The R&S MXO4 is too powerful for its own good (and Dave's sanity)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2023
- The new Rohde and Schwarz MXO4 oscilloscope is too powerful for its own good, and Dave's sanity. Why doesn't Single Shot mode just work?
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"The tool on the stool needs to be smarter than the tool on the bench." - One of my ME profs.
Love it... haha. PEBKAC is another one - "problem exists between keyboard and chair"
These days, that means RTFM because the tools are so capable, you can't find all the capability poking around within any modern mid range and higher scope. I showed a lot of smart engineers capability in the products they already owned, at HP/Agilent, Tektronix and R&S.
@@bsodmike
If you need to explain PEBKAC........... yeah , NO !!
You probably shouldn't make the comment.
i think you can assume that everyone here knows certain basic things
one of them being PEBKAC
ALSO.. it's actually PEBCAK , but you can go either way , but it started as PEBCAK.
but. ... You never explain it
Imagine clicking on that grayed out 'N single' box and it telling you precisely why it's grayed out. Now that would be a very nice UI feature. Maybe some day
Yes, every UI ever would benefit from this - figuring out "why is this greyed" is often the least intuituve thing to find the answer to. unfortunately many UI systems treat "greyed" as "disabled" and hence not able to initiate any action, like showing help messages.
A few modern digital cameras do this now and it's really helpful. I agree that every UI should have this feature.
Pop up saying what needs to be changed to edit it, and offer to make those changes by tapping Yes.
This is like the RTB/RTM scopes- normally, you just get a history of the last of segments depending on the memory settings, but there is also a "Nx single" setting that sets how many segments "single" captures.
Essentially this boils down to : 'run' then 'stop' gives you the last segments, 'single' gets you get the _first_ segments.
This gives more flexibility than the more conventional segmented approach on other scopes. e.g. last segments are handy to trace back after an event, first segments to capture startup/boot behaviour.
I did a vid about this th-cam.com/video/O0xZXMHKlJY/w-d-xo.html
If "Nx single" defaults to 1, then it behaves like other scopes. I wonder if this resets if you to a 'preset' or whatever they call the return-to-defaults button.
Ah, yes I forgot the RTB2000 has the NxSingle mode also. I've never used it. Not sure why the MOX4 was set to a high value, I don't remember adjusting it. The MXO4 has permanant automatic history mode which is in addition to the usual segmented memory capability.
When I start with a Preset (green button), the MXO4 works as one would expect (default of single acquisition, configurable to N acquisitions) th-cam.com/video/gkgLcDy8ee4/w-d-xo.html
Rename the button “Single (on steroids)”
Technically the button still just does a single acquisiton sequence. It is just that the sequence is much more complex than one might expect or be used to.
When your scope comes with Clippy... :D
I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. Please consult Chat GPT for clarification. The bots are taking over ....
I really like the way it tells you the capture end time down to the nansecond. I wonder whether you can have the scope sync to a ptp time source so all instrument clocks are sync'd within microseconds of each other.
That is one of the best unique features of new R&S scopes - they don't have any segmented memory "modes" and all the stuff is always on and the data is available even if you forgot that you may need it!
When starting from a Preset, the single shot mode should work as expected (default is 1 acquisition, can be configured to make N acquisitions). The grayed out "N-single / Avg count" is due to settings left over from a previous user session.
th-cam.com/video/gkgLcDy8ee4/w-d-xo.html
This is way beyond anything I'll ever need but I always enjoy all of your videos. My Tektronix 2235 is all I'll ever need, thanks!
My first ever scope was the Tek 2235 AN/USM-488, it still works and I still use it from time to time. My daily drivers are a TDS3014B and Agilent DSO7104A.
I have way too many analog oscilloscopes :D
all R&S scopes work like this. RTB/RTM/RTO/RTE I have worked with are all like that. But the default is usually Nx=1 capture so it behaves like you'd expect.
There are two main branches of DSOs. The first is general purpose lab DSO, which, in some way, emulate the behavior of analog oscilloscope adding some more features to it. These things are very intuitive, you probably never open the manual. And there is also the second branch containing heavily specialized devices, presented MXO4 is a good example of a such thing. You definitely need to read the manual of such device and doing measurements is not a straightforward process due the fact, it needs some planning. UI of these things somehow expects you are using features like loading, defaulting and saving presets, which gives you (at least) predictable starting point. Typical workflow begins with planing the whole process, then loading default settings, then setting all you need to se to do the planed measurement and attaching the probing equipment, then saving that settings (just to have some point, where it is easy to return to), then doing measurements, saving results and analyzing them. These extremely complex equipment carry ability to somehow mimic the general purpose devices, but it's crucial to build some default preset (or more of them) to create an easy to use start point. They offer such a huge amount of menus and submenus with a lot of options, that it is almost impossible to hold complete situation awareness, which lead us to situations, where some setting, accidentally left from previous session, lurks in the deep darkness of complexity of that device waiting to kick your ass at the moment you wouldn't expect this, which is what happened in this case. The level of complexity of a general purpose equipment is much lower, which give those issues almost no place to hide. Which implies, that these heavily specialized beasts require complete different workflow than general purpose ones. Just my own experience.
