Siglent SDS800 Zoom out question (problem?)

[frank2644]

A couple of years ago I bought a Siglent SDS1104X-e and it has performed very well for me with one notable exception. That is, the ability to zoom out to examine events that happened just prior to trigger and outside the screen view area.  Dave had a video describing this shortcoming and he seemed to think that was a significant disadvantage. Sure there are workarounds, like recapturing using a longer sweep rate, but I have found that annoying over the years.

Here’s Dave’s explanation of the problem.


I am considering buying the SDS800 but I’m wondering if it has the same zoom out problem?

Thanks,
Frank

[KungFuJosh]

Look at History mode on the Siglent. I think that applies to your old scope also.

[frank2644]

Look at History mode on the Siglent. I think that applies to your old scope also.

Yes, I have a History key but I have not been able to figure out how to use it. I think you have to start the trace and then turn on history mode. However that seems to stop the trace and that implies human detection of an event is necessary. Further when it stops if the Horiz sweep is fairly slow (>5ms) it doesn't capture  any frames. And I don't think it works at-all in single sweep mode. In summary, it seems too complicated and limited to be useful. Having a zoom out seems a lot simpler and doesn't require any setup.

If anybody knows if the SDS800 supports zoom out please advise.

Thanks for replying
Frank

[Fungus]

I am considering buying the SDS800 but I’m wondering if it has the same zoom out problem?

It's the Siglent way.

[tautech]

I am considering buying the SDS800 but I’m wondering if it has the same zoom out problem ?

Problem it isn't, it's just the way these low cost Siglents work, just as LeCroy and IIRC Pico too.

SDS800X HD to SDS2000X Plus all work the same but higher models offer a Fixed Mem Depth acquisition mode to provide the zoom out feature.

However you will find SDS800X HD Zoom mode more powerful than the earlier X-E series.

[Someone]

That is, the ability to zoom out to examine events that happened just prior to trigger and outside the screen view area.

You got trolled, it is an imaginary "problem" in some bizarre corner case that almost certainly does not apply to your use case.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/oscilloscope-zoom-out-quirk/msg4484857/#msg4484857

[frank2644]

That is, the ability to zoom out to examine events that happened just prior to trigger and outside the screen view area.

You got trolled, it is an imaginary "problem" in some bizarre corner case that almost certainly does not apply to your use case.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/oscilloscope-zoom-out-quirk/msg4484857/#msg4484857

I think you are saying that zooming out is a very infrequent requirement and can be easily overcome. Therefore not important. Although I am sure I have encountered this issue and admittingly I have become accustomed and it doesn't really bother me much anymore.

However, Dave Jones in the video I previously provided seems to think zoom out is valuable as well as some other Superusers that I have seen comment favorably about that capability. One poster thought it was a standard. Another poster said he thought all scopes had it.
 
Currently I'm considering buying a new scope and I gotta believe I would appreciate that zoom-out function if my new scope had it.

So if the SDS800 doesn't have it, I have to decide if having zoom-out is worth having to learn a differed manufacture's interface.

What-to-do? what-to-do? woe is me.

Thanks for the reply
Frank
 

[KungFuJosh]

To make a better informed decision, ignore that video's bias, and check out the demonstration thread: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/sds800x-hd-review-demonstration-thread/

There you have a superior engineer demonstrating the features (including history mode) of the scope you're interested in.

[Someone]

I think you are saying that zooming out is a very infrequent requirement and can be easily overcome. Therefore not important. Although I am sure I have encountered this issue and admittingly I have become accustomed and it doesn't really bother me much anymore.

The question for you is why do you (specifically in your circumstances) need to use the capture around the screen method rather than using a zoom window?

Every choice has downsides which the people pushing the "CANT ZOOM OUT" hysteria avoid mentioning, those downsides make the technique appear undesirable most of the time. Also noting that the SDS800 has a different interface to your current scope which changes the experience of the different ways to view the waveform.

[nctnico]

That is, the ability to zoom out to examine events that happened just prior to trigger and outside the screen view area.

You got trolled, it is an imaginary "problem" in some bizarre corner case that almost certainly does not apply to your use case.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/oscilloscope-zoom-out-quirk/msg4484857/#msg4484857

I think you are saying that zooming out is a very infrequent requirement and can be easily overcome. Therefore not important. Although I am sure I have encountered this issue and admittingly I have become accustomed and it doesn't really bother me much anymore.

