Rigol DS1202 Z-E review 

On the Rigol, you can eliminate the noise by selecting Acquire->Mode->High Resolution. This averages neighbouring ADC samples, which reduces the bandwidth and the high frequency noise. Note that this is different than averaging mode, which is for averaging periodic waveforms. High Resolution works for non-periodic waveforms, and is useful any time you just don't need to see the very high frequency stuff.

Regarding saving stuff onto your NAS from the scope, the Rigol is fully controllable (including dumping raw samples) via USB or ethernet. I have my 1054Z (with 100MHz and other features unlocked) set up via the LXI LAN interface and I control it via a python library. The nice thing is that the regular UI is also usable so you get the best of both worlds. Obviously, these days I use the R&S RTB2004 much more because speed and features, but that is like 10x the price of the Rigol. Still the Rigol is very capable and probably still the best hobbyist grade scope.

Hi Matthias When you press the mode button repeatedly, the scope steps through the selections. Pressing any other button locks the selection. This way is easier than pressing the rotating intensity/selection knob which usually locks in the selection you don't want. Joe

The problem with the USB scope is that it's a ridiculous concept to emulate the knobs of the real thing in the UI. If it was an interface actually designed to be used with a mouse and keyboard with just rolling menus and entry fields you can just scroll (like all editing software uses) it would just become a question of the poling rate and boot time between the two.

Interesting review, the bugbears remind me of my time working in an NMR lab, the lower field instruments would have various 200MHz scopes of a similar style but I'd often grab the 1 GHz Tektronix MDO4000 series scopes for the real work. One of the simple bits I loved was have a knob dedicated to each cursor! Of course they're a little beyond the hobbyist budget, as was the 8GHz scope we also had for really fun stuff.

A note on probes. 10x setting has the full probe bandwidth. The 1X setting has a reduced bandwidth.

I have 1054 but it seems quite similar. In i2c decode mode you can change from ascii to hex you need to use up/down button on the right to the screen to change menu. Secondly there are some nice python libraries to communicate with the scope and this open lots of possibilities ;)

Great review

Pretty interesting indeed, Matthias! 😃 Great tool indeed! Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

RE: the fuzzy trace, that's an on-purpose feature you can turn off. Somewhere in the display settings you can set it to "precision" mode. It'll then downsample the trace so it's exactly one sample per pixel on the display.

Man, this gives me old AvE videos flashbacks. All that's missing is a Hakko soldering iron.

I have this scope, and I absolutely love it !!! It came with everything that I would ever need. So good

When I had my brief stint at Conestoga College Doon campus studying computer engineering technology the Tektronix digital scopes we were using were easily CA$2000 each and that was fall 2004. With companies like Rigol and Keysight made oscilloscopes more affordable for the average hobbyist.

My noise issue was the Power Line WiFi extenders that I use. Noise comes in bursts. This noise also caused my cable company to shut me down until we found the offending section of coax cable.

I just got this scope earlier this month, as my first* real learning scope. It was pricey for my budget and I thought of going with a USB scope (because I'm still a beginner), but between the slow response, tying up a PC and the universally terrible interfaces they all seem to have, it just made sense to invest in a real physical scope that would get me reliably through the next few years of learning. I think the Rigol was probably a good choice, and I look forward to watching your videos and seeing it in use as I learn. Bit of story time: Ironically, after telling my Uncle that I bought the Rigol scope, he gave me an old Tektronix 546B analog 4-channel storage scope that he used when he was an instrumentation technician. It's been sitting in a dusty storage area for a long time and needs new probes and a lot of work to clean up. I imagine it'll need most of it's pots cleaned. The crazy thing is, this old scope is almost too heavy for me to lift. It's a monster! * Bit more story time: This new Rigol scope is technically my second scope, because that same Uncle gave me a vintage (1950's) EICO tube-based CRT scope when I was a teen, but I never learned how to use it, so I would just hook it up to my stereo and play around with it until it displayed something cool looking. When I lost it during a move, I was very disappointed that I hadn't got around to learning how to use it properly, but in my defense , we didn't have all these awesome creator/educator channels like yours back then to teach me what I needed to know.

