Siglent SDS2204 + MSO review

[nctnico]

SDS2204 + MSO review

HW: 5-3
SW: 1.1.1.35.1

Reason for buying
I wanted to get a more modern oscilloscope to replace my Tektronix TDS744A (4 channels/ 500MHz) but it didn't need to be a 500MHz oscilloscope. Before last year the only option was to spend >€5000 on a Tektronix or Agilent with 4 channels. Then came the Rigol 1000Z series with 4 channels and not much later the SDS2000 series from Siglent offering a higher samplerate and a bigger screen compared to the Rigol 1000Z. Having digital channels could be useful as well. I do have a high end Tektronix logic analyser but it is heavy and the software is quite slow to use. Being able to offload some of the simple logic analyses tasks to an oscilloscope maybe worth while especially if it can do protocol decoding. The specifications for the MSO probe on the SDS2000 are not stellar though. The input capacitance of 10pf is rather high. Not problematic but I wouldn't use it for circuits going over 50MHz. IMHO 8 channels are just right. Having more is just overcrowding the screen especially if you also want to look at a couple of analog signals as well. I have used Agilent MSOs in the past and enabling 16 channels was a bit beyond the point of useful.

All in all I choose to buy the 200MHz model. The worse case samplerate is 1Gs/s which seemed pushing the limits too far at 300MHz (3.3 samples per period).

First impression
The oscilloscope comes with four 300MHz probes, power cord, USB cable, a quick-start guide, MSO probe and a CD. The CD only contains the user manuals; no software. The oscilloscope does not come with a front cover which makes it less convenient to bring it to customers for measurements. I also would have preferred a real power switch. Even if it is at the back of the instrument. But then again high end Tektronix logic analysers don't have such a switch either. The probes are a bit flimsy even compared to the relatively cheap Testec probes I'm using. On the plus side they have a slim design like the Testec probes and they come with a complete set of accesoires.

All the options are enabled in trial mode. Instead of a time limit the options are available for a number of uses (30 times). So I don't have to hurry to try the AWG. Or just save it for when I just need an extra AWG channel.

Display
What I'm missing is an option to inverse the video. I'm using a dark on white color scheme on all my equipment. It is much more  pleasant to the eye (dark on white is standard in every PC application). The display on the SDS2000 also has a screensaver. Unfortunately that just hides the signals and shows the Siglent logo slowly bounching across the screen. What I would have liked is that it switches off the backlight. Even LED backlights have a finite lifetime.

MSO probe
The MSO probe comes with 10 EZ hook grabbers (made in USA) and leads. The probe set is an extension cord (the connectors are similar to those used for fast-SCSI) and a plastic box with a 2.54mm boxed header connector to connect the grabbers. The cable itself is a crappy 0.65 pitch ribbon cable which is easy to damage. Worst; most of these ribbon cables have a solid core so it is likely to have a very short life. I dug up a more rugged fast/ultra-SCSI extension cable from my cable box and that seems to work just as well. Would it be so difficult to include a cable like this?


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Adaptec-internal-wide-68-pin-SCSI-cable-1-meter-3ft-1496280-00-rev-a-/130466139871

More complaining: all the grabbers and connecting cables are grey. It would have been nicer if 2 of them where black to indicate the ground connection. Because the MSO box doesn't have 'warranty void' stickers I opened it up and much to my surprise the analog front-end for the MSO part is in the plastic box! The specifications of the MSO bit are not stellar: 10pf input capacitance is rather high for a logic analyser especially with the input circuitry very close to the inputs. From the PCB layout it seems the digital signals are transported to the oscilloscope using differential (LVDS?) signals. If Siglent wants they could replace the analog front-end with something much better!

First measurements
At first glance navigating through a signal seems to work OK. Zoom is a nice addition but if you are not capturing long traces adjusting the time/div and using the horizontal position knob works just fine. It is also nice that the units and probe attenuation factor can be freely adjusted. If you have a current clamp you can set the units to A with the proper multiplication factor. All in all the basic oscilloscope functionality seems to work as expected.

I tried decoding some serial data at 9600 baud. When the timebase is set slow it may be necessary to select a longer memory depth manually for decode to work properly. Much to my surprise the decode does not work for the digital channels! I bought this oscilloscope specifically for that feature!

