<d1b2>
<newt> are you saying I should go with the SDS1104X-E i originally posted? I appreciate the suggestion to check out teequiptment
<d1b2>
<mubes> Only you know which scope can meet your requirements, but I would strongly suggest a 4 rather than 2 channel device....but that's down to the way I use my scopes, YMMV.
<d1b2>
<mubes> Personally I'd prioritise 4 channels much more than digital ones.
<d1b2>
<newt> ok, thank you! id love to get the 2000 series 4 channel but not in the cards right now....is the SDS1104X-E i posted a digital scope? im not sure i caught that if it is
<d1b2>
<Darius> fair enough, we only have 1 4 channel scope in the office, but a built in 16 channel logic analyser sounds like luxury 😄
<d1b2>
<mubes> I'm not saying digital channels can't be useful, but I find I use them way less than I ever expected to, even though I mostly do digital work.
<d1b2>
<Darius> huh fair enough
<d1b2>
<mubes> ...and there are extraordinarily cheap LA pods for PCs out there now.
<d1b2>
<newt> ive already got a 16 channel saleae so i guess im good on that end...i didnt realize / not familiar enough with the terminology of these scoped, i thought all of them were "analog"
<d1b2>
<Darius> yeah that is true.. I have one
<d1b2>
<Darius> guess I was expecting the combination to be useful but I haven't actually tried such a beast
<d1b2>
<mubes> @newt all modern scopes are 'digital' in the sense that they record the waveform and then display it.
<d1b2>
<mubes> Good old fashioned 'analog' scopes left the building about 30 years ago, apart from specialist applications
<d1b2>
<newt> @mubes how do I determine what this LA portion is then?
<d1b2>
<mubes> My first one was a Tek tds210 and it was amazing compared to the previous analog stuff
<d1b2>
<Darius> yeah of course
<d1b2>
<Darius> I think we still have an analogue scope here somewhere but it's terrible to use by comparison
<d1b2>
<mubes> @newt don't really understand the question, sorry.
<d1b2>
<Darius> gotta love having to pull teh curtains down so you can see fast signals 😄
<d1b2>
<mubes> Ah, takes me back....
<d1b2>
<newt> i guess you all are just suggesting to use a dedicated logic analyzer versus having the scope decode it...ie, dont buy your scope for the decoding features, prioritize channels and bandwidth...amiright?
<d1b2>
<Darius> yeah
<d1b2>
<Darius> I think the inbuilt LA might be useful but not worth a big premium
<d1b2>
<Darius> and decoders feel like a scam when you have sigrok..
<d1b2>
<mubes> Weeell, it always depends on your use case, in general if you want something you can grow into then I'd suggest 4 channels, higher bw and la in that order.
<d1b2>
<mubes> Esp. if you've already got a pc based la, which are generally more flexible.
<d1b2>
<Darius> unless you are doing RF etc anyway then you might want to swap the first two
<d1b2>
<mubes> ...you can still use the scope to trigger the la, and vice versa, in the general case.
<d1b2>
<mubes> Yeah, true....but I think most of these are hackable to 200mhz anyway.
<d1b2>
<Darius> yeah
<azonenberg>
Yeah most scopes have a trigger output
<azonenberg>
so you can use the trigger out on the scope as an input to your saleae
<azonenberg>
and then trigger the saleae on that
<d1b2>
<newt> gotcha! makes sense
<d1b2>
<mubes> The big pain I find with trigger in (which can be a poor man's additional channel) is that you can't see the waveform to select the triggering point. In that case a third or fourth channel is much nicer to trigger from....but with some thinking you can gerally patch your instruments together with trigger outs and ins....that only gets hairy at the kinds of speeds @azonenberg worries about 😁
<azonenberg>
mubes: yeah this is what the glscopeclient sync wizard does
<azonenberg>
and ngscopeclient will make it easier with some new tweaks
<d1b2>
<newt> so if im tracking correctly, this scope (below) has the newer software that interfaces better with scopehal, 4 channels, and may be hackable to 200mhz
<d1b2>
<mubes> For the money the silent stuff seems decent and well supported to me, but you should also look at rigol. I think @zyp is very happy with his.
<azonenberg>
newt: yes, the 2104x+ is quite a nice entry level scope
<d1b2>
<Darius> oh that connector I thought was for an LA dongle on the sigilent is a HDMI connector labelled Sbus
<d1b2>
<Darius> wonder what that does..
<azonenberg>
With scopehal it is a little slow, except low single digit Hz update rates to the PC
<azonenberg>
but that is true of anything in the sub $5K class other than PicoScope / ThunderScope
<d1b2>
<mubes> 2104x+ is my daily driver and I really like it. Works decently, if slowly, with scopehal.
