EEVblog #1146 - New Low Cost Rigol MSO5000 Oscilloscope

[Martin72]

Yesterday our WS3024 returned after external calibration so I had an direct visual comparison.
Yeah...quite more "look and feel" professional building quality, bigger and brighter screen, better structered menus...in this points the rigol lost against the "little" Lecroy.
But we´re talking about a prize of appx 3 times more than a 5074 and in some cases the WS3024 appears slower and haven´t all the features the rigol got.
Nevertheless it couldn´t be magic to create a design nearly to scopes like the Lecroy WS3024 what the frontpanel design and the menu structure concerns.
As I said before, I don´t mind about the "Mickey Mouse" design in general.
But in direct comparison vis a vis, the rigol looks like a toy for children...
Although it isn´t of course in technical way but I can understand Dave´s comments in the vids where he´s presenting the 5000 and 7000s rigol(no fully reviews..come on Dave).
We´re talking about scopes fully armed (in "legal" way) between 5000...12000€.
The technical abillities in general might be justifying the prices if rigol fixed some issues.
But the design.....

[nctnico]

Who cares about the design. You don't have to take the oscilloscope to dinner. However the design of the MSO5000 could have been less cluttered. Rigol should'nt have put the buttons on the side of the screen. A touch screen makes them redundant.

[Hydrawerk]

Could someone measure the waveform update rate of MSO5000 under various conditions (e. g. all channels on, serial decoding on)?

[Martin72]

@nctnico
I don´t get the advantages of a touch screen in case of a measurement tool like an oscilloscope….

Could someone measure the waveform update rate of MSO5000?

Next week

[nctnico]

@nctnico
I don´t get the advantages of a touch screen in case of a measurement tool like an oscilloscope….

I have an R&S RTM3004 and a MicSig TO1104 (both with touch screen) and I'm finding the touch screen a big improvement for making settings beyond the horizontal and vertical controls (*). BUT the interface on these oscilloscopes has been designed for touch from the ground up. Last year I've also played shortly with a Keysight S series (IIRC) which has a touch screen as well . However in that oscilloscope the UI hasn't really been designed for touch. Many of the menus and screen elements are too small to touch so operating the scope gets tedious. I don't know how well Rigol has designed to UI to work with a touch screen.

[Martin72]

Oh, a Micsig...It´s Offtopic but what are your thoughts on this, we´re  searching for a mobile scope for services

[nctnico]

Oh, a Micsig...It´s Offtopic but what are your thoughts on this, we´re  searching for a mobile scope for services

Offtopic it goes then: IMHO unlike other handheld scopes the Micsig TO1000 is also useful as a bench scope. I'd say it is a bench scope without buttons but with a battery. If you are looking for a portable scope I'd certainly give it a try. What is special about the TO1000 is that it can record to video so you can save a life signal as a video.

[Synthtech]

Another vote for the Micsig, it’s fantastic to drop anywhere and start probing.

[supercilious]

Next week

Could I also request that you measure the data transfer rate? How long does it take to transfer 100M samples using SCPI to a PC via USB and/or ethernet? This was always an Achilles heel for Rigol scopes and made them much less useful than they would otherwise be with their large sample memory compared to the competition.

[Martin72]

Hi,

This could I do at home later. ( I´ll take the scope back to home on forthcoming friday).

The update rates measures will be done tomorrow.

[Fungus]

Could I also request that you measure the data transfer rate?

And the screen refresh rate when using remote access? 

(plz)

[Martin72]

I must confess, I´d never used scopes with a connection via pc so far…..no, stop...we use "scope explorer" by our older lecroys to transfer screenshots ( cause they didn´t have usb ), it´s awesome slow..

[Martin72]

Hi,

Feeding in a 25Mhz Sine into the rigol, zoom to one period (5ns/div.), also using the full vertical grid.





Memory Depth:             Wfs/s:
1K                                530000
10K                              94000
100K                            61000
1M                                 7842
10M                                 798
25M                                 320
50M                                 160
100M                                 80

If I did it right, these are the results.

[Hydrawerk]

Thank you.

[Martin72]

Wednesday I test it with all channels on.