I also did some tests with peak-detect mode. I used a signal generator to create pulses with a width of 16ns. The oscilloscope triggers fine but at settings of more than 200ms/div it doesn't display the pulses. The same goes for roll mode. The narrow pulses don't show. IMHO a fail because peak-detect is supposed to detect the narrowest pulses the front-end can handle. I guess peak-detect got implemented the wrong way; let the ADCs run at decreased sampling speed instead of downsampling while keeping min/max values. What this oscilloscope does is called 'envelope mode'. Actually my TDS744A can do both 'envelope' and peak-detect since these are two distinct different ways of acquiring a signal.

I'm also missing a 'menu off' button to hide a menu. The 'UP' button more or less works in a similar way of escape but it displays the message 'the page is top!' if you are already in the root menu.

Automated measurements
So far I have only used the Vpp and frequency measurements. What I like about these is that the min, max, average and standard deviation are also shown. The values always tend to vary somewhat so having the extra information helps a lot to get a better feel for the signal you are looking at. To get stable readings on my TDS744A I have to switch the acquisition method to averaging with a lot of cycles. The downside is that the automated measurements are in the middle across the screen.

Bandwidth and aliasing
Because this is a realtime sampling oscilloscope with a bandwidth relatively close to the worse case nyquist frequency (500MHz) it is expected that the frequency response shows some peaking due to 'brick wall filtering'. I used an RF generator set to 0dBm (612mVpp on the oscilloscope) and set the input impedance to 50 Ohm. I forced the sampling frequency to 1Gs/s by enabling 2 channels. There is some peaking (maybe +/- 1dB) at some frequencies but nothing severe. On my 200MHz model the -3dB bandwidth is 345MHz. That is way more than I expected based on the specified bandwidth of 200MHz. When going beyond the nyquist frequency there is some residual signal due to aliasing. With the RF generator set to 1001MHz I see a 12mVpp sine wave with a frequency of 1MHz. With the 0dBM input signal the triggering is stable up to 450MHz. With the input sensitivity set to max (2mV/div) the oscilloscope still triggers on a 450MHz signal of -30dBm (less than 1mVpp) which is quite impressive.

The MSO part
It takes a bit of playing to get used to setting it up. The channels can be enabled individually and the order in which the channels are displayed can also be changed. Unfortunately things get weird when decoding is enabled. The digital channels get lost or work in the wrong way once the stop button is pressed or in single acquisition mode with decoding enabled. See picture below where the signal D0 (red) should display the same as channel1 (yellow). I think somehow the time cale for the digital channels doesn't follow the timescale for the analog channels. That is a major bug!

The MSO probe also has a clock input but I can't find a setting to use external clocking for the digital channels. IMHO the MSO part is still under development. A slight hint is that the 'Digital' button does not go off once the MSO part has been activated.

Dumping images
I played a bit with dumping images. What I would like to have is a way to write the images with a white background. That looks much nicer in a report. I often make reports with screendumps from an oscilloscope. Having large black blobs in a document doesn't make it appealing. My TDS744A allows for writing images in reverse video (white background). Something else I'm missing is writing images in a different format. I would have expected to be able to choose between BMP, JPG and PNG but it seems only BMP is supported. Another option I'm missing is to dump the traces as CSV data. On my TDS744A I have used that feature to write a long trace to disk and process it further using Excel.

It would also be nice if the oscilloscope has it's own web server. That way a browser could be used to retrieve images and other data (sample values in CSV format). That would avoid needing to go back and forth with a USB stick all the time.

PC Software
I wanted to give the Easyscope3 software from Siglent a try as well but even after installing the NI-VISA software the software still says it can't initialise itself and terminates. I installed the software on a freshly installed Windows XP in a virtual machine. Not wanting to mess with finding compatible third party software versions endlessly I gave up on the software. I have the same problem with the software which came with my Siglent SDG1010. Siglent: please create software packages which 'work out of the box'! Having to install all kinds of third party software is way too cumbersome. Again: a webserver inside the oscilloscope would make it a lot easier than to having to mess around with software which needs to be installed first.

Conclusion
All in all there are several area's where bugs need to be fixed (also see the reviews of others). I was expecting that; I wanted to wait longer for the firmware to mature but an upcoming project forced me to either buy a CAN analyser or get the SDS2204 ahead of time. I also started to run into several limitations of my TDS744A. As it sits now I wouldn't recommend buying this oscilloscope if you can't work around the bugs that have been found so far.

