was able to use the digital channels.

I think the answer is here:

While the MSO cable is not included, moving forward, we'll be enabling MSO in all our scopes - you will still need to purchase the probe (same cost), but now they can be moved between scopes.  Not that big of a change for an individual user, but for a teaching lab it will be a huge improvement (they can buy say five MSO cables, keep them in a drawer and then hand them out to a bench as needed). 

I would like to make probes for myself.

Could you look at how the detection of the probes is done?
- 2 pins connected together
- 1 resistor between 2 pins
- Another thing ...

I hope there are no active components in it.

Thanks,
Marc

[maxspb69]

It contains a Zylog MCU. It is the "key" It is not fools  in Rohde&Shwarz

[RBBVNL9]

Hello RTB users...

I know this is a smaller thing. Still curious. I recently sent my RTB2004 back for repair because the screen was showing a strange pattern (glue of the digitizer getting loose?). Instead of repairing, R&S sent me back a replacement unit. Might be new, but has an unusual sticker on top of it. The replacement has a higher serial number:

Original device: Material 1333.1005K04 S/N: 111@@@
Replacement device: Material 1333.1005K04 S/N: 201@@@

The thing is, on the replacement scope, the lights on the front panel controls, which change into different colours depending on the channel selected, now look quite horrible. They are not evenly coloured, as before, but have darker and lighter areas and show different colour tints. Also, the new unit has a rather audible fan noise, while the old was dead silent.

Anyone knows whether there were different series over time, either the above (and perhaps other) differences?

(I already read in a threat that there are differences across RTB noise, not sure I heard about front panel lights or other differences.)

[skander36]

Can you take a picture with the panel lights?
Did you try to adjust the intensity of the LED's? Setup-Display-Intensities-LED Brightness.
In which country is assembled?

[RBBVNL9]

Thanks, skander36

Can you take a picture with the panel lights?

To be honest, it's not so easy to take a picture that well represents how you see it in real. Anyway, the two below pics give a bit of an impression. In the one with channel 1 (yellow) selected, the upper dial has greenish tints in it. The lower dial tends to the orange/red colour.

Did you try to adjust the intensity of the LED's? Setup-Display-Intensities-LED Brightness.

Yes, they can be adjusted via the menu you mentioned from 20% to 100%. But the issue is the same at every brightness level.

In which country is assembled?

Romania, according to the sticker on the back of the unit.

[nctnico]

It is possible R&S used different LEDs which have a narrower angle. Not surprising given the component shortages. Recently I had to buy bog standard LEDs from the only distributor that had a few left.

[skander36]

Mine is also assembled in Romania, and it seem to look the same.
Buttons looks ok, only glow rings for vertical adjust buttons seem not too uniform.
I don't know is from the quality of LED's, maybe the rubber material is not the same quality as before? 

[RBBVNL9]

Dear skander36,

Thanks for the reply. Judging by your photos, your illumination has the same issue as mine. Especially when 'protocol' mode is activated, the dial colours are rather weird and ugly, for both the rotary dials and for the trigger button when the serial trigger function is selected...

Guess we have to live with it.

[goaty]

Mine has same apperance of color rings, but hey, I´m looking at the screen, not the knobs 

[marcopolo]

Me too