Hi, You know how I reviewed the new Agilant 3000 Series Scopes about 7 months ago when they first came out. Well, it turns out as of today October 18th Agilant have just upgraded them. not the physical scope, but the firmware. They've got a new release.

uh, firmware code named yes, it's got a code name code name Dingo and uh, version 2.0 firmware for the 3000 I Thought we'd take a look at it. it's got some cool new features. One of the killer new features for this new firmware is something that I complained about when I first originally reviewed the scope and I think I'm going to take credit for this one because uh, back when I reviewed it, I said well, the function generator in there is great. Excellent idea to stick a function generator in the scope.

allows you to do lots of cool stuff, but it was clear that they were actually using an arbitrary Uh waveform generator internally to actually generate uh, the waveforms that it could do. and I said at the time, why don't why doesn't include arbitary capability? Why can't you capture the waveforms with the analog input and then edit them and store them and then output them on the function generator and well, at the time Agilant said, well, you know they didn't want it. they it was a bit competitive internally. You know their function generator group would be all up in arms cuz they'd lose sales of their function generator, etc etc.

and well I don't know I Thought it was a bit lame that it didn't have arbitary capability, but I understood it from an internal political point of view. But as it turns out, they've decided to offer free, arbitrary capability on the 3000 and I find that rather surprising now. um I expected it uh to come up eventually if uh, like a competitor came out and they had a function generator in their scope and Adelin had to compete, they'd put it in there. but I thought no.

Other than that, they wouldn't do it. but turns out they have. So this sucker now is arbitrary waveform capability and if you got one of these scopes with the waveform generator option, you can download the firmware. Bingo you'll have it too.

Beauty All right, I've updated the Uh firmware, which is a pretty, uh, painless uh process. You put it on a USB stick and uh I should have the new version 2.0 firmware installed. so let's check it out. It's uh, booty and booty booting.

Same splash screen but I rather like that splash screen. So I'm glad they kept it actually. and if we go into the about screen here, there we go. Version 2.0 Warning: unreleased software only cuz I got it uh, before most other people.

Okay I don't have any uh manuals for how any of this uh works so we're going to have to suck it and see. but as it turns out, that's one of the best ways to see if features are user friendly. So let's try and uh, capture a uh, waveform input and then save it and generate it through the arbitrary function capability. I've got my Uh probe here set up for single shot capture I'm just going to bang it on on the bench here and that will generate a shock impulse response.

Here we go. Well, it will there. we go eventually. So if we hit that there, it's let's get that on the screen.

Let's do it again. Bang! There We go. that looks like a nice waveform. Let's try and save that into our AR uh generator.

Okay, I'm going to assume that it's going to be uh, sensibly I'd put it under the save recall uh file thing. um, under save here uh format. Bingo. Look at that arbitary waveform data I I don't think we had that before and power Harmonics data.

that's for the new Power uh module. Possibly that's in there, but uh, that's a new arbitary waveform data. So let's select that and location SLR it's already. Uh, put that in there.

it looks like well. I Guess you can store as many as you want, but uh, let's well. let's choose one of those. Let's store it in AR Zero press to save and it's done.

It's saved. All right. Let's go into our wave generator here and our wave form. Hey, Bingo There we go.

We've now got an arbitrary capability there as well as um, if you didn't know some of the new uh, there's a couple of extra wave shapes added to the previous new uh, firmware, exponential, um, exponential rise and four cardiac and Galan pulse stuff. So we go up here to arbitary and uh, it looks like we've got edit waveform. Bingo That's a new option. Okay, let's go into settings here and uh, it looks like there's a noise capability here.

Check it out. It's got arbitary plus noise so it looks like you can add from anywhere to from no noise, just arbitary up to what is it. Well, 100% noise. There we go.

That's a handy feature. I Rather like that. uh, but I Haven't figured out yet how to uh Gen actually load that? uh, waveform in? There's the default wave Gen, but we don't want that. We want, uh, edit, waveform and Source is there We go.

Channel One: Okay, our source is coming from Channel One, store source to AR and bingo there it is. So we didn't even I Don't think we even had to save that to the file I I Think that was totally optional. Um, so let's actually, uh, try that again. Actually, let's uh, go back to our single shot capture here.

Get out of our edit menu. Let's capture that again. There we go. and let's uh, see if we can edit waveform and source is one and store source to AR Yep, it changed it.

There you go, so you don't have to save it to file. you can just, uh, capture it on any of the channels and store it straight in. I Like it. Or you can take it from the math as well or any of the reference waveforms.