<d1b2>
<Darius> ah it IS for an LA pod
<azonenberg>
Yes. I've used the 2000 series as demos
<d1b2>
<mubes> Bit more spendy than you intended?
<azonenberg>
they're definitely not bad scopes
<d1b2>
<newt> would the SDS1104X-E be ultra slow with scopehal then?
<d1b2>
<Darius> lol costs as much as the scope 😖
<d1b2>
<mubes> I've not used the 1104x-e so can't compare, sorry.
<d1b2>
<mubes> All I can tell you is the 2104x+ is part of a newer generation of kit from silent than the 1104x-e.
<d1b2>
<mubes> Grr..phone keeps correcting Siglent to silent.
<d1b2>
<newt> ok thanks everyone! not going to paralysis by analysis, just going to decide and be grateful....very grateful to everyone for their feedback @azonenberg @mubes
<d1b2>
<mubes> Good luck! All the stuff you're looking at is decent, just stick with the mainstream stuff and you'll be fine whatever you choose.
<d1b2>
<mubes> (people have hacked the sds2104x+ to 500mhz provided you're only using two channels btw. 350mhz on 4 channels. It doesn't come with probes that are capable of that though, and newer software versions might make that more difficult)
<d1b2>
<mubes> And I'm not saying I condone that (even scope vendors have to eat), just reporting 🙂 night all.
<d1b2>
<Darius> I see they have headless scopes now, like you can get headless mixing desks
<azonenberg>
yes, there are a few. but most have trouble hitting the WFM/s we'd expect from something like a picoscope
<azonenberg>
i'm very excited for the thunderscope, despite being fairly low bandwidth so far
<d1b2>
<Darius> I was looking at the SDS6204L (not to buy just out of curiosity)
<azonenberg>
yeah i demoed one a while back
<azonenberg>
the desktop one not the rackmount
<azonenberg>
it wasnt bad, but was still fairly slow wfm/s in scopehal
<d1b2>
<Darius> ok
<d1b2>
<newt> decided on the 2104x! so stoked!
<t4nk_freenode>
only 100MHz1? :b
<azonenberg>
t4nk_freenode: it ca nbe upgraded in BW later
<azonenberg>
i think you can add the MSO option later too
<d1b2>
<Darius> mmm shiny toy
<t4nk_freenode>
bleh, I just use my tongue for up to 380V
<d1b2>
<Darius> zesty
<t4nk_freenode>
newer had any pwoblems
<t4nk_freenode>
too bad it's so darned expensive, I'd like a nice scope too
<d1b2>
<Darius> strictly cold food and drink for the next few days for you hey? 🙂
<d1b2>
<Darius> good test instruments do make things a lot easire
<t4nk_freenode>
yes, they do
<azonenberg>
yeah every time i upgraded gear it was a huge step up in productivity and things i was able to understand about my designs
<azonenberg>
and just usability
<azonenberg>
especially coming from a rigol ds1000 series to a lecroy lol
<d1b2>
<newt> Lol
Degi has quit [Ping timeout: 255 seconds]
Degi_ has joined #scopehal
Degi_ is now known as Degi
<d1b2>
<mubes> The rackmounts have GbE, I was hopeful the wfm/s would be better. Was the 6000 GbE? Siglent are (hopefully) loaning us one in an April timeframe to integrate/test.
<azonenberg>
I don't actually remember if it was gig, i'd need to check old notes and see if i have any records of that
<d1b2>
<mubes> Personally, I think that's a great choice.
<azonenberg>
What I can say is, the highest actually demonstrate wfm/s to scopehal i got with the sds6204a was 3.71 with a single channel at 25K point memory depth
<d1b2>
<mubes> From a glance it seemed like they were charging more for the rackmount than the desktop. I was sorta hoping that implied improved hw.
<azonenberg>
and the highest throughput i achieved was 40.8 Mbps, getting 2.04 WFM/s for a single channel at 2.5M points
<azonenberg>
With four channels active at 25K points, I got only 1.07 WFM/s
<d1b2>
<mubes> Those aren't great figures 😦
<azonenberg>
and with four channels at 2.5M points I got 0.51 WFM/s
<azonenberg>
which is a respectable but not great 40.5 Mbps
<azonenberg>
This is afaik with the 20 Hz rate limiter on the command bus
<azonenberg>
because of that firmware bug
<azonenberg>
i do not know if it's ever been patched?
<d1b2>
<mubes> Iirc that scope goes up to 125Mpoints/channel. That could be a while.
