Hi. This video comes from a question on the Forum by a username stays and he asks, should he save up for two months and buy the venerable DS 1052e Everyone knows it, it's been around for a long time. rock solid little scope, or should he save up for four months, roughly pay a bit over double the price and get the new DS 2000 series scope and well, interesting question. So I thought I'd do a quick video on the the current state of the art in these budget Scopes How much scope do you get for basically the same money as the price that this was released at? Remember, the Ds1052e was not always.

you know, under 400 bucks? It originally came out at that similar 800 price point. This one's official price is 839 US Dollars And you may not realize, but this one's actually five years old now. It came out in uh, sort of latest 2000 and eight and it's still going I Mean it's unbelievable. five years for one of these, um, base level Scopes And it's an interesting question: should you buy one of these or is it worth paying double and getting one of these? Sure, it can be a bit more than double depending on your location and the international market and all that, sort of.

BS So that's an interesting question. Does this one offer double the value compared to this one? or double the bang? Put back, let's investigate. So how much has oscilloscope technology progressed in the last five years? Well, in fact, it's uh, less than five years because the Ds-2000 series has been out for like, uh, nine months now. So you know we're talking like a four years, uh, four, four and a half years Max technology difference between these two.

Now, the Ds-1052e doesn't really contain anything that the Ds-2000 doesn't have, so this video is going to be all about the additional features and capabilities on the Ds-2000 series over the Ds-1000e series. One of the biggest things is the display much bigger Uh display at 800 by 480 whereas this one is only 320 by 240. this one is, uh, brighter though. But ah, no contest.

They've upped the minimum uh bandwidth to 70 megahertz from 50 megahertz in the 1000 series. We won't go into the differences with the hack and stuff like that. Unfortunately, the bandwidth is not software upgradable in this thing, which is a bit of a bummer and we've got two gig samples per second as opposed to one gig samples per second. Now that uh technically may not matter much with sine X on x interpolation which both of these units have, that technology hasn't changed, but this one has a boxcar averaging feature or what they call the high resolution mode which allows you to make use of that two gig samples per second.

and we can see that high res mode here if we go down, switch it on. It effectively gives you a greater resolution analog to digital converter Modern Scopes have that features they didn't have it in these low end ones back then. One small difference is the pros with the 1000 series only got the standard 100 megahertz passive probe, but with the 2000 series you get the 150 megahertz passive probe as standard even on the 70 megahertz model. and on the higher bandwidth model you get the 350 megahertz passive probe.

Excellent! And we have an anti-alias in mode too. You can see this down here like this so you can't Alias like you can up here. I'm displaying the 10 megahertz signal on both of these. they're exact same time base but look at the alias in on this one.

Absolutely horrible. Look at that. Ah hopeless. You won't ever see that on the 2000 series.

Big bonus and we've now got 14 times the memory at 14 Meg points. This one only had one Meg points which was phenomenal for its day. Absolute killer, but this is 14 times more with an optional software upgrade to 56 Meg or 56 times more. And let's uh, stop both of these waveforms here.

I've got, let's zoom in on this one. This is set to 14 Meg points. Look at that beautiful smooth. You can see all the detail in that.

if we zoom in on the same waveform here with one Meg points, look at that. It's just all crusty. It doesn't have the memory depth capable of displaying that fine detail when you zoom in. Now in some cases, this massive 14 Meg Point memory or 56 Meg Point memory is still not enough if you've got individual bursts like this separated by very large period, very large time periods in the the order of seconds.

For example, you need Giga points of memory on a traditional scope to actually sample it. But so these modern Scopes have what's called segmented memory capability. AKA Waveform replay mode that's called on this Ds2000 That's what this control around here does. allows you to record and Playback uh, segment captures of high resolution parts of the waveform separated by very long blank periods.

