[time-nuts] Rigol DS1102E down to $400

[Hal Murray]

A while ago, Rigol dropped the price of their 100 MHz 2 channel scope to be 
the same as their 50 MHz version.  That was low enough for me.  Since then, 
they dropped the 50 MHz version to $330.
  http://www.rigolna.com/products/digital-oscilloscopes/ds1000e/

I'm happy.

It comes with USB and serial ports on the back.  I've been playing with the 
USB port.

The programming manual and/or firmware have various quirks/bugs/omissions.  
If anybody is interested, I'll clean up my notes (and/or code) and put them 
on the web.

I've crashed the firmware several ways while debugging things.

I haven't figured out how to do a screen capture over USB.  I can grab the 
data and feed it to gunplot.  (I can do a screen capture to a USB flash drive 
and carry that to a PC.)

Time-nuts stuff:

Here is a picture of a PPS from a TBolt delayed by 1 second.
  http://www.megapathdsl.net/~hmurray/time-nuts/Rigol/scope-1sec.png
The second/delayed pulse is about 10 uSec slow.  If we assume the TBolt is 
much better than that, we can calculate that the clock on the scope is about 
10 PPM fast.  (It limits the delay at 1 second so you can't delay a bit more 
and zoom in for a more accurate reading.)

Here is another picture looking at the 10 MHz signal from a TBolt.  (It's 
triggered on another PPS that is wide enough to see.)
  http://www.megapathdsl.net/~hmurray/time-nuts/Rigol/scope-2ms.png
Note that the sweep speed is 2 ms/div, a wonderful example of aliasing. :)

If I turn on the measuring stuff, it says 96.xx Hz which translates to 9.6 
PPM.

------------

It also came with some Windows software, but I don't have any Windows gear so 
I don't know how well it works.  Has anybody tried it?  It might be 
interesting to spy on the serial port to see what commands it uses.


-- 
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.