Beautiful. Okay, now what it looks like it's done here with the waveform is it's automatically. It looks like it's automatically scaled cuz you saw that waveform wasn't uh, full scale on the screen, but it has actually scaled it full scale inside there. so that's that is really quite nice.

I Like that. So I presume that you get the full uh, what is it 10 or 12 bits capability I'd have to check don't remember off the top of my head but you then you get the full capability of uh, that your full, you get the full resolution of the Dack in there based on your current waveform. I Like it. That's neat.

and it looks like they've got this window here. This window obviously that, uh, orange, uh window there obviously correlates to this zoomed window down here. and they've automatically scaled these figures based on those maximum positive and negative values. That's rather neat.

and they've got an interpolate function there just to, uh, smooth it out. so it's uh, not as jaggy. And let's go into edit existing. Shall we point? Number one: You can insert points and you can remove points.

Okay, so it's obvious that that you set your voltage. here, you set you set the voltage you want. like that. oh yeah, I can see that point can see that point going up there.

So if I go into here and point number there there you go. I'm jumping along each data point, each sample which will be output to the deck or actually oh sorry Point number 161. No you have to go into fine if you want to do each individual little bit. but then you can set the voltage and bingo Actually there you go.

If you just hit insert point, then you just keep inserting that voltage there. So if I put the voltage adjust here fine and I just H keep hitting insert point I can just sort of manually. you can. you probably can't see.

Let's take that to oh, hang on, let's take that to course voltage and then you can insert the point and you can see me manually drawing that waveform. So I can draw in effectively, draw in a uh, like a rough sort of sign or triangle wave or any wave shape I like oh, there's a bit of lag there though. you see how it's still going. it's capturing.

it's uh, actually capturing. uh, actually trying to catch up to where I had it I don't rather like that I'd rather that be uh, instant. but oh, it's stopped. For some reason.

what's going on? Why is it stopped? Selection is not available anymore. Oops, something's gone wrong anyway. I can remove points and I don't know. It just seems to work quite well.

It's fairly intuitive and there's transparent you can see that's nice. It gets rid of the menu so that you can see your waveform behind it. Excellent. All right.

Well, let's go back. I don't want that extra little uh jaggy stuff I edited over there and oop store to AR Yeah, Okay, yes, we're back. So if I go back into my wave gen here, it looks like it's automatically selected the amplitude for me 635 Ms Peak to Peak because the peak to Peak that it was doing here was 640 M volts. That's my waveform that I uh captured, but it set the AR gen to that.

It set the frequency to 200 HZ Okay, so what I've done now is I've stored that uh signal that we captured as one of the uh reference wave forms over here so we can keep that permanently on the screen. Now let's uh, have a look at what happens when we get the AR Gen to generate this signal and Bingo there it is. It's repetitive. It's uh, generated that signal as a repetitive signal and that's at the 200 HZ repetition frequency we set in here.

so we can change that. Obviously, there's our ARG and we can change the repetition rate of that particular waveform. That arbitrary waveform which we generated nice works exactly as you'd expect. But of course, if you change that uh repetition uh frequency there, then you'll find that the Um frequency of the waveform itself, not just the repetition rate uh, changes.

So just be careful when you do that sort of thing. Remember, there's our reference wave form, so as you can see, it's actually uh, changing frequency based on the Uh based on the record. uh, the sample record length inside the arbitrary waveform generator. And of course, it's not magic.

it can't uh, go up to any arbitrarily high frequency no pun intended. So um, we're adjusting our uh, our repetition frequency down here and once it gets to 1 mahz Bingo you'll see the amplitude start to drop on that wave form until, well, there's not much left. And let's try that noise function and see how it works. Setting: Add noise and bingo, look at that.

I I Like that. That's nice. Now there's one thing I haven't been able to find in this: ARB uh gener Ator is the ability to generate a single shot waveform if I just want to generate that bang once and then stop I don't know how to do it I it'll be silly if you can't do it, but I'm Bugg it if I can find it. Maybe that's one of the limitations with uh, a built-in AR gen like this that they're well, now effectively uh, giving away although you do have to pay for the wave gem option, but maybe they don't want to add uh, stuff like that to actually compete with the Um, you know, a full-on profit proper? Uh, separate bench function generator Because one of the things this Um still does not have is external modulation capability and I'm just wondering: is it possible to um, uh, use one of the spare analog channels here to feed in your modulation signal into that and then modulate the your arbitrary or some other uh, waveform, some one of your other, uh, predetermined forms be it sign or whatever.