However, Dave Jones in the video I previously provided seems to think zoom out is valuable as well as some other Superusers that I have seen comment favorably about that capability. One poster thought it was a standard. Another poster said he thought all scopes had it.
 
Currently I'm considering buying a new scope and I gotta believe I would appreciate that zoom-out function if my new scope had it.

Don't get fooled by people dead-set on being right no matter what. Keep in mind there are many possible workflows depending on the problems / circuits you are working on. The best option is to just try a few scopes. As a consumer you typically have a right of return within a couple of days. That should be enough to give a DSO a try using a pre-defined test plan and see what works best for YOU.

[tautech]

That is, the ability to zoom out to examine events that happened just prior to trigger and outside the screen view area.

You got trolled, it is an imaginary "problem" in some bizarre corner case that almost certainly does not apply to your use case.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/oscilloscope-zoom-out-quirk/msg4484857/#msg4484857

I think you are saying that zooming out is a very infrequent requirement and can be easily overcome. Therefore not important. Although I am sure I have encountered this issue and admittingly I have become accustomed and it doesn't really bother me much anymore.

However, Dave Jones in the video I previously provided seems to think zoom out is valuable as well as some other Superusers that I have seen comment favorably about that capability. One poster thought it was a standard. Another poster said he thought all scopes had it.
 
Currently I'm considering buying a new scope and I gotta believe I would appreciate that zoom-out function if my new scope had it.

Don't get fooled by people dead-set on being right no matter what. Keep in mind there are many possible workflows depending on the problems / circuits you are working on. The best option is to just try a few scopes. As a consumer you typically have a right of return within a couple of days. That should be enough to give a DSO a try using a pre-defined test plan and see what works best for YOU.

There will be no surprises for member frank2644 as right from the outset he said he already has SDS1104X-E.
Did you not spot that ? 

However he will/should/might be pleased with the easier to use Zoom mode in SDS800X HD.

[nctnico]

That is, the ability to zoom out to examine events that happened just prior to trigger and outside the screen view area.

You got trolled, it is an imaginary "problem" in some bizarre corner case that almost certainly does not apply to your use case.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/oscilloscope-zoom-out-quirk/msg4484857/#msg4484857

I think you are saying that zooming out is a very infrequent requirement and can be easily overcome. Therefore not important. Although I am sure I have encountered this issue and admittingly I have become accustomed and it doesn't really bother me much anymore.

However, Dave Jones in the video I previously provided seems to think zoom out is valuable as well as some other Superusers that I have seen comment favorably about that capability. One poster thought it was a standard. Another poster said he thought all scopes had it.
 
Currently I'm considering buying a new scope and I gotta believe I would appreciate that zoom-out function if my new scope had it.

Don't get fooled by people dead-set on being right no matter what. Keep in mind there are many possible workflows depending on the problems / circuits you are working on. The best option is to just try a few scopes. As a consumer you typically have a right of return within a couple of days. That should be enough to give a DSO a try using a pre-defined test plan and see what works best for YOU.

There will be no surprises for member frank2644 as right from the outset he said he already has SDS1104X-E.
Did you not spot that ? 

However he will/should/might be pleased with the easier to use Zoom mode in SDS800X HD.

Well, zoom mode just isn't the universal answer and the OP is clearly looking to expand his horizon. I understand you want to try to promote Siglent as this is the brand you sell, but realistically it doesn't hurt to try / investigate various pieces of equipment from various brands to see what would be a good fit. That is exactly what I do when I look for a new piece of equipment.

[KungFuJosh]

Well, zoom mode just isn't the universal answer and the OP is clearly looking to expand his horizon. I understand you want to try to promote Siglent as this is the brand you sell, but realistically it doesn't hurt to try / investigate various pieces of equipment from various brands to see what would be a good fit. That is exactly what I do when I look for a new piece of equipment.

You're correct, but at the same time, if his budget is under $500, there's nothing better available than the 800X HD scope he's interested in.

[Fungus]

You're correct, but at the same time, if his budget is under $500, there's nothing better available than the 800X HD scope he's interested in.

The Rigol can zoom out, no problem.

[KungFuJosh]

You're correct, but at the same time, if his budget is under $500, there's nothing better available than the 800X HD scope he's interested in.

The Rigol can zoom out, no problem.

You're arguing disingenuously. The Rigol fails by comparison on every other feature (except HDMI output which is not on the Siglent), and especially on support, which barely exists, if at all.

