Agilent DSOX 2000 trace colors

[KD0RC]

Does anyone know if there is a way to change the color of the traces on an Agilent 2000 series scope?  The default yellow and green are waaaay too close in color for me to easily discern. If I look real close (literally take off my glasses and get my face right up to the screen...) I can tell which is which.  Anytime the traces are real fat, it is easier to tell, but if I turn on averaging to get a thin trace, I really can't tell which is which.  I suppose it is no worse than my Tek 2213 analog scope when using dual trace, but I upgraded and want to take full advantage of the $$$ I just spent.   

I looked all through the user guide and tried everything I could think of in the scope, but no luck.  I saw that you can change colors of annotations, but not traces.

Thanks,
Len

[AndyC_772]

They're fixed, sorry. I presume your scope is 2 channel; channels 3 and 4 are red and blue, which might be easier to tell apart.

Since yellow = green + red, is there any chance you could be red/green colour blind?

[mikeselectricstuff]

Bear in mind the trace graphics are generated by the ASIC, so colours could well be nailed down in there. I don't recall from the teardown vid whether the LCD has a parallel or serial interface, but if the former, you could juggle some bits around to change the colour mapping. 

[KD0RC]

Well, I figured that they were fixed but thought I would ask anyway.  I do have the typical male red/green color blindness.  It is not severe, and I can tell the difference among colors, but small spots (or lines) or muted colors tend to blend together.

[baljemmett]

To give you the choice of changing the colours of each channel would involve nothing more than a firmware update from them with the option available. Maybe if you speak nicely to Agilent explaining the problem they might take it onboard and be the first manufacture to provide colour options.

Heh, that ship sailed long ago - some of the old HP DSOs had customisable trace colours - I remember seeing that in the manuals when researching a potential eBay bid, and since I'm in the same boat as the OP (thanks to fairly severe colour blindness, I can't tell the traces on my DSOX2002A apart - couldn't really justify the extra cost of a four-channel model) it stuck in the mind as a useful option to look for.

[echen1024]

To give you the choice of changing the colours of each channel would involve nothing more than a firmware update from them with the option available. Maybe if you speak nicely to Agilent explaining the problem they might take it onboard and be the first manufacture to provide colour options.

Heh, that ship sailed long ago - some of the old HP DSOs had customisable trace colours - I remember seeing that in the manuals when researching a potential eBay bid, and since I'm in the same boat as the OP (thanks to fairly severe colour blindness, I can't tell the traces on my DSOX2002A apart - couldn't really justify the extra cost of a four-channel model) it stuck in the mind as a useful option to look for.

You could always spin the vert pos knob and see which trace moves...

[Rigby]

Or, equipment manufacturers could be aware that 1 man in 13 is color blind and do the very minimal amount of work required to make the colors adjustable on new designs.

[echen1024]

Or, equipment manufacturers could be aware that 1 man in 13 is color blind and do the very minimal amount of work required to make the colors adjustable on new designs.

An excellent point. I'm just wondering how hard could it be to add that functionality.

[Rigby]

An excellent point. I'm just wondering how hard could it be to add that functionality.

On existing scopes, it could be anywhere from trivial to impossible.  On new designs, all they need do is add it to the spec sheet before design begins (or before it's too late to design that in.)

[echen1024]

An excellent point. I'm just wondering how hard could it be to add that functionality.

On existing scopes, it could be anywhere from trivial to impossible.  On new designs, all they need do is add it to the spec sheet before design begins (or before it's too late to design that in.)

If it's determined by the ASIC, then yes, it might be close to impossible.

[baljemmett]

You could always spin the vert pos knob and see which trace moves...

Which is exactly what I do, unless I just poke the big glowing buttons to turn one off quickly and tell them apart that way.  Doesn't take away from the fact that either nobody gave any thought to making life easier for those of us with vision deficiencies, or they did and then decided not to bother.  Nor, come to think of it, does it help in screenshots...

The only particularly good reason I can think of to actively not do it, presuming it was thought about early enough in the design process that the ASIC supported it, would be the colour coding on the front panel; I can see someone deciding that having the traces not match the channel selectors would cause confusion/be ugly/something else an affected user wouldn't care about.  Now, I think some of the (reassuringly expensive!) R&S scopes use RGB LEDs to make their front-panel buttons match the user-configurable trace colours, but I could be mistaken.

(When all's said and done, though, it's no worse than using an analogue 'scope or a monochrome DSO, as the OP observed.  At least yellow and green are both visible, even to the majority of sufferers.  ISTR some Chinese scopes use yellow - or maybe it was green? - and red, which would render one channel totally unusable for some of us; red is so dark as to be almost invisible against the black background.)

[jrgandara]

I don´t have any color deficiency, but IMHO yellow and green are too close and prove to be a poor decision, specially in a two channel scope. We have so many colors and they chose just this two!

[VK5RC]

I have the dsox3024,  I haven't had much trouble,  could it be the colour temperature of the light fittings in the room?

[daddario]

Sorry for the slight off topic, but this thread got me thinking - what was the first colour 'scope and when was it introduced? Or rather, when did they become popular?
I could leaf through some old ELFA catalogues, but I don't have access to them at the moment.