Oscilloscope Zoom Out Quirk

[Elasia]

Announcement from another thread:

Let's see how Siglent reacts to this video and the one showing the comparison to their competitors. Perhaps there has been a conversation between the CEO and the R&D department already:

CEO: Why are our oscilloscopes different compared to all of the competitors?
R&D: The people from Lecroy said...
CEO: Don't care about what Lecroy said. Dave made us look stupid! And dumb! And more stupid. How much time to fix?
R&D: A couple of hours tops I guess.
CEO: Make it so! New firmware by the end of the week!
R&D: OK boss.

Alternative:
~1 month ago resulting from beta tester emails:

CEO: We need allow for capture zoom out.
R&D: Why ? Pico and LeCroy don't support it.
CEO: Apparently some can't embrace the capture analysis tools we offer so we need to make it much easier for them.
R&D: OK we will look into it but we really should be fixing the few bugs already reported.
CEO: Yes, OK then get onto it when you can.

Yes you heard it here first !
ETA, unknown.

Nice.. my own take on it is just wanting to be able to hide the view finder top bar for more real estate.. that said i wouldnt mind being able to hide the top and bottom bars as well and maybe say use a double tap of the touch button to bring them back or a double touch at the location they would have normally been

[Elasia]

The beauty of dso is, you can change nearly everything in firmware.
So, in case of siglent, why don´t change the memory management, letting the user allow to choose for himself always the maximum memory - or choosing it to auto.

They do.. from their own workflow its fine as it is and even with my own now that i know how it works, its just that everyone else whom dont understand how to use the zoom control to control it.. and thats a great deal of people

[maginnovision]

Why don't they just let you resize the windows? The R&S scopes let you do that. When in zoom mode I can hide the zoom nav window or make it huge. Same with FFT and bode plot. Let the user decide what they want.

[tautech]

The beauty of dso is, you can change nearly everything in firmware.
So, in case of siglent, why don´t change the memory management, letting the user allow to choose for himself always the maximum memory - or choosing it to auto.

Memory management is already auto within the limits of the max memory depth we set.

Capture depth is the topic of this thread and that will change, not the automatic memory management otherwise the risk is that other 'important to some' specifications will suffer.
Memory management is the way it is for good reason so to get best ADC/FPGA throughput performance.

[EEVblog]

The beauty of dso is, you can change nearly everything in firmware.
So, in case of siglent, why don´t change the memory management, letting the user allow to choose for himself always the maximum memory - or choosing it to auto.

Memory management is already auto within the limits of the max memory depth we set.

Capture depth is the topic of this thread and that will change, not the automatic memory management otherwise the risk is that other 'important to some' specifications will suffer.
Memory management is the way it is for good reason so to get best ADC/FPGA throughput performance.

But the user has chosen to manually use X memory depth. Saying they can't have that because they know better than the user what they want is just idiotic.

[EEVblog]

We look forward to your followup video Dave when you discover the capabilities of 2 obscure buttons on the Siglent front panel.   

Tautech, why not show the steps to achieve this without cheekiness? Remember that people that come across this thread may be trying to make a purchase decision - since they will not have a Siglent in front of them to explore the mysterious buttons, they will go elsewhere.

I urge you refresh your memory with study of the first 3 pages in the SDS2kX Plus thread.
Maybe the reasoning behind Siglents acquisition strategy will become clear.

He does have a point... I had no clue zoom worked like that even after reading that originally before i picked up the scope and then forgot about it. It's not automatically natural/instinctual to setup and thats why it flummoxes a number of people and to a large degree they have a valid point.  The scope does indeed allow timebase expansion already even exactly how nctnico works and is fanatic about / how Dave expects it to work as well so there is no reason they cant also make it an option to default work in that manor if someone wants it to WITHOUT selecting zoom.. in fact i'd encourage you to give them that direct feedback as it is something i'd like to see as well even after mastering zooming.
The ability to do that is just a matter of hiding the zoom ui components and reduce all of it into a timebase/memory selector based on the same table Martin72 posted.. they dont need to get fancy about it and shouldnt take one of their programmers no  more than a couple of hours to tinker around with the UI
This is only a UI interface problem and NOT with the base functions of the scope itself

Forgetting about the zoom out feature entirely, why on earth can't a user who manually selected X memory depth get that memory depth at the timebase they want?