Just because 5 brands do something one way, and another 5 brands do it slightly differently, doesn't make any of them the correct or the only way to do a thing.

[nctnico]

Siglent fanboys & girls versus Rigol fanboys  & girls.... let the mud slinging match begin 3 - 2 - 1 GO!   

Meanwhile, the OP never really stated a budget so it is premature to propose the bottom of the barrel models which are just built to a price point and are not really great at anything.

The best way is to find / compile a list with equipment which fits the bill, then start looking at price versus pros / cons. Sometimes this means budget or requirements need adjustment. And there is also a used market where you can find good equipment for reduced prices from reputable sellers.

[2N3055]

Well, zoom mode just isn't the universal answer and the OP is clearly looking to expand his horizon. I understand you want to try to promote Siglent as this is the brand you sell, but realistically it doesn't hurt to try / investigate various pieces of equipment from various brands to see what would be a good fit. That is exactly what I do when I look for a new piece of equipment.

"Zoom out" is term related to using zoom function. Nobody cares about "changing timebase after the stopped capture" except people that don't know how to set timebase right in the first place.

He can also ignore sensationalistic clickbait video and, as you point astutely, think with his own head, and decide not to use scope wrongly...
I wholeheartedly agree with you he should try and use real data and make a decision on his own.

I use several Siglent scopes and a Keysight pretty much on daily basis. Out of reasons where I use Keysight instead of my Siglents, there are some decodes and some other stuff that is more suited for the task, but relying on the scope to capture stuff outside of what I set it for by chance to cover my bad practice is not one of them.

Like I documented few times before, Keysight DOES NOT capture outside the screen. What it does is cheat. When in RUN only screen length is captured. If you then press STOP, it performs a separate, additional, new trigger where it captures long.

It performs this: it changes timebase to as long as it can (cannot say long because it has 100x less memory than this inexpensive Siglent), takes Single, waits for trigger, captures and goes back to timebase it was on.
If there is no trigger for some time (cca 200-250ms timeout), it will timeout and show you last good triggered capture, that will be only one screen wide.

That video was proven factually incorrect on many points.
Whoever uses that one to make decision is making a mistake.

This imaginary "this scope knows better than you and has captured data you would otherwise miss" was proven to be false argument.
It should not be used as a criteria to chose a scope.

If for some reason you need manual memory control, that might be valid checkpoint, OTOH. I can understand that.
But more important is manual control of sample  rate. That is used all the time. And that is there.

And as Josh rightly said, is there really anything better than SDS800xHD in that price range?

[2N3055]

Siglent fanboys & girls versus Rigol fanboys  & girls.... let the mud slinging match begin 3 - 2 - 1 GO!   

Meanwhile, the OP never really stated a budget so it is premature to propose the bottom of the barrel models which are just built to a price point and are not really great at anything.

The best way is to find / compile a list with equipment which fits the bill, then start looking at price versus pros / cons. Sometimes this means budget or requirements need adjustment. And there is also a used market where you can find good equipment for reduced prices from reputable sellers.

I am considering buying the SDS800 but I’m wondering if it has the same zoom out problem?

Thanks,
Frank

Is that not specific enough ?

[nctnico]

Well, zoom mode just isn't the universal answer and the OP is clearly looking to expand his horizon. I understand you want to try to promote Siglent as this is the brand you sell, but realistically it doesn't hurt to try / investigate various pieces of equipment from various brands to see what would be a good fit. That is exactly what I do when I look for a new piece of equipment.

"Zoom out" is term related to using zoom function. Nobody cares about "changing timebase after the stopped capture" except people that don't know how to set timebase right in the first place.

I use several Siglent scopes and a Keysight pretty much on daily basis. Out of reasons where I use Keysight instead of my Siglents, there are some decodes and some other stuff that is more suited for the task, but relying on the scope to capture stuff outside of what I set it for by chance to cover my bad practice is not one of them.

Like I documented few times before, Keysight DOES NOT capture outside the screen. What it does is cheat. When in RUN only screen length is captured. If you then press STOP, it performs a separate, additional, new trigger where it captures long.

Oh, this sillyness again.    Your statement can be translated 1 on 1 into: I'm right handed so everyone should use right handed tools. Left handed tools are for idiots who never learned to use their right hand properly. Just stop making a fool out of yourself. People in the real world know better; left handed people work more efficient with left handed tools.