So you aren't wasting all of your sample memory in all this Dead period. Here, you're just capturing little snapshot there. a snapshot there and that's what I'm going to demonstrate here: I've got a 100 kilohertz sine C waveform 100 kilohertz main frequency there separated by um and not very low frequency I've got it separated by one kilohertz there. So it's a one kilohertz burst with 100 kilohertz main frequency and as you can see, I've got this scope set to 14 make points and it's not capturing that properly because there's just not enough memory depth to do it.

So if we change the time base up like that, we can see it. Now let's put on waveform capture mode and here we go. We just press record here and check this out. It's going to record 8 000 of those waveforms.

There we go. It's just man. It's about to finish. There we go.

It's just captured 8 000 of those. So now I can just replay through. You can't see that waveform change much at all because I've you know it's the same signal going in. but let's say it did vary.

You would actually see you know each capture of that waveform. It stored 8 000 waveforms. Brilliant feature. So depending on the repetition rate of the waveform, we're talking about Giga points of memory here.

So this thing is stored: eight thousand waveform captures of 14 points at 14k Points each. So even on the 14k points is enough to zoom in and see detail on that. A phenomenally useful feature. There we go.

We'll record 500 waveforms at Uh I think it's Uh 140k Points each and we can also do Trace analysis or pass fail analysis and we can go in there and we can set our mask as well. And what we can do is we can actually scroll through and select the waveform we want so we can go right to this uh, say 508 at the end here and we can create a mask from any frame that we've actually captured a pass file mask. Brilliant! So then what we can do is we can start an analysis of all the frames based on the pass fail mask which we've set in there and it gives us the results down here of which particular frames failed so you can see it down there, but you can go through and it actually analyzes each frame based upon the Uh, the mask which you've set up. Absolutely brilliant and then it gives you some stats.

305 of those waveforms are failed to pass the mask out of 508. Then we've got waveform update rate. The Ds-2000 specs it at a maximum of 50 000 waveforms per second, which is excellent, and the Ds1052e doesn't really specify it doesn't have a trigger outer capability to enable you to directly measure that, but it's in the order of like a couple hundred waveform updates per second at best. And what I'm feeding in here is a little glitch.

You can see it popping up here, no problems at all. I've got this set to 14 k points and this is also set to a short memory depth as well. It's not set to one Meg point because the waveform update rate changes with your memory depth as I'll show you. But look, oh, there we go.

We just called it there. maybe you just caught one there if you're lucky, but this one just shows up the glitches all the time. Not a problem at all. and if we increase that, uh, sample memory 140k points, we're still picking it up.

Not a problem with 140k and even at 1.4 Meg points, we've still got enough waveform update rate to, um, pick up all that and pick up those anomalies. You'll never, ever see it on the Rygold, Especially if you go up here and set the Rye goal to a memory depth of long memory. you'll probably never see it up there. And here's the waveform update rate Actually measured from the trigger output of this Ds-2000 there it is 46 kilohertz or 46 000 waveforms per second.

And of course, that's going to vary with the time base. There's only going to be certain sweet spots on that time base relative to the input frequency that you're actually measuring where you're going to get. You know your full waveform update rate, but the same thing applies to any digital scope, including the 1000 Series so it's still in real in terms of real world use with glitch, capture and other aspects. Streets ahead of the 1 thousand series, no question, and just look at the Practical difference in this waveform update rate between the two.

I've got just a simple sine wave on here modulated with some noise and look at the intensity graded display and the waveform update speed. You can see the clear detail in the DS 2000 series down here. Look at that. Absolutely beautiful and if I change the memory depth of course that will vary.

So let's go 140k points Here we go: 1.4 mid points 14 Meg points 56 Meg points. So as you can see on the wave on the lower memory depths with the faster waveform update, even here, you're getting more detail than you get in. On with that, 1.4 Meg points than you get in with the short memory here. So if you compare the two, there's just really, you know a massive amount of signal Fidelity difference in here even when this thing's capturing large amounts of waveform data.