[Swap_File]

Anyone have a chance to break open the PLA2216 logic probes and see what's inside?  I'm considering building my own since I doubt they use $400 worth of parts.

[Martin72]

I doubt they use $400 worth of parts.

Sure they don´t.

None make an offer worth the prices of the parts.

[Martin72]

Today, I did some measurements on a signalboard which delivers among others a three-phase pwm signal.
And I was a little bit dissapointed.
As known from all the different lecroy models on the work, as known from the SDS1104X-E, the MSO 5074 couldn´t display a "stable" pwm-signal.
I couldn´t describe it better, but the signal "jitters" on the screen, as if you don´t have the trigger proper set.
On the lecroys/siglent, the signal is "stable" displaying.
Sure, with single-shot pressing one after another you can see the signal width going from small to wide and back - But it´s annoying and it would be much more comfortable and less irritating when the rigol does it like lecroy/siglent.
And I try to use the "lowpass" math function to seperate the sinewave out from the pwm.
To set the cutoff frequency of say 1000hz, you must set the timebase of several hundreds of milli-seconds.
It works, but you can´t see much from the sinewave which period is way shorter than the actual timebase set.
Therefore a free selectable cutoff frequency independent from the timebase would be necessary, otherwise the filter functions makes no sense at all.

[Martin72]

Today I did the last measurements before Christmas Holidays.
Specially the waveform update rate with more than one channel, the update rate by spi decoding.

First of all, the behaviour of the rigol in case of wfs/s is exactly the same as here:



Nothing bad, but remarkable.

Wavefrom updates during decoding spi : appx. 90wfs/s
Waveform updates decreasing while using math, in my case displaying FFT : No.


Waveform updates one channel as expected over 500000:



With more channels on between 70000.....90000, still an excellent result.
And : It decreases one time when more than one channel is active, it don´t decrease further.

Interesting:
The measurements were taken with a 25Mhz Sine at 5ns/div.
But if you zoom out to 20ns/div AND with all channels on, the waveform rate increases to appx 200000...hm.

Martin

[orion242]

Just ordered the 5074 from RigolNA tonight.   Estimated ship date ">8 weeks".

Must have sold a few.

Had the 1052, upgraded to the 1054z shortly after that came out.  The HDMI output and bigger screen for the price sold me on the 5074 alone.  The 1052 would still serve my needs, but for the price and features of the new devices seems silly not to upgrade if you have the cash.  Beats the living snot out of the old crow I had before I met Rigol.

[Martin72]

In comparison with the 1054z, it´s really an upgrade buying the 5074.
FFT and other math functions are faster and can be displayed alone, the bigger screen....
At this Points I´m confident with the 5074.

[mrpackethead]

Just ordered the 5074 from RigolNA tonight.   Estimated ship date ">8 weeks".

Must have sold a few.

Had the 1052, upgraded to the 1054z shortly after that came out.  The HDMI output and bigger screen for the price sold me on the 5074 alone.  The 1052 would still serve my needs, but for the price and features of the new devices seems silly not to upgrade if you have the cash.  Beats the living snot out of the old crow I had before I met Rigol.

It will be interesting to see if Rigol makes any attempts to 'update' any new firmware versions to make them somewhat more secure.

[Fungus]

It will be interesting to see if Rigol makes any attempts to 'update' any new firmware versions to make them somewhat more secure.

...because I'm sure they want to sell less. 

[mrpackethead]

...because I'm sure they want to sell less. 

We will see. There is certainly plenty they could do to make it much tougher to hack.    I would be confident that Rigol certainly knows of this thread, and similar threads ( such as hackaday ). The thread has certainly been read by some of the Rigol resellers, who likely would have discussed it upwards.   My gut feeling ( no proof ) is that Rigol seeded that hacking thread as well.   ( the serial number 001 was the big giveaway ).

But the ball is in their court.  The first ones are out there, but will subsquent ones be the same.  Only time will tell, but either way we will know waht Rigols intention is.

[Martin72]

I don´t think they´ll prevent the models from hacking - The entry models (5074/5104) will be bought and hacked by hobbyists, greater models and/or the options will be bought from companies.
So they won´t worry about that, I guess.