Pros:
- low fan noise
- good triggering on low level signals

Cons:
- peak-detect is not doing peak-detect at all
- decoding doesn't work on digital channels
- flimsy MSO cable

At the moment I'm not quite sure whether I keep the oscilloscope or not. I'm not satisfied with the peak detect not working as it should and not happy with the decoding working on the analog channels only.

The same screendump showing the digital trace problem with decode enabled twice. Once normal (white on dark) and inverted (dark on white):

[David Hess]

I also did some tests with peak-detect mode. I used a signal generator to create pulses with a width of 16ns. The oscilloscope triggers fine but at settings of more than 200ms/div it doesn't display the pulses. The same goes for roll mode. The narrow pulses don't show. IMHO a fail because peak-detect is supposed to detect the narrowest pulses the front-end can handle. I guess peak-detect got implemented the wrong way; let the ADCs run at decreased sampling speed instead of downsampling while keeping min/max values. What this oscilloscope does is called 'envelope mode'. Actually my TDS744A can do both 'envelope' and peak-detect since these are two distinct different ways of acquiring a signal.

This is one of the first things I evaluate in DSOs and the Chinese ones have all failed miserably so far whether they said they supported peak detection or not.  People keep trying to convince me that their long record lengths make up for it but my ancient DSOs have no problem.  I suspect the older Rigol DSOs deliberately confuse peak detection with envelope detection because the truth makes them look bad but their marketing deception makes them look worse.

Bandwidth and aliasing
Because this is a realtime sampling oscilloscope with a bandwidth relatively close to the worse case nyquist frequency (500MHz) it is expected that the frequency response shows some peaking due to 'brick wall filtering'. I used an RF generator set to 0dBm (612mVpp on the oscilloscope) and set the input impedance to 50 Ohm. I forced the sampling frequency to 1Gs/s by enabling 2 channels. There is some peaking (maybe +/- 1dB) at some frequencies but nothing severe. On my 200MHz model the -3dB bandwidth is 345MHz. That is way more than I expected based on the specified bandwidth of 200MHz. When going beyond the nyquist frequency there is some residual signal due to aliasing. With the RF generator set to 1001MHz I see a 12mVpp sine wave with a frequency of 1MHz. With the 0dBM input signal the triggering is stable up to 450MHz. With the input sensitivity set to max (2mV/div) the oscilloscope still triggers on a 450MHz signal of -30dBm (less than 1mVpp) which is quite impressive.

Brick wall filtering has no place in a time domain instrument and using it after digitizing not only does not remove aliasing but screws up the transient response.

[nctnico]

Maybe 'brick wall' is a bit of an overstatement but to prevent severe aliasing the analog front-end has to do some serious filtering which does affect transient and phase response. An ideal oscilloscope has a Gaussian roll-off but that is hard to achieve will sensible realtime sampling rates.

I have found another bug: the zoom window isn't aligned with what is shown. In the picture below the bottom half of the screen shows the last rising edge of channel 1 (yellow). The zoom window however is way off:

[Hydrawerk]

Thanks for the review, it is quite long. I have to read it sometimes.

[marmad]

I also did some tests with peak-detect mode. I used a signal generator to create pulses with a width of 16ns. The oscilloscope triggers fine but at settings of more than 200ms/div it doesn't display the pulses. The same goes for roll mode. The narrow pulses don't show. IMHO a fail because peak-detect is supposed to detect the narrowest pulses the front-end can handle. I guess peak-detect got implemented the wrong way; let the ADCs run at decreased sampling speed instead of downsampling while keeping min/max values. What this oscilloscope does is called 'envelope mode'. Actually my TDS744A can do both 'envelope' and peak-detect since these are two distinct different ways of acquiring a signal.

This is one of the first things I evaluate in DSOs and the Chinese ones have all failed miserably so far whether they said they supported peak detection or not.  People keep trying to convince me that their long record lengths make up for it but my ancient DSOs have no problem.  I suspect the older Rigol DSOs deliberately confuse peak detection with envelope detection because the truth makes them look bad but their marketing deception makes them look worse.

This works fine on my Rigol DS2000 - in either Y-T mode or roll mode. But the Siglent starts doing some different kind of decimating when the timebase is >=200us/div (>=5.6M sample length), because the intensity grading changes dramatically there compared to all faster timebases.