Um actually modulate that with one of your analog inputs I Wonder if the hardware is actually capable of that? If it was, that would be really cool. Now another thing they've added is, uh, an optional module for the if you've got the advanced math uh option module then they've added all these other cool stuff. All these uh, you've got uh, filters. Youve got squares, square root, absolute logs, natural logs, exponentials and low part, and high pass filter measurement Trends and ah, all sorts of stuff.

I like it. but of course, if you don't have that module, you don't get it. so you got to pay for it. Okay, let's just have a quick play around with that low pass filter there and we can adjust the bandwidth here.

And uh, the purple waveform? There is our math. Uh one. This is still our live input. Obviously see it's uh, live if you disconnected, it totally goes away.

So our math is being updated in real time there. and let's adjust our B with here for uh, let's lower that down and we should see the amplitude. uh drop there we go Bingo cuz we've put in that uh, low pass filter so that's a neat tool. It just allows you to uh, experiment in uh, real time inside your scope with um, your actual waveform so you can see it actually smooth out.

um, all of those high frequency high frequency components. And if I go into the uh analyze menu here then I've got the new uh video um option uh installed as well. You've got to uh, pay more for that of course. but it can do all of uh HD TV stuff and all that sort of thing.

Beautiful! And here's a new module which they've got in the 2.0 firmware which you can buy which is the power application one I'm very excited I've got it and uh, let's switch it on and uh, look at some of the stuff we can do cuz it's very cool. Some of the stuff we can analyze here for uh you know DC to DC Converters Power applications Current harmonics, Efficiency Inrush current Modulation Power quality Switching loss, transient response turn on turn off time output Ripple Psrr slew rate Fantastic! Everything you need for Designing power supply, circuitry and the good thing about this okay is we if you actually uh, go in there let's say we want to do um uh let's say efficiency. Okay, let's go into signals. Look at this.

It uh, tells you how to actually, uh, set up your voltage probe, your current probe, voltage and current probe. And the good thing about having a four Channel scope is that you can have, uh, measure input and output power at the same time cuz you can have voltage and current on uh one and two. and uh, the output uh, voltage and current on three and four and it gives you a little connection diagram right there and it shows you how to do that. You've got the volt, you've got your differential voltage probe there.

Usually you're going to use differential probes for something like this. Um, unless you're working on a totally common, uh, ground system or something, your current probe and channel two your other differential probe measuring your input and it shows you how to set it up. It's just nice that you've actually got um output Ripple um actually written here and you got output Ripple over here and that's good when you do screen captures and you put them in test reports and stuff like that. And if you haven't actually um, analyzed uh Power Supplies before or you're a bit Rusty you know you haven't done it for 5 years or something.

This, um, it's just nice being able to go in here. Okay, I need to measure the switching loss of this thing and you go in there and it tells you how to set it all up to measure the switching loss I Love it. One of the other things they've actually uh included with this update even though they haven't actually done anything, but they've actually uh specified it. there is now a 2E calibration interval standard with these Scopes and that applies to all existing Scopes manufactured as well as new ones Because Agilant? Well, they actually have done some work on it I Guess they've actually analyzed it and found that these Scopes should be stable and they're um, confident that um, you can the Uh: the recommended Factory calibration interval is now 2 years and that can be a big deal.

Um for people who have to get these sort of things calibrated and who don't have their own internal standards. but they follow the manufacturer's recommended interval so they've upped it from 12 months to 2 years. Beauty Now the specs for this building Arj aren't exactly going to set the world on fire. We're only talking uh, 10 bits, vertical resolution 100 Meg samples and uh 8K sample memory.

But hey, considering this build into a scope, it's It's not bad at all. It's certainly quite useful. So I Don't think Agilant Function Generator Group are you know, really shaking in their boots at this stage? You know you might lose the occasional sale, but uh, really, if you want a you know a decent high performance AR generator, you've got to get a dedicated instrument. So there you have it.

It's a rather, uh, neat little uh implementation of an internal AR generator and I don't mind it at all. It works quite well. It's fairly intuitive um, single shot capability would be nice, but it's not. It's not a full featured AR generator.

You can't do, you know, a function generator? it's just they've just added some basic AR capability and it's uh, Especially considering it's a free download. it's very worthwhile getting if you've already paid for the function generator. Definitely get it. now.

It does have the capability to um interface to um, some uh PC uh software as well for um, editing and downloading, uploading, downloading the waveforms I I'm assuming that is the agant, uh, bench link software, but I didn't get any pre-release information on that. Normally you've got to pay extra for the bench link uh, software. So I'm not sure, but I'm sure details will come to light today. So there you go if you've got an Agilent 3000 Series and you've probably been maybe deciding if you want to buy the uh function generator or not.

Well, it's now got old capability and if you've already got it, download it quick. Smart. Catch you next time.