But look at that, no contest and that brings us to Intensity graded display which these modern Scopes have IE The Tektronics DPO Digital Phosphorus Oscilloscope Technology Agilent Have it. all. the major manufacturers have it and now it's in these you know. Entry Level: Scopes Just look I'm varying the intensity here and you can see the difference in that waveform.

It's basically giving you an analog like display, so this intensity gradient of your display it's working much more like an analogous oscilloscope. If you compare that to the 1000 series which doesn't have intensity graded display, all you're doing is changing the brightness of the waveform. There is no detail in there. I.E Less frequent stuff is not um, any display with any less intensity than more frequency.

So it's not an analog type display. it is just your traditional old-school digital no contest. Now, something that shows up this analog-like intensity graded display quite well is an amplitude modulator sine wave. In this case, I've got a one megahertz sine wave 120 amplitude modulated with that 100 Hertz sine wave and I've got both of them set to maximum brightness here.

and as you can see, Um, you know you can see more detail this one. They're both set to one midpoint memory, by the way, so we're getting roughly equivalent. um, there. But you can see the finer detail on the Ds2000 because of the better screen and everything else.

But watch what happens if we turn the intensity down on this because it's an intensity graded display. You get the more frequent stuff highlighted brighter, whereas if you do it on the 1000, it's just the one intensity. That's it. You don't get anything, but it shows up beautifully on this DS 2000.

Look at that. Absolutely beautiful. And then if we increase the memory depth as well, look at that wonderful, absolutely beautiful analog-like display that's at minimum intensity right down there and we can turn that up. And that's just.

it works exactly like an analog scope. And if you don't believe me that it's just like an analog display. Well, here it is on an analog oscilloscope. Look at that.

We adjust the intensity like that, we ingest the intensity and it's very, very similar at the Slow Time base. And let's take the time base all the way up, shall we? We've got to adjust our trigger again. Bang! We'll take this time base all the way up. We'll adjust our trigger and there it is, zoomed in at the faster time base.

Look at that analog like performance. Beautiful. And of course we can adjust the intensity on that to go all the way down and we can do the same thing on the analog like display bit. There you go.

Beautiful. You do not get that on the older Scopes without these intensity graded displays and at the exact same tie base on the Rygold Ds-2000 Regardless of memory depth, you just do not get that at all. And the vertical range on this scope can go down to 500 micro volts per division. That is absolutely phenomenal.

And I Do hope that sends a new A sets a new trend in that low noise front ends in oscilloscopes these days. very few oscilloscopes are ever on the market have had 500 microvolts per Division and I'm generating a 500 microvolt signal here from my Marconi generator. There it is at 10 megahertz and look at that. Yeah, I've got average interned on 64 averages.

We can turn that all the way down. Ah, there there you go but 64 averages and the same 500 microvolt signal on the Ds1052e Of course it's only got a minimum vertical range of 2 millivolts per Division and I've got 64 averages set there as well. and they've both got Hardware frequency counters built into them. Nothing changed there now.

As for measurements, yeah, both of them can display a whole bunch of basic uh, waveform measurements, but the Ds-2000 goes far beyond that right into the realm of statistics. What we can do is turn on statistics here and check out all these statistics, which we can get along here. We can have five different statistics displayed at once, controlled by both horizontal and vertical stats. Menus with all these different options, Vrms, overshoot, pre-shoot period area area, and that's just the vertical, the horizontal.

If we go in there, we've got frequency rise time, all sorts of stuff. we can do phase delay between channels, and there's all the statistics counting up there. You can see that the various counts are going up, and of course, this waveforms not changing much at all, so there's hardly any difference in there. But if we had a waveform that was, you know, significantly changing we would you know, be able to see the current, the average, the deviation, and we can select in here the extreme values or the difference.

Phenomenal capability. And then you can actually get graphs of the statistics you've actually Chosen and combine it with the waveform replay or segmented memory feature. Incredible. And of course we've got the usual Fft capability.