"An analog scope doesn't have a cooling fan" *My Tektronix 535 scope/space heater is clearing its throat* 🙂

I use the functions on the left side a fair amount for one off stuff i just leave frequency and peak to peak voltages on the yellow trace. It just stays open and works automatically. Fancier functions you aren’t wrong. I have a different model but they have some functions that trigger when your signal varies by a certain percent (masking maybe? I forget off hand). It lets you trigger off glitches and things easily its handy. I used it for example to trigger off an afci tester to see what it was doing or find switch noise on ac, or probe an uninterruptible power supply. You are kind of right about analog scopes. Sometimes i use mine just because it feels nice to use… but if I’m honest there is no practical reason with a digital scope that capable.

As others have mentioned, when you have the probe in the 1X position, it limits the bandwidth to something like 2 or 5 MHz I think.

Re: selector knob hard to push without rotating: Instead of using the knob, you can push the same button you used to access the dropdown menu multiple times to select and then press "clear" to close the menu.

25 years ago, a colleague of mine (who was also airplane pilot) was teaching his son how to drive. Before actual riding, his son had to muscle memorise where any button was and how to use it. The test was: being able to do it blindly with the eyes shut. The idea is of course to be able to keep the eyes on the road/traffic for safety reasons.. Try to do this with a modern car.

I bought that same scope a few months back. When using that parameter setting dial/button...press it in and rotate it *while it's still pressed*, then release it once you've got the selection you want. Little bit tricky at first. And if there's a long list of selections, well, you may have to be a bit of a contortionist - or go back to click/twist/click/dammit/click/twist/click.

Have you looked at those cheap 30$ usb logic analyzers? Very useful. Also the more expensive ones usually have a channel or two for analog.

Have you tried an Analog Discovery oscilloscope? It seems like a fair middle ground for those two. I use it quite a bit, it could use the Rigols big buffer. But for digital work it's quite nice. Recording I2C or other digital signals can be set to trigger at not only edges but also acknowledgements, addresses and so on.

Have you ever tried a Picoscope? It's popular in the automotive diagnostic industry and seems like the GUI is easy to use. I always prefer hard buttons as opposed to software but if you have to travel for work you want to consume physical space wisely.

you are quite the professional hobbyist.

On some scopes, you can hook up mouse or/and keyboard via the USB port.

First switching converter is the active PFC, the other is the main stepdown transformer.

Nice video Matthias, thanks for sharing. Have you looked into what the SCPI Panel Control provides you using the built in ethernet connection. Apparently you can send commands and read data. Not sure how rudimentary that ability might be, but just curious.

I have a Siglent SDS1104X-E which for my money is miles better than the Rigol offerings at the same price point. Hantek and Micsig also have some nice offerings in that range.

Nice Video

I find these videos SO interesting and I TRY TO KEEP UP but when you said "high frequency transient", all I could think of was a homeless man that was in the same place every day when I was a kid.

I bought this scope from Emona Instruments, NSW they are really good.

My very cheap 200mhz Siglent has a roll button. That's not to say it doesn't have other silly UI attributes, but it does at least have a roll button :)

Now I would like to learn about your home-made? power supply :D There are always many stories involved with the tradeoffs, decisions and learning curves when building those.

Oh yes, I was in the market for one of these.

I just bought this exact model…… 2 months ago. I was hoping for Matthias review before i pulled the trigger on it but went with it anyway. 🤦‍♂️ Oh well. In the end, for the money it cost me, I cant complain.

Having knobs is important.

I would expect the 14 MHz waveform you measured is really just a function of the bandwidth of your probe loop antenna.

What you are looking for is an "Analog Storage Oscilloscope". But they lack a ton of DSO features.

Hi Matthias, I have the same scope, I chose the 200MHz BW model because it was a just a few bucks more than the 100MHz unit. I have the same issue with the knob selector, not good for us with high blood pressure. Internal noise, on the most sensitive vertical setting, I have a noise of some sort on the trace, I think you are correct in that there is an internal source. WOW, $500CDN?? Mine was about $375CDN, got mine from Electro-meters in Pickering, ON about a year ago.

I ended up buying a siglent SDS1104x-u when I was looking for a scope in that price range. 100Mhz 4 channels. I felt that if I ever needed more than 100Mhz, I'd likely also need way more than 200Mhz, while the extra channels found immediate use.

my fav feature of most of these is the ability to unlock 200mhz regardless of what model it is:P

❤Rigol + chipwhisperer Side Channel Attack

You could add a button to the scope for the selection

you can reduce the "noise" by using averaging.

