Rigol DS1000E spectrum analyzer via USB

[Gabri74]

Found this interesting article on Hackaday about using a Rigol DS1000E to acquire samples
and then doing all the math on the PC.
Seems interesting...
For now it doesn't seem to work on the 1000Z series...

Hackaday article:
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/22/a-better-spectrum-analyzer-for-your-rigol-scope/

Original author article:
http://rheslip.blogspot.ca/2015/09/software-spectrum-analyzer-for-rigol.html

I've some reservations on this phrase from the author article:

The DS1102E captures 8 bit samples at up to 1 GHz which means in theory we can make a 500 MHz spectrum analyzer

mmm.... 500MHz span with a 100MHz frontend... mmmm....   

[Karel]

Forget it, it's going to be slow as hell.

The workflow:
1. set the scope memory depth to anything but auto.
2. start an acquisition
3. stop the acquisition
4. download the deep memory data to the pc, either via USB or LAN, depending to the memory size this can take up to more than a minute
5. execute an FFT

It's a de-tour but for educational purposes the following demonstrates a proof of concept:

Download the waveform from the scope using this tool: http://www.teuniz.net/DSRemote/

Open the waveform data in EDFbrowser: http://www.teuniz.net/edfbrowser/

In EDFbrowser, observe the FFT: http://www.teuniz.net/edfbrowser/EDFbrowser%20manual.html#Powerspectrum

You can write a program to do all this for you quiet easily, but the screen updates takes ages.

Unfortunately, The Rigol scopes are very slow with downloading the waveform data and, even worse, it must be done in "stop" mode...