We can go split screen here, which is really nice or we can actually go full screen uh, combination of that. And of course we can scale that in various ways and we can select a different window in types and what we can do here is set up Advanced ex. math expressions which allow us to do all sorts of stuff. Check it out! We've got integrals, differentials, logs, exponents, square root, sine, cosine, tangent variables, and we can do various Um arithmetic operators as well.

In this case, I'm going to do the square root of Channel One, so if we apply that, then Bingo that is our square root of Channel One the purple waveform there, and what we'll do here is we'll have a go at the integral of Channel One. So we select integral. We select Channel One. There, we select closing brackets that's our expression and we apply that.

and there's the integral of that waveform when you scale it and position it correctly. Beautiful. and you can do that for advanced, Uh, Expressions Channel One. Channel Two combine them, as well as constants and all sorts of things.

Fantastic. And there's been a big step up in the number of trigger modes. all we had back then is Edge pulse slope, video, and Alternate that's it. But on the Ds-2000 we have more than we can poke a stick at.

runt pulses, windows, and third slope pattern, delay, timeout duration, set up and hold. and then we've got the various serial protocol triggers as well. And I Know the serial uh decode features are optional extras, but hey, it's capability. In a base level scope.

For a basic SPI and I Squared, C and Rs232 product called decoding, you've got event tables and it's all there. And of course, with the large memory, you can capture huge expanses of data like that and then just, uh, stop that and then zoom in on an individual, pack it like that. That's the advantage of the really deep memory that 14 Meg instead of one Meg Now on an 800 class Uh entry level scope, we've got not only uh, trigger out but um, that Lan capability built in as well with Uh LXI standard. Brilliant! Let's have a look at what we can do.

So what I've done is connected my scope to the Ethernet port on my laptop here and I'm running software written by an Eev blog Forum User called Marmad and he's written this awesome software which works with all the Ultravision series. Scopes not just the 2000, but the 4000 and the 6000 as well I believe and allows us to capture all of the Uh waveform captured data from the scope, all that segmented uh, record replay stuff and then we can do various cool plots and analyze the data export it do all sorts of things. Fantastic utility. It's not written by Rigol, but it uses the V these are LXI interface.

in this case I've installed the national instruments Visa driver in this thing and the software he's written just interfaces using the standard Lxir protocols and it allows him to control the scoping and extract all the frames of data out through all the memory. and we can do various things with it as you'll see and I will get a screen a proper Uh screen capture of this in a minute. So what I've got is a slowly varying waveform on the scope and as you can see, it's corresponding in almost real time. There, it's actually telling us it's updating its six waveforms per second.

That's the speed that it's actually uh doing here so it's not quite uh, real time. But what we'll do is we'll use the record feature of this and we'll plot this data on our on our PC here. It'll be fun watch this. So as you saw there I had this waveform and I was modulating that at one Hertz so you saw it actually changing Live there I've recorded uh 8128 um frames of that or away forms of 14k Points each and we're going to be able to load all of that into the software.

It could take some time to load all that data. It's a massive amount of data it's got to transfer across the Ethernet port and import. So what we can do here: there's various options, there's record up here and there's play DSO and we can actually save it back I Won't go into the full details here, but let's just do an example of where we can save this Frame array here. and so let's just save this and we'll call it test three and we'll save it and what it's doing now is it's actually um, importing the data as you can see 43 for frame 50, Frame 70.

There we go up to 100 And it's got to read all 8 000. it doesn't have to. We can actually stop it and we may actually do that. We may not let it go all the way, but as you can see, while it's actually doing that there is you can see the data is its replaying the data on the screen of the oscilloscope here and you can see it going up like that and it'll reach its peak and that'll go back down.

So it's eventually reading all those recorded frames and then we're going to be able to get a very nice waterfall plot of this. All right. I'm actually going to, uh, stop it there I'm about to frame 2500 I'm sure we'll have enough data see the modulation, so let's give that a go and we'll cancel that and check it out. We now have it's starting to plot a waterfall plot of that waveform versus frame.