FYI, Picoscope is pretty good, at least what I've seen of it. So, don't generalize from this (particularly, laughably, bad UI!) USB scope to all of them. (Note this is more a caution to viewers than a critique of the video.) But it is pricier, and you might as well get a standalone scope if you're budget minded and just need a scope.

Rigol is nice. I the DS1054Z. Where did you pick yours up? just curious, there is like only one authorized dealer in Canada.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="207">3:27</a> Doesn't it work to click, hold and drag the mouse up or down to turn the knob? I thought it was convention for virtual knobs like these. Also, <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="850">14:10</a> doesn't this scope have a LAN port on the back? Nowadays they usually have a web interface where you can "download" a picture or raw data.

doesn't it have a cable network connection? I used to take screenshots from the scope using the apple laptop over the home network on the older model (1054z). I guess it also supports aquiring raw data.

I hardly ever use my Hantek DSO4102C scope. I can assure you the UI is just as bad and awkward. I love my small Tektronix 224 and use it all the time. It's tiny, silent, ready on power up, runs from a 12V external adapter or 12V SLA battery (I threw the old battery out and didn't replace it), with isolated grounds and channels to stop me from making stupid mistakes. The Hantek has been demoted to FFT analyzer and signal generator.

There needs to be a modular system for creating physical UIs with knobs, buttons, sliders, lights, etc. that connect via USB to your PC and can be configured to control existing software.

I’ve heard you say before you worked at RIM. I’m curious if we will get your thoughts on the new RIM movie Netflix is making?

Hmmm, coud you save the roll-mode data to the USB, then re-load it into a mode that can decode the data?

I have been using oscilloscopes daily since the 1980s. I judge an oscilloscope by how much internal noise is generated with good ground. If I can see noise with the probe ground connected to the probe signal pin, as you have done, and see any noise then I will not use it. If the signal of interest is 1 or 2 millivolts and I need to measure frequencies and phase shifts of a signal, the scope is useless. It will be impossible to trigger. What do you attribute the noisy floor signals to? Otherwise, it looks like a very useful scope.

Speaking of your old life in tech, have you seen the trailer for the new BlackBerry bio movie that dropped a few weeks ago? I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the movie once it’s out.

For (far too long) I was frustrated by trying to turn a setting on a screen with a mouse,,, only to find that I could click on the knob and just slide the mouse up or down to turn it.

it's not the case for this instrument, but a long boot-up time and warm-up time is kind of the norm...you wouldn't trust a critical instrument from a cold boot because the reference isn't warmed up for instance.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="18">0:18</a> Ok that's on you for using an ancient laptop. On the rare occasions when I reboot my PC, it boots faster than that scope. That aside, I have a similar scope and I'm surprised you didn't mention the ethernet port and ability to mirror the screen and control everything with a browser or with SCPI. Is that missing from this model? I consider both to be killer features. The alternative (taking photos of LCDs and screwing around with GPIB) is horrible.

I can confirm that the boot time does not get better with higher end scopes, opposite actually. I regularly use $50K Tek scopes at work and they take a solid 3 minutes to boot. Every new generation of scope gets worse.

HF noise the scope picks up is likely your wifi, phone, bluetooth and radio signals since the probe functions as an antenna. And due to the high speed dac you pick up quite a lot of noise. If you'd use a terminal directly on the scope you'd probably see a lot les noise. Scope nouse is in the order of 10-20 mV. Looks worse than it is. On analogue scopes you see far less noise due to the slowness of the phosphor in the tube. As others have mentioned you can put it in high res mode, or you can reduce the buffer size. It tries to overlay multiple waves but with non cyclic waveforms it becomes a noisy mess. I think this one should have an ethernet port, you can use it to capture data quicker than usb. There is also free scope software you can use. The rigol software is unusable.

Would a Keysight be better?

What is the deal with just grounding the probe to pick up magnetic signals or is it a special probe?

Knobs: yes yes yes!

I cannot imagine the meeting where they decided to emulate analog controls in a digital UI. By doing more work they made the product less functional

What do you mean by the pc is not usable?

