new killer scope in town - a true game changer from R&S - RTB2002 & RTB2004

[JoHr]

Sure it has a glossy screen ... more than others. But actual smartphones have the same glossy screen. With a dark screen/background you have a high miror effect too. I already got used to it and don´t see a big issue on that. And I´m in daily usage with the scope now.

[Robaroni]

Sure it has a glossy screen ... more than others. But actual smartphones have the same glossy screen. With a dark screen/background you have a high miror effect too. I already got used to it and don´t see a big issue on that. And I´m in daily usage with the scope now.

Yes, I'm doing the same thing and as I think about it I like the glossy screen more. It seems sharper to me just like my Android does. The detail on this display is very special in my view.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Can we keep on-topic please!

Agreed! This thread has been generally very useful (albeit dangerous to one's wallet) - thanks to everyone for all the helpful info.

Mike - did the R&S guys make any comments about if they would like general questions and suggestions passed onto them? If so, who to?

I'm sure they would appreciate constructive suggestions - one issue they have is they are fairly new to the scope market ( though like Rich, Joel is also ex Agilent), and  most of their serious users are in-house R&S people. Rich's thread here is probably as good a place as any.

Re. shiny screen it's all about position - if there is only one place you can sensibly put a scope, and it reflects glare, it's a major problem, if not, it's a non-issue. (The R&S guys didn't like it either BTW!)

[nctnico]

Sure it has a glossy screen ... more than others. But actual smartphones have the same glossy screen. With a dark screen/background you have a high miror effect too.

That makes me wonder... why do all scopes still have a dark background? I did some TFT conversions on old test equipment and in those cases I always went for a white background. It is much easier for the eyes.

[Octane]

I hate white background. It is way to bright to stare at it all the time.

[ebastler]

That makes me wonder... why do all scopes still have a dark background? I did some TFT conversions on old test equipment and in those cases I always went for a white background. It is much easier for the eyes.

I think intensity grading is more clearly seen on a dark background, as are weak traces: It is easier to spot a trace with 5% brightness on a black background, than a trace with 95% brightness on a 100% white background.

[Robaroni]

Octane,
Maybe if you had a color option and you could pick a muted white you might like it. I know that with my EDA I'm pretty fussy about the schematic side and the grid background but on the PCB side I use black. Could just be that after 30 years I'm used to it.

Picoscope which runs a computer display show their demo shots with a white background. I'd like the option to fiddle with it to see which works better over time.

Mike, interesting that the R&S guy didn't like the glossy screen, I'd like to talk to the engineers who picked it. Did they have the non-glare option? Maybe it was a price thing or they couldn't get the specs they wanted in a different surface.

[JoHr]

...  Re. shiny screen it's all about position - if there is only one place you can sensibly put a scope, and it reflects glare, it's a major problem, if not, it's a non-issue. (The R&S guys didn't like it either BTW!)

@mike: Whats your experience with using a display foil?
Does it have major effects to the touchability?

My expirience is (and it might be disgusting) that a touched display is more responsive than a fresh cleaned one. Cleaned up it felt a little sticky ...

[BrianSchmalz]

I got the same screen protector for my scope that Mike recommended, cut it to size, and couldn't be happier with it. While the screen was very nice before the screen protector was applied, it's just drop-dead gorgeous now. No glare problem, no perceivable difference in touches. I'm very happy with the screen protector. If somebody didn't know that there was a glossy screen underneath, they would never be able to tell.

*Brian

[mikeselectricstuff]

...  Re. shiny screen it's all about position - if there is only one place you can sensibly put a scope, and it reflects glare, it's a major problem, if not, it's a non-issue. (The R&S guys didn't like it either BTW!)

@mike: Whats your experience with using a display foil?
Does it have major effects to the touchability?

My expirience is (and it might be disgusting) that a touched dispaly is more responsive than a fresh cleaned one. Cleaned up it felt a littla sticky ...

Protector seems to have no effect on touch operation or visibility. After a while you do see finger marks when viewed from an angle but doesn't affect normal operation. Cleans off quite well with IPA.