So the frames like it started here. This is like frame number one and then you can see the one Hertz modulation on that frame. It's probably not the best example. It's not drawing the full line down there.

that's why it looks a bit, uh, funny. But this is a classic, um, waterfall type plot and it's a great visualization tool to actually see this and you can't get this on the scope, but to import the data and have a tool like this available in you know, this sort of price range scope is just absolutely phenomenal. So that's one of the great uses of uh, the Ethernet LXI interface. You can write Advanced software to control almost any uh aspect of the scope and its operation.

So as well as that 3D waterfall type plot, we can also do a 2d version of that and an intensity graded bitmap display too. So that's what we're going to do. Let's go for the intensity graded one and we'll plot that and get that out of the way up. I Can't drag that out of the way.

sorry, but you can see it building up there to give us that intensity graded display. It's brilliant. So there you have it. There's a look at a five-year-old uh, sort of what I would consider entry level uh scope at that 800 price point and what you can get today for that same price point and it's I paid around about the same price from my first 20 megahertz dual Channel single time base analog uh, oscilloscope way back I Don't know when I was a teenager and now when I bought this I paid about 700 odd dollars for this before the prices dropped and it was, you know, fantastic capability for its day.

Five years ago, this was absolutely incredible. It sent set a benchmark with that one gig sample per second. The one midpoint memory real time had Fft and various uh, you know other features which um, aren't too dissimilar to what is on any uh, modern scope. Five years later, except take a look at what you can get now for the same money, there's just and the difference is absolutely incredible.

There's practically no contest. Now to answer the uh original uh Poster's question on the Forum should he? uh, wait, let's save up for two months and buy this. We'll save up for four months and buy this. well.

I Think you know my answer. Go for the unless you absolutely cannot afford it, go for something like this: modern feature set Rigold DS 2000 series. It's got an order of magnitude, more features and performance as you saw, and there's stuff which I didn't even not show I'm sure there's uh, other little things in there that I've missed and things like that. and if you want to point them out, put in the comments or on the Forum This is what I would consider an entry level feature set scope these days.

around about that eight? that traditional, sort of, you know, sub thousand dollar, eight hundred dollar, uh, price point whereas these are now, uh, something like the Ds1052e has sort of gone into the really Ultra low-cost Bare Bones sort of, you know, oscilloscope Market it's you? Yeah, yeah, arguing semantics. Is this entry level? or is this entry level? But of course, if you only got 400 bucks then the point is. mood? really isn't it? Well, you know you buy the Ds1052e or one of the other, um, a low-cost uh Scopes these days which do have more functionality than the 1052e. uh typically and it'll serve you well.

They're a decent entry level scope, but what I'm trying to say here is that the Ds-2000 represents the new Benchmark in what I would consider entry-level scopes at that more traditional 800 price point because that 400 price point, really, you know, didn't exist. Uh, five years ago, you couldn't get any decent scope with any sort of, you know, decent usable capability for that sort of price. So these are new modern Ultra low-cost Scopes have really created a new category which hasn't really been available before. so I'm absolutely Blown Away With the capability you can get for that sort of, you know, know, the same price I pay for my original 20 megahertz analog.

all those decades are going. What will we have in five another five years time, what will be the uh sort of, You know, the Benchmark feature set. This is pretty much the best bang for buck. um scope.

You can get sub thousand dollars on the Market Bar None This is a set the Benchmark for modern feature set just like this one did five years ago. Oh hope you enjoyed it folks. It was a bit longer than I expected, but I wanted to demo uh, all of the individual features, so if you want to discuss it, jump on over to the EV blog Forum that's the best place to do it. And if you like this sort of video, please give it a big thumbs up or two thumbs up I don't think you can do that I think you can only give one thumbs up on YouTube Bummer.

Catch you next time.