Products > Test Equipment

Siglent SDS800 Zoom out question (problem?)

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nctnico:
Siglent fanboys & girls versus Rigol fanboys  & girls.... let the mud slinging match begin 3 - 2 - 1 GO!   :popcorn:

Meanwhile, the OP never really stated a budget so it is premature to propose the bottom of the barrel models which are just built to a price point and are not really great at anything.

The best way is to find / compile a list with equipment which fits the bill, then start looking at price versus pros / cons. Sometimes this means budget or requirements need adjustment. And there is also a used market where you can find good equipment for reduced prices from reputable sellers.

2N3055:

--- Quote from: nctnico on October 03, 2024, 12:02:53 pm ---Well, zoom mode just isn't the universal answer and the OP is clearly looking to expand his horizon. I understand you want to try to promote Siglent as this is the brand you sell, but realistically it doesn't hurt to try / investigate various pieces of equipment from various brands to see what would be a good fit. That is exactly what I do when I look for a new piece of equipment.

--- End quote ---

"Zoom out" is term related to using zoom function. Nobody cares about "changing timebase after the stopped capture" except people that don't know how to set timebase right in the first place.

He can also ignore sensationalistic clickbait video and, as you point astutely, think with his own head, and decide not to use scope wrongly...
I wholeheartedly agree with you he should try and use real data and make a decision on his own.

I use several Siglent scopes and a Keysight pretty much on daily basis. Out of reasons where I use Keysight instead of my Siglents, there are some decodes and some other stuff that is more suited for the task, but relying on the scope to capture stuff outside of what I set it for by chance to cover my bad practice is not one of them.

Like I documented few times before, Keysight DOES NOT capture outside the screen. What it does is cheat. When in RUN only screen length is captured. If you then press STOP, it performs a separate, additional, new trigger where it captures long.

It performs this: it changes timebase to as long as it can (cannot say long because it has 100x less memory than this inexpensive Siglent), takes Single, waits for trigger, captures and goes back to timebase it was on.
If there is no trigger for some time (cca 200-250ms timeout), it will timeout and show you last good triggered capture, that will be only one screen wide.

That video was proven factually incorrect on many points.
Whoever uses that one to make decision is making a mistake.

This imaginary "this scope knows better than you and has captured data you would otherwise miss" was proven to be false argument.
It should not be used as a criteria to chose a scope.

If for some reason you need manual memory control, that might be valid checkpoint, OTOH. I can understand that.
But more important is manual control of sample  rate. That is used all the time. And that is there.

And as Josh rightly said, is there really anything better than SDS800xHD in that price range?

2N3055:

--- Quote from: nctnico on October 03, 2024, 06:23:33 pm ---Siglent fanboys & girls versus Rigol fanboys  & girls.... let the mud slinging match begin 3 - 2 - 1 GO!   :popcorn:

Meanwhile, the OP never really stated a budget so it is premature to propose the bottom of the barrel models which are just built to a price point and are not really great at anything.

The best way is to find / compile a list with equipment which fits the bill, then start looking at price versus pros / cons. Sometimes this means budget or requirements need adjustment. And there is also a used market where you can find good equipment for reduced prices from reputable sellers.

--- End quote ---



--- Quote from: frank2644 on October 02, 2024, 05:21:27 pm ---
I am considering buying the SDS800 but I’m wondering if it has the same zoom out problem?

Thanks,
Frank


--- End quote ---

Is that not specific enough ?

nctnico:

--- Quote from: 2N3055 on October 03, 2024, 06:38:42 pm ---
--- Quote from: nctnico on October 03, 2024, 12:02:53 pm ---Well, zoom mode just isn't the universal answer and the OP is clearly looking to expand his horizon. I understand you want to try to promote Siglent as this is the brand you sell, but realistically it doesn't hurt to try / investigate various pieces of equipment from various brands to see what would be a good fit. That is exactly what I do when I look for a new piece of equipment.

--- End quote ---

"Zoom out" is term related to using zoom function. Nobody cares about "changing timebase after the stopped capture" except people that don't know how to set timebase right in the first place.

I use several Siglent scopes and a Keysight pretty much on daily basis. Out of reasons where I use Keysight instead of my Siglents, there are some decodes and some other stuff that is more suited for the task, but relying on the scope to capture stuff outside of what I set it for by chance to cover my bad practice is not one of them.

Like I documented few times before, Keysight DOES NOT capture outside the screen. What it does is cheat. When in RUN only screen length is captured. If you then press STOP, it performs a separate, additional, new trigger where it captures long.

--- End quote ---
Oh, this sillyness again.  :palm:  Your statement can be translated 1 on 1 into: I'm right handed so everyone should use right handed tools. Left handed tools are for idiots who never learned to use their right hand properly. Just stop making a fool out of yourself. People in the real world know better; left handed people work more efficient with left handed tools.

frank2644:
Thank you for of the replies, they are very helpful.

SOMEONE asked why I need that zoom function so I decided to recheck my RF sweep generator that I made a few years ago. That had some challenging waveforms. Surprisingly, the frequency steps are not measuring correctly or consistently so I have to figure out what's wrong, it's probably me. I've  tried to describe the waveform details at the end of this note, but it's probably better not to get sidetracked in those details.

Anyway, the purpose was to determine if a zoom out function would be useful. And so far I'm not sure. IOW, the off-screen capture in this case would probably not be large enough to be useful. Further, overall I'm starting to think the few times a zoom-out would be nice is not a big enough benefit to justify buying a different mfr's scope and having to learn it's operation and perhaps hit other shortcomings. If the zoom-out was a life-saver, I might thing differently, but now I don't think that's the case. I haven't reached a decision yet, but I'm leaning toward the subject Siglent scope.

BTW, the few times I needed support the vendor TEquipment was very helpful and even got answers from Siglent for me. Although I never tried to get answers directly from Siglent myself. And I have to say, the SDS1104x-e I have has been very satisfactory.

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Waveform details: Basically I capture a 360khz wide, 27 step sweep with a 10.7mhz center frequency. The sweep takes about 1/2 second to complete the 27 steps. The 27 step marker pulses are on chan 3, with the RF on chan 1. The goal is to verify the frequency is correct at each of the 27 markers.
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Thanks, again, to all who contributed. Any further comments are welcome.
Frank

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