Products > Test Equipment
REVIEW - Rigol MSO5000. Tests, bugs, questions
WinnieThePooh:
Hello community!
In this post I’d like to tell about my impression and testing results of Rigol MSO5074 oscilloscope.
Testing methods are based on Altemir’s post REVIEW - Rigol MSO4000 and DS4000. Tests, bugs, firmware, questions, etc.... Some results to compare with were also taken from his post.
After weekly testing I’ve written a little report for Rigol’s local distributor on Russian language. Some most significant bugs are listed below with a little description.
Please let me know if you found other problems.
Known Firmware Bugs/Issues (red indicates latest FW version available, italic indicates requires for testing - please, inform me about results)
1. Low contrast, bad viewing angles of screen. It’s also not very bright. Seems to be Rigol scope’s family bug
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
2. Backlight of buttons is not bright enough (especially on 1’st channel button)
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
3. Colors on screenshots are very, very different from what you see on screen
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
4. Windows on screen (DVM and Counter for example) are all different in size and don’t stick to each other, so it’s difficult to arrange them.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
5. Selected trigger mode has a very little indicator; single mode doesn’t indicate at all. Selected mode isn’t shown in trigger menu.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
6. In Dots mode you don’t see dots; even at small time base (2 ns) dots are connected with lines.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
7. In High Res mode signal is not less noisy then in usual Sample mode, although vertical resolution is higher
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
8. New measurement is added on the left and moves all other measurements to the right. It would be more convenient if it adds on the left of others
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
9. You can select a separate measurement but you can only DELETE it and can’t change nothing else (source, measurement type). Measurement selection is almost invisible.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
10. There is no user-defined probe ratio – only pre-defined values. Thus it’s difficult to measure current on sense resistor.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
11. Strange behavior. Advertisement says it has more than 500 000 wfrm/s update rate. That’s true, but ONLY in single ch., 10ns time base mode (with AUTO memory mode). Update rate dependence on time base and active channels’ number looks very strange – for example, with 1 active channel and 20 ns time base you have 12 000 wfrm/s, but with 2 active channels and 20 ns time base you have 310 000 wfrm/s. (see update rate testing results below)
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
12. With time base more than 20 ms, update rate is higher with 200 MPoints memory selected then with 1 kPoints. (see update rate testing results below)
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
13. In AUTO memory mode scope don’t use more than 25 MPoints, although available memory is 200 MPoints.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
14. The way the scope collect data looks strange: packets of samples, separated by a long pause. Pauses between packets take up to 87% of all blind time. For comparison, Rigol MSO4000 collects data in series, sample by sample, without any packets.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
Rigol MSO5000
Rigol MSO4000
15. No internal 50 Ohm termination, though there is an inactive setting in channel menu.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
16. Offset about 250 uV with external 50 termination connected. Without termination (open input) – just 50 uV
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
17. Scope saves waveform only in *.bin or *.csv, but loads just *.wfm – you can’t load saved waveforms.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
18a. No frequency and magnitude axes in FFT mode
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
18b. FFT does not have MAX and Average
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
18c. FFT size is not shown (and could not been set)
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
18d. Lack of Kaiser-Bessel Derived Window and Dolph-Chebychev Window, all these 2 windows with variable alpha.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
19. Scope has Eye Analysis and Jitter functions in Measure menu, but they are not mentioned in manual and seem non-working
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
20. Color Grade function is VERY dependent on waveform’s Intensity setting (display>intensity). At maximum intensity you’ll see all white waveform, at minimum – all black, actually without any color difference. This feature is not mentioned in manual.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
21. Waveform Freeze function seems not working, and I don’t know what it should do.
It works: If you manually stop the acquisition, pressing "Stop", "Waveform freeze" keeps the display "as is" showing multiple waveforms overlaid (Just as if you would take a photo from an analogue scope). If you disable the option, manually pressing "Stop" just shows the trace from the last real-time acquisition. thx mimi
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
22. SCPI command ':LA:TCALibrate' doesn't do anything. This is something that should be a menu option on the scope, so maybe its not been implemented yet.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
--- Code: ---:LA:TCALibrate?
response: 0.000000
:LA:TCAL 0.000000100
:LA:TCALibrate?
response: 0.000000
--- End code ---
:channel1:tcal 0.000000100 for example, works OK
23. Lack of interpolation mode selection (line or sinc)
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
24. The trigger delay only works up to 535..537ms (the limit appears to have some sort of hysteresis) for fast sweep rates (<=200us/div, in single channel mode). For faster sweep rates it wraps around, e.g. 600ms equals sone 40ms delay)
Same for FW v00.01.01.04.04 and v00.01.01.04.08
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
Testing results 1. System info
2. Acquisition - all with open input, 1ms time base
2.1 Normal mode
2.2 HighRes mode. Signal isn't less noisy then in Normal mode (bug #7).
2.3 Average mode, 256 averages
3. Waveform update rate
3.1 Sample rates
3.2 Waveform update rate. Input signal - sin 10 MHz 1 Vp-p
MSO 4000 results:
3.3 Waveform update rate. Input signal - sin 1 MHz 1 Vp-p
MSO 4000 results:
Tests 3.2 and 3.3 is a good illustration of bug #11. Scope has maximum update only in certain time base (10ns in 1ch mode, 20ns in half ch mode, 50ns in all ch mode). MSO4000 results is much linear and smooth, without unexpected peaks.
