R&S MXO3/04/05 - Reviews, Bugs & Wanted Features/Improvements Thread

[LoTech]

Great and how do I get to the new firmware?
For the past couple of years R&S support is going in the wrong direction. I have a bench full of R & S equipment and my life is miserable every time I need to download anything from them.

[n55_6mt]

Managed to get my hands of a copy of the 2.10.2.0 firmware from another forum member. I've only encountered responsiveness issues with the horizontal encoder a handful of times but it's promising that in the release notes, this time they say that they've solved the issue rather than just improved responsiveness. I'm curious about impedance analysis although it looks like it will be a paid option.

Unfortunately, the reference waveform update rate issue still seems to be present, maybe this will get fixed on the next update.

Overall, there's a number of nice features added, histograms on measurements are an especially cool feature.

[LoTech]

can you help a brother out or is it asking for that frown upon?

[LoTech]

Does anyone know if K31 (power analyses) is included in the PK1 for MXO4?
Website info does not mention is included but IIRC from my RTM scope, the K31 was released later with a FW update

[rusoaie]

Does anyone know if K31 (power analyses) is included in the PK1 for MXO4?
Website info does not mention is included but IIRC from my RTM scope, the K31 was released later with a FW update

yes, it is:

R&S®MXO4-PK1 - Application bundle, consists of the following options: R&S®MXO4-B6, R&S®MXO4-K31, R&S®MXO4-K36, R&S®MXO4-K510, R&S®MXO4-K520

Source: MXO 4 Series Oscilloscope - Specifications, version 20, May 2026, page 41

[Martin72]

Hm? 

[KungFuJosh]

Hm? 

Wrong thread. 

[LoTech]

All right, FW updated for the MX04. BIG THANKS to the awesome members here.

The scope is now updated to latest FW, but bare bonez...I am waiting for a few options to come in and in the meantime I poked around the MXO4 demos and noted the band-pass filter demo, which I think it is a pretty awesome feature. The band-pass setting points to a "user defined filer file" but it is part of the demo "user defined filter".

Has anyone here experienced with this option? What is the header and what prereqs must be present when building a custom user file, for the scope to read it. I would obviously want to change the band-pass freq as need...Ideally I can find a way to the demo file, make a copy and use the copy as the woriking copy that can be modified as needed.

Thoughts or directional guidance? If there is a thread already out there discussing this, please point me in that direction.

[santiall]

All right, FW updated for the MX04. BIG THANKS to the awesome members here.

The scope is now updated to latest FW, but bare bonez...I am waiting for a few options to come in and in the meantime I poked around the MXO4 demos and noted the band-pass filter demo, which I think it is a pretty awesome feature. The band-pass setting points to a "user defined filer file" but it is part of the demo "user defined filter".

Has anyone here experienced with this option? What is the header and what prereqs must be present when building a custom user file, for the scope to read it. I would obviously want to change the band-pass freq as need...Ideally I can find a way to the demo file, make a copy and use the copy as the woriking copy that can be modified as needed.

Thoughts or directional guidance? If there is a thread already out there discussing this, please point me in that direction.

I was starting playing with that at some point but I never finished playing with it . You need to create a csv with the filter coefficients, the impulse response, which you have to do by yourself (user manual suggests Matlab or you write your own program).
The main 'trick' is that the filter sampling frequency needs to match the oscilloscope sample rate:
Bandpass and bandstop FIR filter with CSV file

To define a bandpass or bandstop, you need a CSV file that contains the comma-separated filter coefficients in one row. The maximum number of filter coefficients is 100 000 taps. No other parameters are allowed in the file.
To create the CSV file, we recommend using the MATLAB Filter Design & Analysis tool. In the tool, enter the filter type, filter order and filter frequencies. Alternatively, you can create the filter and the CSV file with Python.
Make sure to set the sample frequency in MATLAB or Python and the sample rate at the oscilloscope to the same value. If the values differ, the filter is shifted in frequency.
On the MXO 4, select "Menu" > "Math" > "Setup" > "Filter", the filter "Type" = "User defined", and load the CSV file.

[tooki]

Does anyone know if K31 (power analyses) is included in the PK1 for MXO4?
Website info does not mention is included but IIRC from my RTM scope, the K31 was released later with a FW update

It depends on when you bought the bundle. If you bought the bundle before K31 was released, you don’t get it for free retroactively. 