And, BTW, thanks for posting your impressions of the MSO functions.

[tautech]

@nctnico
Hopefully Siglent may expand on some issues you have raised, in the meanwhile, those I can help with:

The full software package is nearly complete and hopefully will be available soon.

I'm still looking for the SCPI manual for the SDS2000

The Siglent SDS2000 series Programming manual is under development and will feature an increased set of commands over those used in the SDS1000 series.
Hopefully it will be available to download soon and should also be shipped on the product software CD as it is for the SDS1000 series.

I use EasyScopeX and NIVisa for PC connection, no problems.
http://www.siglent.com/en/server/download.aspx?nodecode=119004002003

Be aware AFAIK the free use of non-purchased options is only available for 30 power cycles of the scope.

Much to my surprise the decode does not work for the digital channels! I bought this oscilloscope specifically for that feature!

Very interesting considering this post from Siglent:

Logical followup questions would be:

1)  why no serial decoding on the 8 MSO channels?  Is this a temporary limitation, that will later be removed (new firmware)?

2)   the specs indicate a max sample rate of 500MSa on the digital channels, but what is the memory depth?


As per Siglent here, I forwarded these question to their Support e-mail address.  And I received a prompt response.  Just so everyone else doesn't have to do the same, here is their reply...

> "What you care about the data of MSO function will be clear when the new firmware version with MSO function at about April 30."


So from that, we can conclude that: 

a)  they're not ready to answer those questions yet, and
b)  the MSO version is about 8 weeks away from release.

Hi Mark_O,
       I think you misunderstood my words, I said "Decode works on analog channels for serial trigger and decode" means Decode button on the front panel is used for analog channels, Digital button controls the 8 digital channels, the digital channels support decoding, too.
The memory depth of digital channel is 14Mpts/CH.
      Our company has a specialized team responsible for oversea technical problems, they are more professional and have more time to solve your problems, that why I suggest you to email them.

EDIT
We seriously need clarification of this issue.

I'm also missing a 'menu off' button to hide a menu. The 'UP' button more or less works in a similar way of escape but it displays the message 'the page is top!' if you are already in the root menu.

It's there....more familiarity needed. 
Measure menu: Stats or All Measure sub menus: "Display off"

IMHO the MSO part is still under development.

Quite possibly, it has not long been released and as I do not have the MSO port on my evaluation unit, I can not test your claims.

nctnico thank you for your review, good to have another perspective of functionality and performance.
Please feel free to compile your concerns in an email to Siglent.

[Hydrawerk]

Cons:
- decoding doesn't work on digital channels

(...) not happy with the decoding working on the analog channels only.

Same as on my Agilent DSOX2002A scope.

[tautech]

The specifications of the MSO bit are not stellar: 10pf input capacitance is rather high for a logic analyser especially with the input circuitry very close to the inputs.

Detailed specs in the datasheet at foot of post:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/siglent's-new-product-msosds2000-series/msg483856/#msg483856

[Hydrawerk]

Another option I'm missing is to dump the traces as CSV data.

Really?
I found this in the user manual at page 165.
4. CSV
SDS2000 saves the waveform data in external memory in “*.CSV” format. The stored files
contain the waveform data of the displayed analog channels and the main setting
information of the oscilloscope. The recall of CSV file is not supported.

[Hydrawerk]

Much to my surprise the decode does not work for the digital channels! I bought this oscilloscope specifically for that feature!

I think that Siglent never promised decoding on digital channels. You should have read the user manual.

[Siglent]

SDS2204 + MSO review

HW: 5-3
SW: 1.1.1.35.1


PC Software
I wanted to give the Easyscope3 software from Siglent a try as well but even after installing the NI-VISA software the software still says it can't initialise itself and terminates. I installed the software on a freshly installed Windows XP in a virtual machine. Not wanting to mess with finding compatible third party software versions endlessly I gave up on the software. I have the same problem with the software which came with my Siglent SDG1010. Siglent: please create software packages which 'work out of the box'! Having to install all kinds of third party software is way too cumbersome. Again: a webserver inside the oscilloscope would make it a lot easier than to having to mess around with software which needs to be installed first.

Dear nctnico, SDS2000 series only support EasyscopeX, Easyscope3 can only be used for SHS series.

