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Recommendations for an Oscilloscope

interested1

Hello Everyone,

  I am in the market for my first oscilloscope.  I have used oscilloscopes before but not really taken to writing down the specs of the device or constructing exactly what I want in a scope.  To date I have gotten by without the device, but I now am in a good financial spot and the purchase of a sub-$500 'scope is reasonable provided I obtain some guide.  My requirements are rather vague, but can be generalized as a desire to purchase a scope that provides enough data sampling for robotics projects --I currently work with the Raspberry Pi and the Beagle Bone Black.  I am confident that the previous curtailment didn't reduce the field all that much, so I reiterate, I am willing to spend ~$500 on a scope, so please no suggestions of thousand dollar scopes.  I want something, which in the breadth of product offerings is probably quite basic, but nonetheless I would like to be able to have a scope to test my robotics and embedded Linux boards with...

 

A friend of mine suggested that I purchase something akin to the Instek GDS-1052-U Digital Storage Oscilloscope, 2 Channel, Color LCD, 50MHz, 250MS/s with USB or a less expensive USB Oscilloscope - MSO-19 Considering his knowledge of what I might be using the scope for, likely an intimacy more than I am expressing in my description for usage, I remain inquisitive for advice.  I mention these products and provide links only to better aid my previously vague explanation for my prospective usage.

 

As a final curtailment, I would really love to get a scope that I could use with Linux rather than Winblow$ as I really only use Linux or OSX boxes these days.  I am confident there are products that are not Winblow$ only, but the two scopes my buddy suggests both seem to urge my adoption of a OS that I want not part in!

 

Thank you for your responses and if I can better explain what I hope to accomplish with a scope please explain to me what I can provide to better resolve the specification I (unwittingly) desire in a scope.  I apologizes again for being less than committal or precise, but you have to begin from somewhere and my point of departure is that I would like a scope... thanks for working with me on a request that is perhaps an incomplete formulation.

 

David

 

P.S. I did try to search for a discussion on this topic; however, I couldn't find anything within the last year or two.  I figure this is a question that everyone has at some point and so why not posit the issue and revisit.

  • If your budget is set at 500$ max, then it's no brainier. After many posts on EEVblog forum, there seem to be consensus that these budget dsos are best: Rigol DS1052E, Owon SDS7102, Siglent SDS1102 CML and Hantek DSO5102B.

     

    General consensus there is that USB scopes are crap and should be avoided. This Instek you mention is old generation dso, pretty slow in terms of sampling rate and with pathetic 4k sample memory. 385$ can get you a much better scope.

     

    Which one of these? I have SDS7102 and I like it a lot, high res big LCD, 10 MB of sample memory at full speed and for both channels, 1 Gs/s, 100 MHz bandwidth. Lately there has been some noise issues with these, so you might wanna check it before you buy...

     

    If you can double your budget than I would take a look at the Rigol DS2072, which is pretty serious scope.

     

    I recommend that you head to eevblog forum and do your research there. There is a lot of scope related discussion and lot of very knowledgeable people.

  • in reply to nermash

    Nermin,

      Thanks for the great advice as well as alerting me that my friend suggested a scope that is not exactly current.  I appreciate that you provided a variety of brands as well as the double-my-budget option.  At this point I think I am going to stick to one of the budget dsos until I really have a need for something more powerful like the Rigol DS2072.  Now the process of teasing out which of the four budget ones best suites my needs.  Thanks again for this great answer!

    David

  • in reply to interested1

    I have the Rigol DS1052E and enjoy it very much.  It was $399 at the time in 2011.  I think that their 100MHz is that price now.  I agree USB scopes are probably not the best route.  For logic analyzer, I love my Salaea Logic: http://www.saleae.com/logic

  • in reply to fustini

    Nice catch Drew!  I as initially thinking of buying hte Rigol DS1052E and doing the firmware downgrade to get the 100MHz, but I will pay the extra money to get the 100MHz and not have to mess around with the firmware.