[JoHr]

That makes me wonder... why do all scopes still have a dark background? I did some TFT conversions on old test equipment and in those cases I always went for a white background. It is much easier for the eyes.

White is a typical color for general PC usage ...
When using this on a scope you´ll get problems with the coloring of the waveforms ...
Colors like pure yellow, green or cyan won´t work that good due to their high brigthness on contrast to the white background.
And reducing max. intensity for them will loose step within the color scale  for dark to bright.
Otherwise you´ll need a complete different color set for white background ... which might be good for the color blind people.

Can somebody post a shot of a picoscope?

PS: my eye specalist once said: the more change you give to your eyes the better it is ... ( esp. if working in front of monitors )

[mikeselectricstuff]

So seems like my scope acts up in the presence of its R&S Masters... After the not-booting issue when they arrived, it's now playing completely dead - power LED on, but nothing else.

Time to see how good their warranty service is.
Hopefully better than recent experience with keysight MSOX3104T, where their Fedex collection courier managed to lose it for a month (though to be fair Keysight did offer a loan unit).

[nctnico]

That makes me wonder... why do all scopes still have a dark background? I did some TFT conversions on old test equipment and in those cases I always went for a white background. It is much easier for the eyes.

I think intensity grading is more clearly seen on a dark background, as are weak traces: It is easier to spot a trace with 5% brightness on a black background, than a trace with 95% brightness on a 100% white background.

On a TFT screen or sharp CRT that doesn't make any difference (with the 5% and 95% corrected for the optical performance of the display).

[tautech]

So seems like my scope acts up in the presence of its R&S Masters... After the not-booting issue when they arrived, it's now playing completely dead - power LED on, but nothing else.

Time to see how good their warranty service is.
Hopefully better than recent experience with keysight MSOX3104T, where their Fedex collection courier managed to lose it for a month (though to be fair Keysight did offer a loan unit).

Must be the caps. 

[Robaroni]

That makes me wonder... why do all scopes still have a dark background? I did some TFT conversions on old test equipment and in those cases I always went for a white background. It is much easier for the eyes.

White is a typical color for general PC usage ...
When using this on a scope you´ll get problems with the coloring of the waveforms ...
Colors like pure yellow, green or cyan won´t work that good due to their high brigthness on contrast to the white background.
And reducing max. intensity for them will loose step within the color scale  for dark to bright.
Otherwise you´ll need a complete different color set for white background ... which might be good for the color blind people.

Can somebody post a shot of a picoscope?

PS: my eye specalist once said: the more change you give to your eyes the better it is ... ( esp. if working in front of monitors )

Picoscope

[Robaroni]

So seems like my scope acts up in the presence of its R&S Masters... After the not-booting issue when they arrived, it's now playing completely dead - power LED on, but nothing else.

Time to see how good their warranty service is.
Hopefully better than recent experience with keysight MSOX3104T, where their Fedex collection courier managed to lose it for a month (though to be fair Keysight did offer a loan unit).

Must be the caps. 

That's how they offered the promo so cheap, they shipped them out with Siglent guts!

[nctnico]

So seems like my scope acts up in the presence of its R&S Masters... After the not-booting issue when they arrived, it's now playing completely dead - power LED on, but nothing else.

Time to see how good their warranty service is.
Hopefully better than recent experience with keysight MSOX3104T, where their Fedex collection courier managed to lose it for a month (though to be fair Keysight did offer a loan unit).

Must be the caps. 

That's how they offered the promo so cheap, they shipped them out with Siglent guts!

At least they didn't outsource the firmware to Siglent 

[Hydron]

So seems like my scope acts up in the presence of its R&S Masters... After the not-booting issue when they arrived, it's now playing completely dead - power LED on, but nothing else.

Time to see how good their warranty service is.

Obviously it's a different story with your unit, which they expect to be taken apart, but did you see any evidence that the warranty would be void if you opened it up? Saw the "Calibration Void" sticker, but this is less of a concern to me in hobbyist use. Would be a shame to have something on my workbench that I haven't opened to have a look inside!

[mikeselectricstuff]

So seems like my scope acts up in the presence of its R&S Masters... After the not-booting issue when they arrived, it's now playing completely dead - power LED on, but nothing else.