You can download the Latest EasyscopeX from http://www.siglent.com/en/server/download.aspx?nodecode=119004002003

[tautech]

The oscilloscope comes with four 300MHz probes, power cord, USB cable, a quick-start guide, MSO probe and a CD. The CD only contains the user manuals; no software.

Replies from Siglent:
Will all software be included on future CD’s?   yes, of course, the one of Nctnico maybe a early version of CD.

The cable itself is a crappy 0.65 pitch ribbon cable which is easy to damage.

Re nctnico’s comments of the MSO probe ribbon cable: is this cable available as a separate item? YES  

[Fsck]

The oscilloscope comes with four 300MHz probes, power cord, USB cable, a quick-start guide, MSO probe and a CD. The CD only contains the user manuals; no software.

Replies from Siglent:
Will all software be included on future CD’s?   yes, of course, the one of Nctnico maybe a early version of CD.

The cable itself is a crappy 0.65 pitch ribbon cable which is easy to damage.

Re nctnico’s comments of the MSO probe ribbon cable: is this cable available as a separate item? YES  

pretty sure he doesn't want the included cable at all, he wanted a better one included. (his example = old scsi cables)

[nctnico]

SDS2204 + MSO review

HW: 5-3
SW: 1.1.1.35.1


PC Software
I wanted to give the Easyscope3 software from Siglent a try as well but even after installing the NI-VISA software the software still says it can't initialise itself and terminates. I installed the software on a freshly installed Windows XP in a virtual machine. Not wanting to mess with finding compatible third party software versions endlessly I gave up on the software. I have the same problem with the software which came with my Siglent SDG1010. Siglent: please create software packages which 'work out of the box'! Having to install all kinds of third party software is way too cumbersome. Again: a webserver inside the oscilloscope would make it a lot easier than to having to mess around with software which needs to be installed first.

Dear nctnico, SDS2000 series only support EasyscopeX, Easyscope3 can only be used for SHS series.

You can download the Latest EasyscopeX from http://www.siglent.com/en/server/download.aspx?nodecode=119004002003

It seems I already tried EasyscopeX. So my comment is actually for EasyScopeX.

About the MSO cable: the cable which came with the oscilloscope is just sub-standard outright crap. This kind of cable is made for installing once or twice inside a PC casing. Not to be on a bench where it gets moved around a lot and may encounter sharp or hot objects. The MSO cable I received had some ugly bends and scratches already when it came out of the box. I ordered a DELL 0H924 SCSI cable from Ebay to replace the MSO cable:


@Hydrawerk: You are right about the CSV files. This function is under the save/recall button indeed. The CD I got had version 1.0 of the user manual on it; I didn't want to rely on that version of the user manual. I knew there was a newer version but that is not listed under the downloads for the SDS2000 series. Regarding decoding: According to Siglent's own posting (quoted by Tautech a few posts earlier) decoding should work on the digital channels so I'm kinda surprised.

@Tautech: On my oscilloscope it seems the number of trials decreases by activating a function. The number of power cycles doesn't seem to matter.

[tautech]

From the SDS2000 Manual V2:
*Digital channels may be grouped and displayed as a bus, with each value displayed at the
bottom of the display in hex or binary. You can create up two buses.
*Under the DIGITAL function menu, an status indicator is displayed in the status
line at the bottom of the display. Light blue shows the digital channel is included in
the bus while black shows it is excluded in the bus.
*Under the DIGITAL function menu, press the System Display softkey to select
Binary or Hex to display the bus values.

But this is not the Serial decoding that many expect.
Is it enough?
EDIT
Image added


There seems some confusion re decoding in MSO and I will ask Siglent to clarify.
They see the discussion and points raised as valuable, thanks. 

Re EasyScopeX
Install guide in file: EasyScopeXEN.chm

[tautech]

@Tautech: On my oscilloscope it seems the number of trials decreases by activating a function. The number of power cycles doesn't seem to matter.

That is good news. 
I stand corrected.

But the shame for us that have the early versions and now with many starts, the latest firmware did not reset the option start counter. 
I will report it as a bug. 

[nctnico]

Re EasyScopeX
Install guide in file: EasyScopeXEN.chm

If I try to open the EasyScopeXEN.chm on my Windows XP virtual machine it starts the help browser but says 'navigation is cancelled' and shows no further information. Perhaps a PDF would be better in order not to rely on what is installed on a PC.