Does that scope just run windows in the background? At my job I got a kick out of playing windows solitaire on a $5k scope haha

I set my old ThinkPad up with a new solid state drive. It now bits super fast. If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, can you use it to operate the virtual knobs of the USB scope?

Hi I have bought the same one and it is very noisy,and fan works continuously What about your? Thanks

I think that scope has an LXI interface in the back. With that you can with ethernet just download the raw data of the waveforms, measurements and also a copy of the screen. I have a set of emacs lisp scripts to connect to LXI instruments. I've pending to upload to a git repo...

Have you thought of replacing the hard drive in the laptop with an SSD. I did this on an old DELL Inspiron 17 N7010 laptop dating back to 2012 and booting is much, much faster.

nice cheap scope, had some fun with the 4ch version, a little lacking on the screen side (size, gui) but does the job. iirc, math mode on this model is a nightmare. btw, you are not supposed to turn off measurement equipment anyway. Some scopes even tell you that the measurement isn't fully accurate until 30m of warm up

Hi, Are you an engineer by profession?

I don't own any digital oscilloscope. But at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="400">06:40</a> you are complaining about the zoom which always zooms into the right edge of the screen. When I look at the screen there is a little yellow triangle at the top of the screen. It looks like some kind of cursor. Can you move that left or right? Maybe it just always zooms into that cursor and you only have to move it to the middle of the screen. 🤔

The knob problem when you push it is a pain in the neck.

хороший аппарат

get an ssd. i'm on my 2013 year Lenovo T430 and it would kick ass of many current laptops(mine is slightly upgraded)

Damn it if i finish this video im going to be shopping for an oscilloscope....

That scope doesn't have ethernet on the back?

I've blown up thousands of dollars in equipment with an oscilloscope. I hate those things.

You're dead right about pc scopes. I have a Picoscope and a Rigol. Although the Picoscope is technically better, using a scope via a mouse is a PITA and like you, I only use it when I have to!

😂👍 I dislike this type the most because I don't understand it, but I still watch it hoping I can find a modicum of information

As an engineer that has built many embedded systems with user interfaces, I am astounded and frustrated by the multitude of awful designs that exist. I can't understand how these systems ever passed even the most basic testing. Frustrating cases from my life: Our microwave has a knob with a rotary encoder. Sometimes you need to select between two modes by turning this knob. A sane design would have, say, clockwise switching to manual and anticlockwise switching to auto. But no, it cycles between modes on each single increment of the encoder - requiring miniscule movements of the knob to achieve the desired setting. At the very least, the encoder ought to have been scaled down - either would have been trivial to implement. I have both a Gps and spectrum analyser that both have very laggy interfaces. Processing user inputs and confirming them ought to have the highest priority - but on both of these devices, it is the lowest. This means that you have to wait a second or more after each button press for the device to catch up, otherwise you find every second press has been lost or misinterpreted... Finally, my phone has a screen "auto rotate" facility which is completely useless because it has absolutely no hysteresis, so it is prone to switching back and forth rapidly when the phone is on a table. To make this worse, it buffers all user input and doesn't empty the queue when switching orientation. So, you get a whole bunch of (potentially disastrous) incorrect selections made once it settles in the new orientation. It is always astonishing how basically good equipment can be ruined by trivial oversights. Like some elaborate instrument, full of ASICs and multilayer PCBs, yet the power supply is such a mundane, poorly designed piece of rubbish that it leads to the premature failure of the whole system.

You... actually spent money?

A high frequency transient is a homeless person screaming!! lol

This reminded me of a SHORT I've seen recently warning against use of phones WHILE CHARGING. They demonstrate with some sort of current detector how using a phone while charging pushes current out through your body. I would LOVE to see YOUR in depth explanation of that video.

Hobbyists "like you". While you may be doing it as a hobby, I would not consider the quality hobby-grade...

If you put linux on that old thinkpad, it would be blazingly fast, not crazy slow like it is now with winBLOWS

Regrading affordability for hobbyists, how about KiCAD and dirt cheap PCBs out of China.

Matthias, Matthias ... your train is long gone. I use to like your videos once upon a time.

The USB version of that scope is terrible and needs a ton of work. The scope is really nice… I love it