[EEVblog]

A question for anyone with a scope that has the 'history' mode:

Does changing the settings between triggers, e.g. changing vertical or horizontal scale, or enabling an additional channel, clear the history buffer? If not, do such changes get reflected in the on-screen display of the settings, when reviewing history?

If I understood it correctly, you mean in Run mode, right? If so, the buffer is discarded when enabling channels on the Rigol DS4014 and I would expect so, given the memory is split between pairs of channels.
In stop mode you can change the vertical and horizontal settings without a problem.

Presumably you have to be in Stop mode anyway to look at the history?

Yes, or otherwise it's being continually overwritten.

[nctnico]

The beauty of dso is, you can change nearly everything in firmware.
So, in case of siglent, why don´t change the memory management, letting the user allow to choose for himself always the maximum memory - or choosing it to auto.

They do.. from their own workflow its fine as it is and even with my own now that i know how it works, its just that everyone else whom dont understand how to use the zoom control to control it.. and thats a great deal of people

Nonsense. Zoom mode just wastes precious space when you need to set it to the full memory depth in order to force an oscilloscope to use all the memory. There is no useful information in there to have it on screen with the full memory record. A  crutch is a crutch. An indicator where you are in the memory record (which is standard on many oscilloscopes)  takes less space. Search and (when decoding) the list with decoded packages are way more useful navigation tools. And using the decoded list view in turn requires to do full memory decoding and not decode just what is on screen.

[2N3055]

The beauty of dso is, you can change nearly everything in firmware.
So, in case of siglent, why don´t change the memory management, letting the user allow to choose for himself always the maximum memory - or choosing it to auto.

They do.. from their own workflow its fine as it is and even with my own now that i know how it works, its just that everyone else whom dont understand how to use the zoom control to control it.. and thats a great deal of people

Nonsense. Zoom mode just wastes precious space when you need to set it to the full memory depth in order to force an oscilloscope to use all the memory. There is nu useful information in there to have it on screen. Search and (when decoding) the list with decoded packages are way more useful navigation tools. And using the decoded list view in turn requires to do full memory decoding and not just what is on screen.

Again you use wording that makes it look like you insist that people are stupid if they don't think like you.

Zoom is useful, and navigational clues and buffer position are crucial piece of it. You just dislike it. On your R&S with large screen and freely configurable zoom size, it well worth the screen space it uses. On Picoscope with excellent zoom implementation it doesn't even use additional screen space at all. It is very easy and intuitive to use.

Try using your web browser on pc without scroll bars... You think people invented dozens of navigation tools in GUIs because they are stupid?

You keep applying fact that "zoom out" is useful for a special case (long, slow triggering captures where you need to get long sequence but need to look at on short packet to know when to stop) and apply it as a general principle.

Get a grip. Zoom out can be useful. We all agree to that by now.

Is it necessary ? No it is not. Very few people use it in isolated situations, and you can as well accomplish same results using zoom mode and/or propper timebase settings. Comfort of any work procedure is highly individual thing.

Should Siglent add full manual control of acquisition memory like R&S has?  Yes by all means, if they can. It is ALWAYS better to have more options. I still would like if they would make zoom mode more configurable to be able to use less screen space as I would rather use that. It is more logical and straightforward to me. And any user of Picoscope and LeCroy.

Would I refuse to buy LeCroy or Siglent scope because of that? No, not by a long shot. I bought Picoscopes despite that, because it is unimportant to me. I just use zoom mode when I need to capture long and look at short time. Period.

What bothers me a bit are these overblown overtones in how this, frankly, non issue, is presented here.

I have an urgent message to Siglent:  Please issue urgent firmware update in which in all menus and user manuals you rename memory depth options so it is clear memory management is Auto with max length. 

Because that is only mistake they made. Unclear terminology. Everything else is one man on a crusade, and a bit of clickbait titles on some videos.

If you guys want to give Siglent (or any other manufacturers) a grief, then please apply energy to get them to fix real problems, real bugs or add real, useful, features. 

