What's this about trial software on the rigol?

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tomek
 
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What's this about trial software on the rigol?

Post by tomek »

Hi!

I recently got the 4-quad channel Rigol https://www.adafruit.com/products/2145 for work.

One thing I didn't really understand was why the bootup screen says something about a trial on a number of functions.

Right now I have 33 hours left. "Trigger" "Decoder" "recorder" "mem-depth" and a number of functions in between. The screen pops up when I turn on the instrument.

Sooo...What is this about?

Thanks!
-Tomek

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adafruit2
 
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Re: What's this about trial software on the rigol?

Post by adafruit2 »

There's a couple 'extra things' you can order to get on the scope like waveform replay and decoding functions. If you don't want those extra things then you can just let the trial expire. If you find them useful you can buy them as software updates via Rigol. The scope works great without the extras, they're not essential for use. Like, I have a scope that can also do RF spectrum analysis but I don't need it so I didn't pay to update it once the trial expired.

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tomek
 
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Re: What's this about trial software on the rigol?

Post by tomek »

Gotchu! Thanks. I realize the product is new to adafruit, but I didn't notice much info about that so it seemed fairly surprising.

Assuming none of those functions are absolutely necessary (and ill dig bit more to understand them, I'm not really EE), its nbd. But the reassurance was helpful.

I'm working by way through the xyz scop techronix docs, then ill try out some rigol specific stuff. So far I just was looking at a fast quadrature decoder signal and decently happy :). Autoranging was fixating on weird stuff tho, I have heaps to figure out.


It's a real shame the trial is triggered just by having the scope on, not by using the functions. I have a lot of playing around to do when I also realize ill be wasting away most of the trial options.

This is pretty far out of adafruits
control, though.

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tomek
 
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Re: What's this about trial software on the rigol?

Post by tomek »

One addition:

This was a silly but nice surprise: I received *two* scope stickers and *two* patches.

It seems you're stocking the scopes with the bonus items inside the scope accessories bag, and then also in the outer box you ship the scope in (the scope is in a rigol box, and I did not have any other items in my order so the scope was in a clean rigol box which was in turn in another slightly larger and more beat up rigol box. The packing slip and extra bonus items were in between the two boxes.)

So the other cool benefit is that I could see that you QC the scope package to make sure all the items are in there before shipping. Or else the patches couldn't have gotten into the accessory kit.

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ReneX
 
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Re: What's this about trial software on the rigol?

Post by ReneX »

Hi Tomek.

I am looking into buying one of these Rigol scopes but I hear a lot of people complaining about fan noise. Would you mind sharing your thought / feelings regarding the noise in your brand spanking new Rigol scope?

Thanks.

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tomek
 
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Re: What's this about trial software on the rigol?

Post by tomek »

Ah, that hadn't crossed my mind. I'm not sure if other models or manufactoring batches had bad fans, but mine is not annoying. It is a light hum, not unlike the quiet fan PC gaming rig I put together a few years ago [edit: 7 years ago, when I counted :O]. So it's not silent, but of the random machinery of any office/workspace, it's certainly not the worse. For example, I'm sitting next to a PC that is making this strange click-hum sound that I can ignore but would be much more annoying if I thought about it.

The fan on the rigol is just a light hum, and very consistent about its sound, too.

Another metric by which to describe it (haha, this feels not so easy), is to say what it is not: I have a bunch of 30mm and 40mm fans on my 3D printer, and even on a seperate 12V server PSU, and those are much louder. I imagine the fan on the rigol is a ball bearing fan of either larger than 40mm diameter or much lower RPM than typical for those size fans.

So for the quad-channel rigol that's new to adafruit's, it's not a problem at all. I hope the machine is spec'ed so that the fan is superfluous (I think in 7-12 years it could be a weakness, pretty much the case for any mechanical fan due to dust and wear.) But by then the scope would be old enough that anyone could probably take it apart and replace the fan.

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tomek
 
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Re: What's this about trial software on the rigol?

Post by tomek »

By the way to clarify two things:
(1) The gaming rig was not a loud rig like usual for gaming rigs, it was some sort of large-tower with special "quiet" fans that had a lower RPM than standard [and were adjustable]

(2) I had to turn on the rigol to think about the sound loudness since I didn't even remember it having a fan sound when I was using it (it does, but it's not intrusive.)

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ReneX
 
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Re: What's this about trial software on the rigol?

Post by ReneX »

OK, you got me, I am going to go for it but just so you know, if I don't like the sound of the fan I am going to blame it all on you :)

Only problem right now is that the model that I have my eye on is not the same as the one you bought from Adafruit, is the same series but with the 100 MHz bandwidth....to be honest, I am not even sure if I need 100 MHz or not but I figure I would treat myself, here is the link in case you are curious: http://www.rigolna.com/products/digital ... Z/ds1104z/

I hope that more bandwidth does not equal to more fan noise! I guess we will find out soon enough.

Thanks.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: What's this about trial software on the rigol?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

As a general rule of thumb, you want your scope's bandwidth to be 5-7 times as high as the fastest signal you want to measure.

All signals can be broken down into a combination of sine waves of various amplitudes at different integer multiples (harmonics) of the base frequency. A square wave is the sum of all the odd harmonics, for instance. Information about the fast changes (rising and falling edges) is contained in the high-order harmonics, steady-state information (the top of a square wave) is contained in the low-order harmonics.

Your scope's bandwidth sets the limit on how much fast-change information you can get. Beyond that frequency, the scope can't move fast enough to keep up with the input.

To put that in context, here are the first four terms of a square wave (1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th harmonics):
harmonics.jpg
harmonics.jpg (49.26 KiB) Viewed 1477 times
From top to bottom, that's what a 100MHz scope would show you when fed nice, clean square waves at 14.3MHz, 20MHz, 33MHz, and 100MHz.

You'll see similar ripple at the leading edge of any perfect square wave, regardless of frequency, if you crank the scope's timebase down into the 10 nanoseconds per division range. At that speed, the waveform on the screen becomes a combination of the actual input and artifacts of the scope's bandwidth limits.

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