[frank2644]

Thank you for of the replies, they are very helpful.

SOMEONE asked why I need that zoom function so I decided to recheck my RF sweep generator that I made a few years ago. That had some challenging waveforms. Surprisingly, the frequency steps are not measuring correctly or consistently so I have to figure out what's wrong, it's probably me. I've  tried to describe the waveform details at the end of this note, but it's probably better not to get sidetracked in those details.

Anyway, the purpose was to determine if a zoom out function would be useful. And so far I'm not sure. IOW, the off-screen capture in this case would probably not be large enough to be useful. Further, overall I'm starting to think the few times a zoom-out would be nice is not a big enough benefit to justify buying a different mfr's scope and having to learn it's operation and perhaps hit other shortcomings. If the zoom-out was a life-saver, I might thing differently, but now I don't think that's the case. I haven't reached a decision yet, but I'm leaning toward the subject Siglent scope.

BTW, the few times I needed support the vendor TEquipment was very helpful and even got answers from Siglent for me. Although I never tried to get answers directly from Siglent myself. And I have to say, the SDS1104x-e I have has been very satisfactory.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Waveform details: Basically I capture a 360khz wide, 27 step sweep with a 10.7mhz center frequency. The sweep takes about 1/2 second to complete the 27 steps. The 27 step marker pulses are on chan 3, with the RF on chan 1. The goal is to verify the frequency is correct at each of the 27 markers.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks, again, to all who contributed. Any further comments are welcome.
Frank

[nctnico]

For your particular measurement, segmented recording would be very suitable as you can likely skip a lot of irrelevant parts of the signal in the sweep (trigger on the markers). Add some measurements over the segments or just browse through the segments and measure frequency per segment would make this test quick & easy to do.

[Fungus]

"Zoom out" is term related to using zoom function. Nobody cares about "changing timebase after the stopped capture" except people that don't know how to set timebase right in the first place.

We could all learn to use left-handed scissors as well, but it's not optimal.

[2N3055]

"Zoom out" is term related to using zoom function. Nobody cares about "changing timebase after the stopped capture" except people that don't know how to set timebase right in the first place.

We could all learn to use left-handed scissors as well, but it's not optimal.

I fail to understand the comparison.

I will repeat. OP asked about video and if that video should be taken into consideration.
I said video was wrong on many facts and that that actual Keysight scope is NOT capturing "outside screen" and that this issue is not important for choice of scope. Siglent, Rigol, Keysight. On none of them it is important.
Manual control of sample rate is very important, and manual memory size might be used sometimes (which is Nico's use case).

Using scope memory to "zoom out" is actually doing it in reverse. That is non optimal, not intuitive, backwards way of doing it.
Better way is to capture long in a first place and "zoom in". That way you can clearly see and control the extent of the whole event and can then observe detail both with time base and position (Nico style) and with Zoom (everybody else).

When I'm using scope I don't just twiddle buttons without thinking, hoping, maybe, by providence, I will catch something on the screen, and that scope will magically, maybe, capture something even if I'm just guessing.
And I'm sure you don't either. You analyze and think of ways to best capture point of interest.
It is interactive though process, including operator and instrument and DUT.
Not random twiddling of knobs.

[tautech]

Any further comments are welcome.
Frank

Frank, this is current Zoom mode implementation.



Main/Zoom/2nd timebase are now at different scaling ratios where the main timebase occupies a smaller portion of the display.
Main and 2nd timebase are identified by the dotted lines around them signifying which is is active to the timebase encoder and toggling between them is done by pressing the encoder, touching the display or clicking with a mouse in the one you wish to bring to the encoders control.

As the unzoomed main timebase now occupies a smaller portion of the display where it is very possible to work entirely with the zoomed timebase and leave the main timebase to analyze captures serving as a record of what's outside the the zoomed timebase you might choose to work primarily with when that need is required.

[2N3055]

For your particular measurement, segmented recording would be very suitable as you can likely skip a lot of irrelevant parts of the signal in the sweep (trigger on the markers). Add some measurements over the segments or just browse through the segments and measure frequency per segment would make this test quick & easy to do.

I agree. That is good way to do it.

On SDS800xHD we can capture to segments, then go into history mode with measurements on.
You can measure segment by segment, resetting stats in-between, or leave  stats on and run through all segments.
You can also FFT per segment, monitoring spectrum..