Author Topic: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size  (Read 61119 times)

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Offline markone

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #125 on: January 29, 2016, 11:02:57 am »
Display memory = 1400 bytes on the DS2000 = 1200 bytes on the DS1000Z= 50 pixels * screen divs * 2

So actually it's even worst, heck ... i'm embarrassed, we have also a ridiculously slow interface, no sh*t !

Sorry for the french, but on the base of what you report it would be enough to deal with a mere 72 KB/s data exchange to maintain a remote live screen 4 channels @30FPS (600*4*30) and as you guys have proved, the DS1054Z  is actually a loooot slower!

I can understand that those physical interfaces are there mainly for instrument setting, but hell, these are numbers suitable for an Arduino UNO board.

The performance of the CY7C68013A USB controller that we can find in 60USD 20Mhz DSOs here seems an unbridled luxury (and they are transferring the whole acquisition buffer to PC).

Year ago i hacked one external PATA HDD enclosure based on CY7C68013A (that contains a sort of 8251 mcu) and attaching a TI 14bit 80MS/s ADC evaluation board on its original IDE PATA bus i achieved sustained 16 MS/s transfers (32MB/s) at easy.

Once properly programmed such controller requires only to write the 16bit word on its data bus and then put a transition on its bus clock pin (the controller code is upload from PC as soon as the device is attached, of course with proper device driver installed) so the external data source has not to be smart.

Ok, as far as i understood, no remote live screen is possible with mine DSO (DS1074Z), so i'm definitively on the market to buy another one.

I should have a sit in front of a real scope screen to evaluate, but right now i do not know how.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 11:29:01 am by markone »
 

Offline marmad

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #126 on: January 29, 2016, 11:40:10 am »
So actually it's even worst, heck ... i'm embarrassed, we have also a ridiculously slow interface, no sh*t !

No, it's larger than the 800 bytes you mentioned (I'm assuming you're getting that figure from the old DSOs with 320x200 screen sizes). It's 1400 (or 1200) bytes per channel; display memory contains vectors for each horizontal pixel.

Quote
The performance of the CY7C68013A USB controller that we can find in 60USD 20Mhz DSOs here seems an unbridled luxury (and they are transferring the whole acquisition buffer to PC).

You're comparing apples and oranges. Those 60USD 20Mhz DSOs aren't capturing 30k wfrm/s into an intensity buffer - they are a whole different animal. You could argue that the DSO maker should allow you to choose between slower update rates / faster transfers and faster update rates / slower transfers - but that is, if not extra hardware, certainly more programming and development costs - so it would mean more expensive DSOs.

Quote
Ok, as far as i understood, no remote live screen is possible with mine DSO (DS1074Z), so i'm definitively on the market to buy another one.

Of course it's possible - you'll just have an update rate of a few waveforms per second.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 11:44:22 am by marmad »
 

Offline markone

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #127 on: January 29, 2016, 01:15:19 pm »
Ok, so we have two bytes for a single dot and we have to multiply my numbers by two.

Still i cannot justify few frames per second, it renders this function useless for a lot of  purposes.

I agree with you that those instruments are not natively designed for remote viewing, but if it's only matter to write some more code (and not a system limit) it could be an additional selling point and/or SW option to pay for.

For sure the dirty cheap price must be taken in account, but i'm in a quite different position because i purchased the 70Mhz version.

I was convinced that analog front end was different BW wise...obviously, as now everyone and their dog know (after Dave's great analysis),   i was WRONG !

To summarize, please correct me if i'm wrong, DS2000 series has much faster screen transfer function than DS1000Z, in the order of 10 factor.


« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 01:18:24 pm by markone »
 

Offline marmad

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #128 on: January 29, 2016, 01:41:48 pm »
Still i cannot justify few frames per second, it renders this function useless for a lot of  purposes.

Well, even 30 FPS would be useless for many purposes when compared to 30,000 FPS; it depends on what you need it for. I've found many uses for the remote viewing - even when it's just doing 5 FPS. Obviously you can scale the display on a PC screen to 4x the size of the DSO screen, so you can see it from across a room. Of course, for very fast changing signals, it's less useful (although you can simulate persistence).

Quote
I agree with you that those instruments are not natively designed for remote viewing, but if it's only matter to write some more code (and not a system limit) it could be an additional selling point and/or SW option to pay for.

Well, the hardware needs to be designed correctly to allow unencumbered asynchronous access to display memory, unless you don't care if the acquisition rate of the DSO is occasionally interrupted for transfers.