<azonenberg>
even with it commented out, i found that the scope generally seemed to be severely latency limited
<azonenberg>
and the BW/throughput limit only came into play as you got up to megapoint memory depths
<azonenberg>
e.g. 250K and 25K point memory dpeths have almost the same WFM/s (3.71 vs 3.35)
<azonenberg>
i periodically update this with new reports from contributors and from my own lab equipment
<d1b2>
<mubes> I don't think they paid too much attention to offload speed. From their point of view it's an unusual use case to want continuous waveforms.
<azonenberg>
Correct
<azonenberg>
When i was talking with jason a year or so ago he told me they had been working on a rackmount headless version
<azonenberg>
and i told him that offload speed for the ATE use case was an absolutely critical performance parameter and that it was their biggest weakness
<azonenberg>
and that hte headless scope would be of little value if it couldn't be reasonably fast
<azonenberg>
i do not know if that advice was acted on
<d1b2>
<mubes> Yeah, I was banging the same drum. For a rackmount it's much more important.
<d1b2>
<mubes> They claim to be able to do 256 channels at 125Mpoints....I hope they've paid some attention to speed!
<azonenberg>
lol
<azonenberg>
i hope
<azonenberg>
anyway, i'd love to hear reports. what i can say is, you will need to turn the rate limiter off to hit any kind of respectable performance
<azonenberg>
so hopefully they fixed that bug
<azonenberg>
And hopefully your contact with siglent EU are more willing to play ball than the folks who took over at siglent US after jason left
<d1b2>
<mubes> Well, they've promised one, and I might go over to Embedded World. While I'm there I'll take the chance to meet up if they're there.
<d1b2>
<20goto10> Ooh, the thunderscope looks really good!
bvernoux has joined #scopehal
<azonenberg>
20goto10: yeah we've been collabing with them for a while and it currently holds the record for highest data transfer rate ever achieved with ngscopeclient (7.16 Gbps)
<azonenberg>
compared to the paltry 2.56 Gbps of a picoscope 6824e
<d1b2>
<20goto10> Are they still aiming for $500?
<azonenberg>
No idea
<azonenberg>
I'm not super closely involved right now
<azonenberg>
louis has been writing the driver
<azonenberg>
My interest is more in a next-gen future collab involving the higher performance frontend i was working on
<d1b2>
<david.rysk> @mubes I'm very interested in the status of siglent stuff; I have a 2000 Plus scope
<d1b2>
<mubes> Hi David. Which model? The SDS2104X+ (they have so many similar names I'm very careful now!)
<d1b2>
<david.rysk> Yeah, the SDS2104X Plus (or one of its derivatives — SDS2xxxX Plus)
<d1b2>
<mubes> yeah, that family
<d1b2>
<mubes> That should be pretty much fully functional....and I'd be keen to get bug reports
<d1b2>
<david.rysk> Yeah it's all the same hardware
<d1b2>
<david.rysk> IIRC the main issue was the intentional delay to allow the firmware to keep up
<d1b2>
<mubes> I think that's what @azonenberg was talking about yesterday?
<azonenberg>
Yes. That's a workaround for a firmware bug where it drops commands if it's busy, but there's no way to query completion
<azonenberg>
so the only safe option is to wait longer than you've ever seen it take
<d1b2>
<david.rysk> Yeah I believe so
<d1b2>
<mubes> oh, that old chestnut
<d1b2>
<david.rysk> it seems to affect all the Siglent scopes 😐
<azonenberg>
We could possibly optimize to only add the delay after some commands, since i dont think all are affected?
<azonenberg>
but even without the delay they're not super fast
<d1b2>
<mubes> Well, I only put an explicit work-around into the 2xxxX+ driver, no idea if it's been added to others
<d1b2>
<mubes> We've given them a bug report on it and TBF I need to test the latest firmware to see if it's fixed. Their CRs aren't too comprehensive
<d1b2>
<david.rysk> Their latest firmware seems to have improvements that only help on their newer HW platform
<d1b2>
<Aleksorsist> @20goto10 price has crept up with some added features (better front end w/ 50 ohm path and 12 bit ADC) right now we're looking at $700-800 but we are trying to cost optimize as much as we can without sacrificing specs
<d1b2>
<david.rysk> my scope is on the older HW platform
<d1b2>
<david.rysk> even though they had just released the newer one
<d1b2>
<david.rysk> > 4. Supported LXI (only with the Uboot-OS Version 5.4)
<d1b2>
<mubes> The one I have here is the older one too
<d1b2>
<david.rysk> that's a cryptic release note entry