3.4 Blind time
3.5 As mentioned in bug #14, scope has strange acquisition mode - packets of samples, separated by a long pause. Duration of each phase of acquisition cycle was measured at different time base.
4. Frequency response
4.1 With and without correction of measuring path. Average value
4.2 With correction. For each channel separately
4.3 Comparison with other scopes
4.4 -3dB frequency in HighRes mode
edit 1. Added bug#22, thanks to thm_w
edit 2. Added bug#18b, #18c, #18d, #23, #24, thanks to alexvg, mim
WinnieThePooh:
All tests results and report (only in Russian, sorry)
thm_w:
Very comprehensive report!
I noticed the same odd thing with the packets of samples. If you turn on zone triggering, I saw it change to more consistent sampling and the dead time was reduced (more spread out I guess), seemingly regardless of whether it was hitting the signal. But maybe there was some other reason for it, related to my triggering.
Now I'm checking wfm/s and zone triggering doesn't seem to effect that much (reduces it about 10%). No difference between 1 zone or 2 zones.
There are definitely oddities to how this scope works, whether due to the ASIC and its functionality or software bugs, not sure.
--- Quote ---19. Scope has Eye Analysis and Jitter functions in Measure menu, but they are not mentioned in manual and seem non-working
--- End quote ---
Yes someone here even reported it to Rigol tech support, that their non-paid for feature is not working ;D
edit: looks like you did the same thing, hopefully they don't mind. But thanks for passing all this on.
--- Quote ---15. No internal 50 Ohm termination, though there is an inactive setting in channel menu.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
--- End quote ---
This is normal, sort of a placeholder and to tell you the input impedance. In the case of DS2000->DS2000A they added a 50 ohm option to later hardware, they may or may not do this with the MSO5000. Usually its a good way to differentiate the low/high end models. A generic BNC pass through is only ~$6.
--- Quote ---20. Color Grade function is VERY dependent on waveform’s Intensity setting (display>intensity). At maximum intensity you’ll see all white waveform, at minimum – all black, actually without any color difference. This feature is not mentioned in manual.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
--- End quote ---
I think you should just set it to 50% for color grading (or set auto to that). But it would be nice if changing this did something like change the color pattern or similar.
Bug 22.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04]
SCPI command ':LA:TCALibrate' doesn't do anything. This is something that should be a menu option on the scope, so maybe its not been implemented yet.
--- Code: ---:LA:TCALibrate?
response: 0.000000
:LA:TCAL 0.000000100
:LA:TCALibrate?
response: 0.000000
--- End code ---
:channel1:tcal 0.000000100 for example, works OK
WinnieThePooh:
--- Quote from: thm_w on June 17, 2019, 09:18:13 pm ---I noticed the same odd thing with the packets of samples. If you turn on zone triggering, I saw it change to more consistent sampling and the dead time was reduced (more spread out I guess), seemingly regardless of whether it was hitting the signal. But maybe there was some other reason for it, related to my triggering.
Now I'm checking wfm/s and zone triggering doesn't seem to effect that much (reduces it about 10%). No difference between 1 zone or 2 zones.
--- End quote ---
Just checked zone triggering, and noticed another couple of odd things.
1 When zone triggering is active, there is no 500 000 wfms/s peak. Just 90 000 wfms/s - looks much more linear
2 If you create a zone that can't be intersected by signal, trig out will still be active and generate trig signal (see pictures). And - magic - trig out shows update rate much higher than in normal mode without any zone triggering. More than that, there is no any packets in this case. (Test mode: input signal - sin 10MHz 1Vp-p, channel 1, 20ns time base. 12 735 wfm/s without zone triggering, 11 400 wfm/s with settings from picture "Zone0", 63 800 wfm/s with settings from picture "Zone1". Last picture - trig out signal for "Zone1" case. )
WinnieThePooh:
--- Quote from: thm_w on June 17, 2019, 09:18:13 pm ---
--- Quote ---20. Color Grade function is VERY dependent on waveform’s Intensity setting (display>intensity). At maximum intensity you’ll see all white waveform, at minimum – all black, actually without any color difference. This feature is not mentioned in manual.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04] / [FW v00.01.01.04.04]
--- End quote ---
I think you should just set it to 50% for color grading (or set auto to that). But it would be nice if changing this did something like change the color pattern or similar.
--- End quote ---
Yes, works great with 50% intensity. But when intensity is set to 100% and you turn on color grading, you just don't understand what is going on. Influence of intense on color grading isn't mentioned in manual. Moreover, intensity setting isn't available in color grading mode.
--- Quote from: thm_w on June 17, 2019, 09:18:13 pm ---Bug 22.
[FW v00.01.01.04.04]
SCPI command ':LA:TCALibrate' doesn't do anything. This is something that should be a menu option on the scope, so maybe its not been implemented yet.
--- Code: ---:LA:TCALibrate?
response: 0.000000
:LA:TCAL 0.000000100
:LA:TCALibrate?
response: 0.000000
--- End code ---
:channel1:tcal 0.000000100 for example, works OK
--- End quote ---
Thanks, added in bug list
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