[nctnico]

Another thing that bothers me is the select/intensity adjust button. If I push it to select something I often turn it a little and end up selecting something different than I intended.

[marmad]

Another thing that bothers me is the select/intensity adjust button. If I push it to select something I often turn it a little and end up selecting something different than I intended.

Yes, this is another problem on both the Siglent and the Rigol; also, the acceleration parameters /sensitivity of the knob are not always optimal.

Neither company seems to be able to get this right. It would be nice if they had variable settings which could be saved for acceleration and delay, so that we (the users) could at least try to adjust them to suit (as closely as possible) our own mannerisms.

[tautech]

Re EasyScopeX
Install guide in file: EasyScopeXEN.chm

If I try to open the EasyScopeXEN.chm on my Windows XP virtual machine it starts the help browser but says 'navigation is cancelled' and shows no further information. Perhaps a PDF would be better in order not to rely on what is installed on a PC.

Contents of EasyScopeXEN.chm:

System Requirements

1?NET framework 3.5 SP1

The application you are installing requires the Microsoft .NET framework version 3.5 to run. You can download the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 package directly from Microsoft. This is a small 3 MB download with just the .NET framework installer. When you run it, the installer downloads the actual framework components that need to be installed on your computer. Once you've installed the .NET framework, you can continue installing the application.

If you plan to install version 3.5 of the .NET framework on a large number of computers, you can also download the full package of the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. This 231 MB download comes directly from Microsoft. The small 3 MB installer likely needs to download much less than this, depending on what is already present on your computer.

2?NiVisa

       Before use this softwave,you have to install the ni-visa runtime library,you can find it in the installation folder or you can download it from NI web site.

3?Window XP(32 bits) or Windows Vista(32 bits/64 bits) or Windows 7(32 bits/64 bits)

4?.Net Framework was installed on the machine when installing Windows 7(64 bits) or Windows Vista(64 bits),follow next steps to use it:

       a?Open control panel,select Uninstall Program.

       b?Select Open or Close Windows Functions in the new window.

       c?Check Microsoft .Net Framework in the Windows Functions Dialog box?click OK button.

Here is a screen shot of my settings that also may help: (Win7 64 Bit)

Another thing that bothers me is the select/intensity adjust button. If I push it to select something I often turn it a little and end up selecting something different than I intended.

The "Rigol Swap Knob" fix can be used to improve usability.

[Mark_O]

From the SDS2000 Manual V2:
*Digital channels may be grouped and displayed as a bus, with each value displayed at the
bottom of the display in hex or binary. You can create up two buses.
...

But this is not the Serial decoding that many expect.

No.  This is a simple parallel bus display mode.  It's not really "decoding" anything, except in the very loosest sense of the word.

Is it enough?

No, because what was being discussed was serial protocol decoding.  That's a different kettle of fish.  I had specifically been discussing serial decoding, saying it wasn't implemented on the digital channels.  And got corrected by Siglent, that it WAS supported, but was simply a matter of which button on the front panel was used to enable the two different sections... based on the data source.

If the unit can only do serial decoding on the analog channels, and parallel "decoding" on the digital channels, then Siglent needs to clearly say so.  There's really no reason it couldn't do serial protocol decoding on the digital channels, since the data there has already been 'processed' and cleaned up, by the threshold detection in the LA front end.  It's just a bit stream, either way.  The same thing happens on the analog channels, but there the decoder has to impose a threshold itself, so it knows where a "bit" starts and stops.

The only reason it may not work would be if Siglent provided no way for the serial decoders to access the digital capture RAM.  From my understanding of Nico's description, the channels CAN be selected for that... it just doesn't work (yet).

[marmad]

From my understanding of Nico's description, the channels CAN be selected for that... it just doesn't work (yet).

Did you mean that you thought they were visible as selections for the Source settings of the Decode bus - but they were non-functional or non-selectable (grayed out)?

If I turn on the Digital channels on my unit, I don't see them as possible sources in Decode - but I don't have the MSO cable, so perhaps that makes a difference.

[nctnico]

@Tautech: thanks for finding out how to get the software going. I'll try that later on. I'm keen on trying to see if I can get a connection over the network interface.

@Marmad and Mark_O:
I just checked again but I can't select a digital channel for decode. There is something weird with decode and digital channels. When I press digital when decode is active then decode is de-activated. But the other way around is different. If I press decode with digital active both decode and digital are active. Like I wrote before: this area seems to be work in progress.