For instance Nico says his prefered method to navigate through capture when decoding is to use list or search.
So why he didn't write an write up how R&S RTM3000 (that is very expensive) doesn't have search on most basic I2C, SPI or UART protocols. After few years since  it is released, still doesn't and not a peep from R&S they even have intention to do so. 
NOW, that is a serious problem, and a reason I didn't buy RTM 3000 at the time . It was otherwise my first choice.
Try finding one packet in 10000 manually.

GW Instek has it, Keysight has it on 3000T series and up, Lecroy has it...

That is an example of real reason not to buy that scope, not some buffer management strategy that you might need in obscure workflow that is applicable only now and then.

And my reason why I didn't buy SDS5000X so far is the same. No search on decoded data. You want to give grief to Siglent, bug them about that.
And to make decoding to decode full buffer length, not only what is shown, with and without zoom mode. That is useful. I agree with you Nico on that. That is something Picoscope does right..

Best regards to all..

[EEVblog]

Get a grip. Zoom out can be useful. We all agree to that by now.

Is it necessary ? No it is not. Very few people use it in isolated situations, and you can as well accomplish same results using zoom mode and/or propper timebase settings. Comfort of any work procedure is highly individual thing.

Should Siglent add full manual control of acquisition memory like R&S has?  Yes by all means, if they can. It is ALWAYS better to have more options. I still would like if they would make zoom mode more configurable to be able to use less screen space as I would rather use that. It is more logical and straightforward to me. And any user of Picoscope and LeCroy.

Would I refuse to buy LeCroy or Siglent scope because of that? No, not by a long shot. I bought Picoscopes despite that, because it is unimportant to me. I just use zoom mode when I need to capture long and look at short time. Period.

What bothers me a bit are these overblown overtones in how this, frankly, non issue, is presented here.

I have an urgent message to Siglent:  Please issue urgent firmware update in which in all menus and user manuals you rename memory depth options so it is clear memory management is Auto with max length. 

Because that is only mistake they made. Unclear terminology. Everything else is one man on a crusade, and a bit of clickbait titles on some videos.

Umm, all you points above is practically a verbatim summary of what I said in my videos.

[2N3055]

Get a grip. Zoom out can be useful. We all agree to that by now.

Is it necessary ? No it is not. Very few people use it in isolated situations, and you can as well accomplish same results using zoom mode and/or propper timebase settings. Comfort of any work procedure is highly individual thing.

Should Siglent add full manual control of acquisition memory like R&S has?  Yes by all means, if they can. It is ALWAYS better to have more options. I still would like if they would make zoom mode more configurable to be able to use less screen space as I would rather use that. It is more logical and straightforward to me. And any user of Picoscope and LeCroy.

Would I refuse to buy LeCroy or Siglent scope because of that? No, not by a long shot. I bought Picoscopes despite that, because it is unimportant to me. I just use zoom mode when I need to capture long and look at short time. Period.

What bothers me a bit are these overblown overtones in how this, frankly, non issue, is presented here.

I have an urgent message to Siglent:  Please issue urgent firmware update in which in all menus and user manuals you rename memory depth options so it is clear memory management is Auto with max length. 

Because that is only mistake they made. Unclear terminology. Everything else is one man on a crusade, and a bit of clickbait titles on some videos.

Umm, all you points above is practically a verbatim summary of what I said in my videos.

Yes, but discussion was going away from it....
I only reiterated points that were written here even before you made those videos..
Your videos are pretty much verbatim of our previous discussion and analysis on the topic by several members here..
That is nature of discussions on specific topic, we speak about same things.. It only means we agree on something..
Regards,
Sinisa

[tautech]

I'll drop this here for study.
SDS5054X Zoom mode dual timebase Stop.
SPI source=STB3
-80ms to +99ms decoded data listed in ~3700 bytes
We can navigate through the capture with a drag of a finger, H Pos or mouse in either window(dotted outline = active) and play forward or backwards or jump to a timestamp.
Decode bar placed wherever you like. 
Hide the right pane menu if required. 
Then there's also History......
Same tools as are in SDS2000X Plus.