[n55_6mt]

Does anyone know if K31 (power analyses) is included in the PK1 for MXO4?
Website info does not mention is included but IIRC from my RTM scope, the K31 was released later with a FW update

It depends on when you bought the bundle. If you bought the bundle before K31 was released, you don’t get it for free retroactively. 

Yeah that's unfortunately another one of the things R&S does with how they manage licenses. The PK1 and other bulk licenses are really just discount codes for all of the individual entitlements, it's not a license in of itself. If they add or remove things from the bundle in the future, you'll still have the same entitlements.

I can't blame R&S too much for this as it's pretty much in alignment with how the other big players operate these days when it comes to software and option unlocks.

[2N3055]

Does anyone know if K31 (power analyses) is included in the PK1 for MXO4?
Website info does not mention is included but IIRC from my RTM scope, the K31 was released later with a FW update

It depends on when you bought the bundle. If you bought the bundle before K31 was released, you don’t get it for free retroactively. 

Yeah that's unfortunately another one of the things R&S does with how they manage licenses. The PK1 and other bulk licenses are really just discount codes for all of the individual entitlements, it's not a license in of itself. If they add or remove things from the bundle in the future, you'll still have the same entitlements.

I can't blame R&S too much for this as it's pretty much in alignment with how the other big players operate these days when it comes to software and option unlocks.

Of course you can blame them. They do not need to a**holes like the rest of them. It is a deliberate choice..

[LoTech]

I thought of grabbing only a couple of options (B6 and K36) and the K31 at a later time, but I might end up with PK1 ...and a big hole in the wallet.

[chilternview]

One annoying thing - maybe a bug? - with the MXO3 and logic probes is that if probes are already attached to the powered down scope, and the scope powered up, the 'Logic' entries are all greyed out. You have to unplug, and replug in the probe connector with the scope, which then initiates an alignment, and the probes are then recognised.

I had hoped that this would be fixed in 2.10.2.0 but no, you still have to plug in the digital probe connectors *after* powering up the scope.

The scope remembers what analog probes are connected after power down/up, why not the digital? I raised a ticket and they seem to think this is an enhancement request; it's not, it's a bug.

[Bernd_2]

All right, FW updated for the MX04. BIG THANKS to the awesome members here.

The scope is now updated to latest FW, but bare bonez...I am waiting for a few options to come in and in the meantime I poked around the MXO4 demos and noted the band-pass filter demo, which I think it is a pretty awesome feature. The band-pass setting points to a "user defined filer file" but it is part of the demo "user defined filter".

Has anyone here experienced with this option? What is the header and what prereqs must be present when building a custom user file, for the scope to read it. I would obviously want to change the band-pass freq as need...Ideally I can find a way to the demo file, make a copy and use the copy as the woriking copy that can be modified as needed.

Thoughts or directional guidance? If there is a thread already out there discussing this, please point me in that direction.

Hello,
I've also been thinking for a long time about how to generate a coefficient file for bandpass and bandstop filters. I don't have MATLAB, and it's too complicated for me anyway.

But I've now found a way to create working CSV files for such filters using just a few lines of Python code.

I tested this with the MXO5, and to keep this thread from dying out completely, I'm posting the results in the MXO5 thread.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/rs-to-launch-mxo5/msg6362062/#msg6362062

Best Regards,
Bernd

[jjoonathan]

Scipy is great, but if you have python and want to manually design filters, pyfda is brilliant. It's "matlab fdatool, but for python, and also better."

https://github.com/chipmuenk/pyFDA/

[Bernd_2]

Hi  jjoonathan,
Thank you very much for the tip and the link to pyfda. That looks very promising and powerful.

The GitHub page also includes a link to a live web app (borish127) that works without a local installation.
Unfortunately, however, when exporting in CSV format, the following error message appears:

Export failed: TypeError: unsupported format string passed to nympy.ndarray._format_

It seems the only option is to install it locally after all. Have you perhaps tried using it to export a filter in CSV format?

Best Regards,
Bernd

[jjoonathan]

It's in the python package index so if you have uv installed (yeah, python has another package manager, but this one is pretty good -- "npm for python") you can run it with a single line anywhere:

Code: [Select]

uv tool run --from pyfda pyfdax
I just tried exporting a CSV and it appears to work, so my guess is a version mismatch in the webapp is causing the problem you see.