BTW: I also found out that decode cannot be enabled if there is an automatic measurement active. I don't see why these two functions would interfere.

[tautech]

@Tautech: thanks for finding out how to get the software going. I'll try that later on. I'm keen on trying to see if I can get a connection over the network interface.

The latest firmware enabled the LAN interface, and I too need to check this out.
There are LAN setup instructions on P164 of V2 user manual.

I have asked Siglent to check their download link to ensure V2 manual is easily available.

[Mark_O]

Thanks for the review, Nico.  But this is rather long, and time-consuming to read.  Could you summarize it down to maybe 5 sentences, for those of us too busy to read the whole thing?         

SDS2204 + MSO review

...

The specifications for the MSO probe on the SDS2000 are not stellar though. The input capacitance of 10pf is rather high. Not problematic but I wouldn't use it for circuits going over 50MHz.

10 pF isn't that bad, in this class.  Sure, the P6417 probes you use on your TLA704 are only 2 pF, but the acquisition modules there support 2 GSa/s in timing mode.  The Siglent LA only goes up to 500 MSa/s.

What I'm missing is an option to inverse the video. I'm using a dark on white color scheme on all my equipment. It is much more  pleasant to the eye (dark on white is standard in every PC application).

More pleasant to your eye perhaps, but not everyone's (including mine).  [I find it really fatiguing to stare into a small white display for long periods.]

MSO probe
The cable itself is a crappy 0.65 pitch ribbon cable which is easy to damage. Worst; most of these ribbon cables have a solid core so it is likely to have a very short life.

Do you know these are solid core?  Or just deprecating them because they might be?  Since they're so "crappy", and you already have much better ones, just chop them up and find out.  Oh, wait.  You might not keep it.  Best not to be slicing and dicing them.     That was close.

The specifications of the MSO bit are not stellar: 10pf input capacitance is rather high for a logic analyser especially with the input circuitry very close to the inputs.

Hmm.  That's twice in one review you've criticized the same thing.   

Much to my surprise the decode does not work for the digital channels! I bought this oscilloscope specifically for that feature!

Well, that sucks.  Thanks for the info.

Bandwidth and aliasing

Much good info here.  Thanks.

The MSO part
...I think somehow the time cale for the digital channels doesn't follow the timescale for the analog channels. That is a major bug!

Is there a Delay or Skew setting adjustment in the Menu structure?  If not, then it's not a bug, so much as a design fail.  Acquisition for the digital signals is happening in the active logic head.  Which has short flying leads to the DUT.  Acquisition for the analog channels is performed inside the scope, after traveling down a 1-2m cable.  Propagation delays means the analog and digital channels cannot be in sync, without some method of offset adjustment.  Rigol just figured that out on their MSO1000Z/2000 units (all their older MSOs had no time sync).

The MSO probe also has a clock input but I can't find a setting to use external clocking for the digital channels. IMHO the MSO part is still under development.

Thanks!  Since they just recently finished the first pass implementation on the LA section, I guess it's not surprising if it's not complete yet.  Still, disappointing.

Dumping images
I played a bit with dumping images. What I would like to have is a way to write the images with a white background. That looks much nicer in a report. I often make reports with screendumps from an oscilloscope. Having large black blobs in a document doesn't make it appealing.

Right.  But this is super simple to do on your PC.  Or are you creating documents on your Siglent?   

I would have expected to be able to choose between BMP, JPG and PNG but it seems only BMP is supported.

Agreed that this is mildly annoying (due to the size of the images to transfer), but fairly standard.  It's easier to just copy raw image data (which is what BMPs are), rather than implementing algorithms to compress the images.

Conclusion
All in all there are several area's where bugs need to be fixed (also see the reviews of others). I was expecting that; I wanted to wait longer for the firmware to mature but an upcoming project forced me to either buy a CAN analyser or get the SDS2204 ahead of time. I also started to run into several limitations of my TDS744A. As it sits now I wouldn't recommend buying this oscilloscope if you can't work around the bugs that have been found so far.

Thanks a lot for your report!  Please let us know if you get a chance to test the CAN decode.  Thanks too for the comments on low fan noise.  That's something that's actually more important to a lot of folks than many manufs. realize.