Hi all,
First, thanks to the folks who maintain the fantastic scope spreadsheet. That thing is awesome!
I've already got an ancient Philips/Fluke PM3040 analogue scope (gorgeous but huge and unwieldy), a Picoscope 3206B (200MHz, 2ch), and an Open Workbench Logic Sniffer, but I'm looking for a lightweight desk scope that doesn't require an external PC, with the particular requirement of 8ch or 16ch digital inputs.
I was looking at the excellent Siglent SDS1104X-E that Dave reviewed in #1042, but I can't make sense of the options. There's SLA1016 which is the actual probe, and SDS1000X-E-16LA which is the software, but neither of those is useful without the other, so I'm confused as to why there are two separate addons with different (rather high) prices. From what I can see, the combined price of the two addons would be more than the original price of the scope! Is this really correct, or am I getting confused?
If this is the case, what's the most cost-effective method (other than half-inching one off the back of a lorry) of getting hold of a scope to the following specs:
- MSO with 2ch/4ch analog inputs and 8ch/16ch digital, with necessary probes and software.
- 70MHz or higher bandwidth
- 1GSa/s or more
- I2C, SPI, UART, CAN decoding support. DMX and I2S would also be handy, but I can break out my PicoScope for those occasions.
- Ability to save trace data to PC, via USB or SD card (or similar) would be helpful too.
Budget is fairly flexible but I'd like to keep it below 650GBP if possible. Any ideas?
Cheers!