[SilverSolder]

[...] It only means we agree on something..
Regards,
Sinisa

We are having a violent agreement! 

[2N3055]

[...] It only means we agree on something..
Regards,
Sinisa

We are having a violent agreement! 

I think everybody is quite civilised... We disagree. So what?  If any of these discussions make anyone learn anything, and/or Siglent, or any other manufacturer make better products because of these discussions,  it's a win.

[jemangedeslolos]

This is a marketing tip from Siglent.
Now that the whole world has discovered the scope, his pros and cons, Siglent will release a corrective firmware.
Everyone will be amazed by Siglent, the speed of the brand to take into account demands from its customers and they will not be able to manufacture enough.

[Martin72]

LOL 

Made my day..

[nctnico]

The beauty of dso is, you can change nearly everything in firmware.
So, in case of siglent, why don´t change the memory management, letting the user allow to choose for himself always the maximum memory - or choosing it to auto.

They do.. from their own workflow its fine as it is and even with my own now that i know how it works, its just that everyone else whom dont understand how to use the zoom control to control it.. and thats a great deal of people

Nonsense. Zoom mode just wastes precious space when you need to set it to the full memory depth in order to force an oscilloscope to use all the memory. There is nu useful information in there to have it on screen. Search and (when decoding) the list with decoded packages are way more useful navigation tools. And using the decoded list view in turn requires to do full memory decoding and not just what is on screen.

Again you use wording that makes it look like you insist that people are stupid if they don't think like you.

Zoom is useful, and navigational clues and buffer position are crucial piece of it. You just dislike it. On your R&S with large screen and freely configurable zoom size, it well worth the screen space it uses. On Picoscope with excellent zoom implementation it doesn't even use additional screen space at all. It is very easy and intuitive to use.

You misunderstand my point but I see I had to clarify it better. If you have to use zoom mode to force an oscilloscope to use all the memory then the zoom mode loses it's intended function: offering a view on a signal using 2 different time/div / horizontal position settings. As you already stated this is very useful to keep track of 2 different parts of a at the same time (which is precisely why dual time bases where invented). However viewing the entire buffer in a zoom window just produces a bunch of colored horizontal bars in most cases. The picture Tautech posted above shows that. IOW: It is a waste of screen space taken by zoom mode AND loss of functionality if the only purpose of zoom mode is to have a workaround to force an oscilloscope to use all the memory.

[Elasia]

Forgetting about the zoom out feature entirely, why on earth can't a user who manually selected X memory depth get that memory depth at the timebase they want?

Because they are boneheads who didnt think of it like that?  From their perspective why would you need such a silly feature when you have a full advanced module to use instead?  Function already exists.. go make something else / dont waste your time on X feature mentality.. as the chinese would say.. its 'chabuduo' and usually the best way to deal with that is just be insistent without causing them to lose face when they originally didnt care it was substandard.  This was the basis for my earlier comment about their culture being that way.. just something that is common with their culture anyone having stuff made there has to be aware of if any QC

Either way from what tau posted it sounds like they will add UI functions to do just that since its just an extension of the zoom functions already there or rather i should say it is storing the data already if in zoom mode.. copy paste code / build UI without zoom UI and make a lot more people happy.. which is actually a better outcome because it means they are listening and willing to actively address it

For the longest time I thought they flat out didnt even support timebase / expanded memory depth which always irked me because otherwise you are forced to look at a giant blob of a cluster fuck and good luck figuring that out if you are just watching it while waiting to trigger

[Elasia]

You misunderstand my point but I see I had to clarify it better. If you have to use zoom mode to force an oscilloscope to use all the memory then the zoom mode loses it's intended function: offering a view on a signal using 2 different time/div / horizontal position settings. As you already stated this is very useful to keep track of 2 different parts of a at the same time (which is precisely why dual time bases where invented). However viewing the entire buffer in a zoom window just produces a bunch of colored horizontal bars in most cases. The picture Tautech posted above shows that. IOW: It is a waste of screen space taken by zoom mode AND loss of functionality if the only purpose of zoom mode is to have a workaround to force an oscilloscope to use all the memory.