     

    What is your view on the Linux software for the scope?  I have read a few things on the topic and it seems that most of the articles and blogs were a mere promulgation of possibility.  Is there a robust application for the Rigol scopes?  This isn't going to break my purchase decision, but since you one of these why not ask!  Thanks again,

    David

  • in reply to interested1

    Do you mean that it does or can Linux?  I hadn't heard of that.  The firmware it came with works well enough for me.  It also does FFT if you want to see frequency spectrum of the signal.  I did see post about using python with it: http://www.cibomahto.com/2010/04/controlling-a-rigol-oscilloscope-using-linux-and-python/

  • in reply to fustini

    My Linux question was in regards to the python access and if it is robust.  The firmware issue is unrelated to the Linux issue.  I read you could trick the firmware into running 100MHz, however, there was a firmware upgrade that closed that... now one needs to downgrade the firmware in order to trick the device into running at 100MHz. I think the two issues got a bit jumbled.  I hope I have clarified the issue.

    David

  • in reply to interested1

    Hi David,

     

     

    the 100MHz is even more simple these days and should work on all scopes:

    http://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/changing-the-rigol-ds1052e-to-ds1102e-using-usb-the-dummy-guide/msg187918/#msg187918

     

     

    Regarding the controlling from Python under Linux:

    There were lot's of problems getting more than 600Samples from the scope because of a firmware bug.  A workaround is currently in linux-next and will probably enter Kernel 3.11:

     

     

    https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next.git/log/drivers/usb/class/usbtmc.c?id=refs/tags/next-20130530

     

     

    If you want a simple library to read the Rigol waveforms, check out my scripts here:

    https://github.com/mabl/pyRigolWFM

  • in reply to Former Member

    Thanks for the Linux specific information.  I love that I can post here and get good quality suggestions and tips!  Thanks everyone for all the help with my oscilloscope question.

  • Hey David (Scheltema -> Dutch roots?)

     

    I've been using the Rigol scope for a few years now, and -for its budget- it's really great. A few fellow engineers bought USB scopes years ago, all of which ended up in the closet, except for the one where the owner wrote a completely new acquisition program image

     

    I've used a lot of scopes for work (Tektronix, Agilent, Fluke, Philips, from old CRT-based ones to modern 12"TFT based scopes that run on a popular desktop OS), and have also used things like picoscope and cleverscope USB scopes, and nothing beats a 'real' scope with 'real' buttons. The DS1052 is a nice little thingy; fits in my backpack, offers a lot of measurement options, and works quite OK. I do miss 'deep memory' functions (acquiring a large set of data, and zoom in on an interesting piece) found in more expensive scopes, and of course the display resolution quite crappy. User interface is OK most of the time.

     

    I second Drew's opinion on the Saleae device; I've bought it for my job and for our local hackerspace, and it's been an instant hit at both locations. Really easy to use and setup, easy waveform viewing, and decoding of data. However, its usage is different from a 'scope': the Saleae doesn't offer a 'live' view but opposes that with the possibility to capture many minutes of data and store it for later viewing. It has saved me many, many, many hours during debug sessions! If you're just going to analyse digital signals, and you're not interested in having a direct 'live' view, skip the scope and get the Saleae logic analyser. Then you can still buy the scope if you need it....

    Greetings,

    Victor

     

    EDIT: I've used some 'budget-line' scopes from big manufacturers aswell. They were very cumbersome in usage, slow in response and even worse in measurement options. Seems like the engineering / marketing just cut away functions, instead of making a new device with a lot of options, but done cheaply.

  • Hi David,

     

    I would like to know more about the Linux part as I am migrating to Linux from windows. How to control and measure an Oscilloscope in Linux ?

    Which Linux distro you are using? I would like to go for Fedora or Open SUSE.

    And what are the other EDA tools you are using/suggesting in Linux?