Quote
To summarize, please correct me if i'm wrong, DS2000 series has much faster screen transfer function than DS1000Z, in the order of 10 factor.

I never had the time to test it fully (and it might have been improved in later FW), but I think it was perhaps closer to a factor of 5. The problem with the DS1000Z is that, in order to keep it very cheap, it's rather under-powered. You can see how the GUI slows down when MATH functions are enabled, etc (I believe the DS2000 has at least one extra FPGA for display processing).
« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 01:44:20 pm by marmad »
 

Offline markone

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #129 on: January 29, 2016, 02:08:42 pm »
When i provide numbers like 30 or 60 for FPS i'm referring to typical lcd panels max refresh rates, every task for persistence, analog moking, rare event capture and so on are already performed by DSO on its own, where FPGA crunch all the KiloWaveforms/s, so we have to transfer the final result to PC as well the DSO LCD transfers it to your eyes, so your brain.

Both of them have an actual frame BW of some tens per second, otherwise it's like to say that the scope's panel  shows 30000 waveforms per second :-)
« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 02:11:46 pm by markone »
 

Offline marmad

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #130 on: January 29, 2016, 02:55:41 pm »
Both of them have an actual frame BW of some tens per second, otherwise it's like to say that the scope's panel  shows 30000 waveforms per second :-)

The DSO uses a screen-sized intensity buffer (Z-buffer) for storing captured waveforms in, and so is able to display, for example, 30k waveforms per second with it's max. refresh rate. Of course, distinguishing the depth of overlapped waveforms is limited by gradation depth - or by the ability of our eyes to distinguish discrete shades (as in analog scopes).

But when you transfer the display memory from the Rigol to the PC, you are not getting the intensity buffer (it would be much much larger in size) - you are only getting the last captured waveform - so 30 FPS is literally 30 wfrm/s.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 03:01:01 pm by marmad »
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #131 on: January 29, 2016, 03:33:58 pm »
I know this is just for a screen capture

If you look at frames 37 and 38 the time to do a raw read of 1420 bytes is:
frame 37 4.85213000
frame 38 4.85515400
3.024ms or 469,577 bytes per second or 3.756614 Mbps.


My loop is not optimized so there is some time spent between requests (just 0.155ms) since the next read request happens at frame 39
frame 39 4.85530900

So as it is on that python script loop my effective transfer rate is:
3.179ms per 1420 bytes. (3.573450 Mbps)

The :DISP:DATA? on the 2000 returns a total of 1152054 bytes (800x480*3+54) plus 13 bytes overhead
TMC_header_len = 11
terminator_len = 2

for a total of 1152067 bytes (9.216536 Mbits) so the potential to get the image at it fastest is
2.58 seconds. I'm probably stalling the tcp stack or something didnt look at the full capture in detail.

In any event, the hardware can transfer beyond 3 Mbps so if instead we were capturing the waveforms it should be able to update them pretty quick, but I didn't try to do that yet.
 
Edit: of course the DISP command might be a special case because the scope might not be too busy. So depending what the scope is doing the waveforms probably hinders the transfer rate.

« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 03:48:48 pm by miguelvp »
 

Offline markone

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #132 on: January 29, 2016, 03:41:51 pm »
@marmad

You are obviously right, but the way you explain the matter may induce one to understand that the ACTUAL refresh rate of the scope screen is from 30000 different images showed distinctly per second while, as we know, we have something like 60 FPS with intensity grade integration and persistance mechanisms applied on every single dot that virtually extend the information rate to thousands per second.

If no graduation data is transferred outside the DSO, i'm spot on your thinking.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 04:40:04 pm by markone »
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #133 on: January 29, 2016, 07:28:07 pm »
Have you tried this one btw?

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/free-ds6000ds1000z-software/

I haven't had a chance to use it yet, comes with full source
 

Offline alsetalokin4017

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #134 on: January 29, 2016, 07:44:51 pm »
Yes, DSRemote works great !

The easiest person to fool is yourself. -- Richard Feynman
 

Offline markone

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #135 on: January 29, 2016, 07:45:55 pm »
of course the DISP command might be a special case because the scope might not be too busy. So depending what the scope is doing the waveforms probably hinders the transfer rate.

Honestly i never tinkered around this scope for external control, it was enough for me to take occasional snapshots on usb flash key, while i played a lot with front panel controls.

I saw in other threads that lot of work has been done around DS1000Z boards by some capable guys that have already sniffed &  scanned spotting lot of important things, i'm wondering if the command interface parser table is fully readable or is buried  encrypted in the flash dumps.

There is still margin to discover new commands ?
 