Time to see how good their warranty service is.

Obviously it's a different story with your unit, which they expect to be taken apart, but did you see any evidence that the warranty would be void if you opened it up? Saw the "Calibration Void" sticker, but this is less of a concern to me in hobbyist use. Would be a shame to have something on my workbench that I haven't opened to have a look inside!

No, only calibration.

[TK]

So seems like my scope acts up in the presence of its R&S Masters... After the not-booting issue when they arrived, it's now playing completely dead - power LED on, but nothing else.

Time to see how good their warranty service is.
Hopefully better than recent experience with keysight MSOX3104T, where their Fedex collection courier managed to lose it for a month (though to be fair Keysight did offer a loan unit).

Must be the caps. 

That's how they offered the promo so cheap, they shipped them out with Siglent guts!

Siglent seems to be the benchmark for LOW QUALITY.  I have not owned any Siglent instrument, is it really that BAD?

[Robaroni]

"Siglent seems to be the benchmark for LOW QUALITY.  I have not owned any Siglent instrument, is it really that BAD?"

It's all in good fun.

I heard they have an MTBF of at least two weeks. 

[agdr]

...though datasheet says UART to 32Mbaud but it seems to stop at 3Mbaud. I have queried this as IMO 3M is too low.

Mike, just curious, have you ever received a definitive answer back on the baud rate?  May have already been posted and I missed it.

One thing that looks good for the long term is they are planning a higher-end model which will use the same software base, so we can expect improvements and updates to percolate down from this development. (This is also the reason for all the empty space in the case).

Slightly embarrassing moment when I first turned it on in front of them and it crashed -  one tip is that you can force a factory reset by holding the PRESET button when the splash screen appears. 
 
 

WOW - that is fantastic news about the higher end model.  I would buy that in a second.  Maybe if we are lucky next March.  The higher end model would almost certainly solve any lag problems with a faster processor.  Might even have the BNC connectors screwed down to the case and non-detent fine-adjust encoders.     If they would make that model with a per-channel set of vertical knobs I would be in scope heaven.

Hey since you've mentioned it I'll go ahead and say that my RTB2004 from Newark weeks ago was crashy right out of the box.  Using it directly and over the remote Ethernet.  The crashing (screen/button/processor lock up) got progressively worse over a few days until it just would lock up entirely after boot.  Rich @ R&S was absolutely fantastic on assistance with the problem and in the end that "holding down the preset at the boot splash screen" procedure completely solved it.  The procedure isn't in the user manual, either, unless they have added it since then. The RTB2004 has worked perfectly ever since.  If anyone is having RTB behaviour problems, give that a try.

[BrianSchmalz]

I just had an intense debugging session with the scope, and I had to make heavy use of the cursors on digital signals. Wow - it is so much faster and easier than using knobs to move the cursors! You get good at rocking the tip of your finger to move that cursor one pixel or two at a time- it becomes second nature very quickly.

[nctnico]

Siglent seems to be the benchmark for LOW QUALITY.  I have not owned any Siglent instrument, is it really that BAD?

No it isn't. The hardware is quite decent and the rust is a running gag but the biggest let down in Siglent equipment is the buggy/incomplete firmware. When it comes to built quality I'm not impressed with the RTB2000 and that is mostly due to the surface mounted input BNCs which aren't bolted to the chassis and the way the PCB is mounted. You won't find that kind of cost optimisations in GW Instek, Rigol or Siglent scopes. In those the input BNCs are bolted to the chassis (for as far as I have seen so far) as they should because these connectors get a lot of abuse.

edit: Made in China means they can built things properly while still keeping labour costs down. Even in the Czech Republic it will be expensive to have an employee mount a PCB onto a metal frame and tighten a couple of nuts on  5 BNC connectors.

[mikeselectricstuff]

...though datasheet says UART to 32Mbaud but it seems to stop at 3Mbaud. I have queried this as IMO 3M is too low.

Mike, just curious, have you ever received a definitive answer back on the baud rate?

No, but I did mention to them today that 3M wasn't enough.

BTW one other thing today was they thought that the greyed search on serial trigger was probably a 'not yet implemented' rather than not doable.