Same reason i keep bringing up the UI needs modded to allow those components to be selectively hidden or shown or even a small slider... aka just tell if you want expanded memory when available and display it in the timebase box like 'normal'

I both like the full waveform slider and dislike it at the same time... the screen is big enough that it doesnt matter its there or not really.. that said however i want my real estate back anyway because its just a distraction unless im actually wanting to scroll through it and in that case just unhide it

[tautech]

Now that the whole world has discovered the scope, his pros and cons, Siglent will release a corrective firmware.
Everyone will be amazed by Siglent, the speed of the brand to take into account demands from its customers and they will not be able to manufacture enough.

Where have you been ? 
They can't produce enough of these already as members here will attest by sourcing any they could find from all over the world.
It's price point, feature set and core specs identified it was to be a strong contender in the DSO market even before release.

The only worry is how any zoom out feature might be implemented for those having trouble to adapt the existing tool set as it could possible impact on the features already available. We don't want that.

[Elasia]

Now that the whole world has discovered the scope, his pros and cons, Siglent will release a corrective firmware.
Everyone will be amazed by Siglent, the speed of the brand to take into account demands from its customers and they will not be able to manufacture enough.

Where have you been ? 
They can't produce enough of these already as members here will attest by sourcing any they could find from all over the world.
It's price point, feature set and core specs identified it was to be a strong contender in the DSO market even before release.

The only worry is how any zoom out feature might be implemented for those having trouble to adapt the existing tool set as it could possible impact on the features already available. We don't want that.

Why i keep saying it should just be a saved option setting to make it run in the mode you want.. they already got a large established universe so that would make no sense to make it default

[nctnico]

Now that the whole world has discovered the scope, his pros and cons, Siglent will release a corrective firmware.
Everyone will be amazed by Siglent, the speed of the brand to take into account demands from its customers and they will not be able to manufacture enough.

Where have you been ? 
They can't produce enough of these already as members here will attest by sourcing any they could find from all over the world.
It's price point, feature set and core specs identified it was to be a strong contender in the DSO market even before release.

That is ofcourse just an opinion; we can't verify Siglent's sales versus others.

Anyway, if a manufacturer wants to cater the professional market then the product must have 100% of the features the professional market requires. No crutches. No half-assed work-arounds. Likely this will make Siglent increasing their prices even more above Rigol's in order to recoup the development costs. Still I think there will be very good value for money. Siglent is getting very close to A-brand territory.

Edit: I agree with what Martin72 wrote below.

[Martin72]

@Rob:

It could always getting better...
Siglent should "allow" the users to have individual control on the memory ( 200mpts...Boy...), then there will be nearly nothing to stop everyone to buy a siglent.

[jemangedeslolos]

Now that the whole world has discovered the scope, his pros and cons, Siglent will release a corrective firmware.
Everyone will be amazed by Siglent, the speed of the brand to take into account demands from its customers and they will not be able to manufacture enough.

Where have you been ? 
They can't produce enough of these already as members here will attest by sourcing any they could find from all over the world.
It's price point, feature set and core specs identified it was to be a strong contender in the DSO market even before release.

The only worry is how any zoom out feature might be implemented for those having trouble to adapt the existing tool set as it could possible impact on the features already available. We don't want that.

Sorry I was too busy setting my scope mem depth manually and play with horizontal window all day long 

I don't why there is problem outside Europe but thanks to members here, I knew several things about this scope before it's released. I sold my SDS2204X waiting for It.
I asked for quotes from the first day and there is always stock.
There was a break two or three days at Batronix but it returned to stock very quickly.

[Martin72]

Siglent is getting very close to A-brand territory.

That is also my assessment, although I´m "only" a testfield technician…

With the SDS5000/SDS 2000X+, they´re are close to it - Remember the specs of the sds2k+, timebase 1ppm and low noise frontend...at this price...
And the SDS5K is the cheapest 1Ghz scope on the market…
Sure, there will be Pros and Cons on the memory mangement thing, but what is the goal of a manufacturer…
Right, to sell as much as possible, so their product should fullfill nearly all the needs.
And when the needs hang on to some, who prefer fully memory control...Why don´t following this.