Offline markone

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #136 on: January 29, 2016, 07:48:17 pm »
Have you tried this one btw?

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/free-ds6000ds1000z-software/

I haven't had a chance to use it yet, comes with full source

Thanks a lot for the hint, i will give a try later.
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #137 on: January 30, 2016, 01:39:23 am »
of course the DISP command might be a special case because the scope might not be too busy. So depending what the scope is doing the waveforms probably hinders the transfer rate.

Honestly i never tinkered around this scope for external control, it was enough for me to take occasional snapshots on usb flash key, while i played a lot with front panel controls.

I saw in other threads that lot of work has been done around DS1000Z boards by some capable guys that have already sniffed &  scanned spotting lot of important things, i'm wondering if the command interface parser table is fully readable or is buried  encrypted in the flash dumps.

There is still margin to discover new commands ?

There is a programmer manual:
DS2000 series:
http://assets.tequipment.net/assets/1/26/Documents/Rigol/DS2072/ds2072_doc_5.pdf

MSO1000z/DS1000z series:
http://www.batronix.com/pdf/Rigol/ProgrammingGuide/MSO1000Z_DS1000Z_ProgrammingGuide_EN.pdf

There might be new commands added on the firmware as they now support CAN bus on some scopes, but overall those docs have most of the commands, maybe there are others but  you can look at all the Rigol threads and probably they are already found by others.
 

Offline Karel

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #138 on: January 30, 2016, 08:21:12 am »
MSO1000z/DS1000z series:
http://www.batronix.com/pdf/Rigol/ProgrammingGuide/MSO1000Z_DS1000Z_ProgrammingGuide_EN.pdf

There might be new commands added on the firmware as they now support CAN bus on some scopes, but overall those docs have most of the commands, maybe there are others but  you can look at all the Rigol threads and probably they are already found by others.

That one is from September 2014. Since there has been some firmware updates, the programming guide has been updated as well.
The latest is from July 2015 and you can download it from the Rigol website.
Technical documents should always be downloaded from the source, not from some shop.

 

Offline markone

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #139 on: January 30, 2016, 01:56:37 pm »

There might be new commands added on the firmware as they now support CAN bus on some scopes, but overall those docs have most of the commands, maybe there are others but  you can look at all the Rigol threads and probably they are already found by others.

Those threads are so huuuge, i was hoping to gain a summary ;-)

Of course i'm aware of official programming guide but i was referring to unknown commands kept "secret" by Rigol.

I think that DZ1000Z scopes have enough power to be turned in a great remote USB scope, but i would bet that this is not what Rigol want.
 

Offline Karel

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #140 on: January 30, 2016, 02:20:37 pm »
I think that DZ1000Z scopes have enough power to be turned in a great remote USB scope, but i would bet that this is not what Rigol want.

I don't think so. Appearantly, Rigol scopes don't have enough processing power and memory to handle USB (or LAN) in a
timely matter. The results are low waveform update rates and an eternity to download the deep memory waveform data.
 

Offline markone

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #141 on: January 30, 2016, 02:54:13 pm »
I think that DZ1000Z scopes have enough power to be turned in a great remote USB scope, but i would bet that this is not what Rigol want.

I don't think so. Appearantly, Rigol scopes don't have enough processing power and memory to handle USB (or LAN) in a
timely matter. The results are low waveform update rates and an eternity to download the deep memory waveform data.


I forgot to mention "slowing or disabling LCD panel display update", as already stated in some previous post.
 

Offline Karel

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #142 on: January 30, 2016, 04:24:57 pm »
I think that DZ1000Z scopes have enough power to be turned in a great remote USB scope, but i would bet that this is not what Rigol want.

I don't think so. Appearantly, Rigol scopes don't have enough processing power and memory to handle USB (or LAN) in a
timely matter. The results are low waveform update rates and an eternity to download the deep memory waveform data.

I forgot to mention "slowing or disabling LCD panel display update", as already stated in some previous post.

Downloading the deep memory waveform data is only possible when the scope is in "Stop" mode.
That means, there's no aquisition and there are no display updates. Still, it's ridiculously slow.
If they should have put an extra arm controller with Linux, they could probably spit out the data 100 times faster.
But, hey, you can't have it all for only 400 bucks. Keeping in mind this price, it's extremely powerfull.
 

Offline markone

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #143 on: January 30, 2016, 06:36:08 pm »
But, hey, you can't have it all for only 400 bucks. Keeping in mind this price, it's extremely powerfull.

Sure i agree, the problem here is that I no longer have the perfect sight i had years ago (GUI fonts would be small anyway, in absolute, i should take it live before purchase) so i was looking for a way to continue to work with it without further degrade my eyes.

The remote PC control would be one way as suggested by some other kind members.

I do not know details about its internal HW architecture, but i think it would be more a problem related to CPU-FPGA interfacing system than CPU computing power limit, at least upon my personal experience of I/O management with same class embedded processor.

The absence of a DMA channel like mechanism between FPGA and CPU would be a good example.

I mean, if the system is designed in the rigid way that most of the data exchange happens to be between ADC->FPGA->LCD panel controller with the main processor left to work aside mostly with aggregate and pre-processed data becoming from FPGA, we have the answer for the boring slow transfer speed on USB / LAN interfaces when we require deep data set.

I'm also quite sure that there is margin for improvement disabling some task but at the same time i'm also quite sure that Rigols does not will that. 
« Last Edit: January 30, 2016, 06:39:39 pm by markone »
 

Offline MarkF

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #144 on: January 31, 2016, 04:54:11 am »
I agree that the font is small.  But, I believe the real culprit here is the font-family.  If you compare the 6's and 9's in this screen capture with the 7x8 pixel Verdana font overlay, you will see that the Verdana font is easier to read even when small.  Comparing their 6's, 8's and 9's, you will see that there is only one or two pixels different between them.  A font-family where the characters have a larger variation, between the numbers especially, would make a big difference.
 

Offline ebastler

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #145 on: January 31, 2016, 08:04:31 am »
I agree that the font is small.  But, I believe the real culprit here is the font-family.  If you compare the 6's and 9's in this screen capture with the 7x8 pixel Verdana font overlay, you will see that the Verdana font is easier to read even when small.  Comparing their 6's, 8's and 9's, you will see that there is only one or two pixels different between them.  A font-family where the characters have a larger variation, between the numbers especially, would make a big difference.

Good point. It's also true for the alphabet characters: The measurements, i.e. the smallest text that appears on the scope screen, are the only place where Rigol decided to use a serif font. The serifs waste quite a few pixels and make the main strokes of the characters even smaller and harder to read, at least for me.
 

Offline markone

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #146 on: January 31, 2016, 09:38:38 am »
Just to complete my lamer list, why the hell the GUI's lateral menus are fixed ? (dunno if already discussed)

We are loosing a lot of screen space, in comparison my Atten ADS1102CAL (with Siglent SDS1102CNL FW) renders a much image, intensity gradient absence apart.
 

Offline alsetalokin4017

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #147 on: February 01, 2016, 01:17:29 am »
I agree that the font is small.  But, I believe the real culprit here is the font-family.  If you compare the 6's and 9's in this screen capture with the 7x8 pixel Verdana font overlay, you will see that the Verdana font is easier to read even when small.  Comparing their 6's, 8's and 9's, you will see that there is only one or two pixels different between them.  A font-family where the characters have a larger variation, between the numbers especially, would make a big difference.

Good point. It's also true for the alphabet characters: The measurements, i.e. the smallest text that appears on the scope screen, are the only place where Rigol decided to use a serif font. The serifs waste quite a few pixels and make the main strokes of the characters even smaller and harder to read, at least for me.

Well, just select "Large fonts" in the Measure menu. How often do you really need five measurements displayed on screen simultaneously?

But I agree completely, using the serif font in the small measurement display is just asinine.
The easiest person to fool is yourself. -- Richard Feynman
 

Offline markone

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #148 on: February 01, 2016, 11:04:29 am »

Well, just select "Large fonts" in the Measure menu. How often do you really need five measurements displayed on screen simultaneously?

But I agree completely, using the serif font in the small measurement display is just asinine.

 :) well, if the problem was only the meas text .... but with have all the rest.

 

Offline alsetalokin4017

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Re: Ridiculously small Rigol DS1000z series font size
« Reply #149 on: February 01, 2016, 11:58:22 am »
Well, I'm losing my close-focus ability as I age too, but I can't expect everything in the world to accommodate my vision problems, so I wear glasses when I need to see up close. Pretty strong ones too, up to 3 diopters and even more when I'm doing repairs or sewing my socks or something.

There is a lot of information on the Rigol screen, some of it unnecessary like the always-on left and right menus. So the fonts have to be small to display all that information.  I don't think this is going to change in some "ideal" firmware revision.  If you need a larger screen, like on higher-end Keysight or LeCroy scopes, you'll have to pay the price for it. But their fonts are pretty small too.
The easiest person to fool is yourself. -- Richard Feynman
 


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