Ya they need a different workflow, but I'd also assume that a person paying 10k+ for such a scope should know what they are doing. Personally I rather go with such complex menus as they allow you more stuff to do. It takes more effort but it outweighs the advantages and possibilities.
You can also always mess up a measurement with a simple device too, think about aliasing.
It appears to be some sort of RTFM problem. I've run into them before. :)
I bought one and had the same frustrating experience with signal shot mode. There are a few other discrepancies in the operation of this scope,however, once I figured all the quirks out, I realized it blows myTek MSOX44 out of the water.
The almighty Dave was almost bested!
Ha! Sometimes you just get a bad dice roll. Good it wasn't a critical fail, with the scope emitting lots of magic smoke...
I'd play with it, but normally it's far too advanced for what I do in my lab. I like the dual generator feature though. Damn useful for decluttering your test gear space.
Dave, it tells you the History mode/depth is on at upper right under the Acquisition section of the status bar.
No, that is not the same thing, it's always there for Run/Stop mode. That's the "always on" history mode I mentioned. Totally different thing to the N-Single number count. It does show "1" but onyl after you have pressed Single, not before in Run/Stop when it shows the auto history number.
wow nice
This is a true power machine.....
Was the segmented memory disabled on the rtb2004?
That's the software option you need to pay for 😢
@@HSong-qr7dn Yes, Rhode has a lot of software options that are extremely costly.
@@tomasbergh True! I compared the price of hardware plus software for rtb2004 and rtm3004, then realised that MXO4 is a cheaper option.
@@HSong-qr7dn maybe but then you have also softwares for the mxo4 that should be added?
Because one has R&S roots and the other has Hameg roots?
Or... damn this thing doesn't work like other scopes I'm used to, and someone said something about rtfm but I don't know what that is... (because seriously, you will never have awareness of capability of you don't rtfm)
Reading the manual doesn't help much in this instance.
Roots: nonsense.
R&S didn’t make any scopes until they bought Hameg. R&S made other test equipment (RF stuff mostly), not really “normal” stuff like oscilloscopes and power supplies. Their purchase of Hameg is what took them beyond RF into more mainstream test and measurement. (In fact, the first R&S oscilloscope wasn’t released until 2010 - a full 5 years after they acquired Hameg.)
@@tookitogo that's an interesting story; R&S would be generators, frequency meters etc., kinda like with Brüel & Kjaer, Marconi Instruments or Radiometer. Hameg scopes were fine in my book, not as glorious as Tektronix (still dreaming of getting a vintage one) but still very good and reliable. I was kinda wondering what happened to the company... now I know :)
@@KeritechElectronics Yeah. Hameg was always high quality, but not super advanced. They certainly didn’t target the high end market that R&S did. Buying Hameg extended the R&S brand into the lower end market, but also extended Hameg’s product lines into the higher end market. Frankly, it’s impressive that R&S has been able to go as high end as they have in oscilloscopes in just over a decade! I suppose their expertise in things like high end spectrum analyzers spilled over.
I really wanna try the latest Tek scopes though… we have multiple R&S scopes at work, and they’re good, but not as responsive a user interface as Keysight. And then there’s LeCroy - we have a few of those and they’re awesome. (The best was a loaner unit they let us use for a few months. But as a 4ch, 8GHz scope, it’s several orders of magnitude out of my budget! 😂)
@@tookitogo Yeah, well, what do I know, I worked at R&S in the scope side and worked with the people that created the R&S scopes in Munich as well as meeting the Hameg side which at the time, still said Hameg on them.
USD 8,440
Please explain the waves, Professor, please reply
A finger problem?
Title must be: Dave acts like a boomer again.
Read the manual, yes after first pressing random button like we all do, but after that just read the manual! 😁
Too much costly
"Vee maake dis good! Yoo must do as vee say in da buk, even if it is not in da buk! Yoo veel like it, yes!"
Years ago I ended up with 3 Hameg scopes at work, because no-one else in engineering could get them to work to make standard scope measurements. I kind figured it out, but depending on "where you came from" with the button presses they would respond differently. Finally sold them by weight for scrap with the emphasis in the sCRAP. Also try ordering parts for these gems sometime. 🤣
Professor, explain in detail. Please respond to my conversation. I want you to explain me from the beginning. Please reply.
While your waiting there are lots of "Learn Electronics" videos on youtube, I'm am sure you will find something there...good luck !
I really hate R&S scopes...
Always counterintuitive and like I'm not gonna bother reading manual Imma use Keysight
RS can't get this stupid with their flagship 12-bit scope.
First!
Say Hi to your mum for me.
$22,000 piece of crap. sorry!!!.I like the simple not the complicated.
If you need to do complicated thing then the you need the complicated device, not the simple device.
$24,640 to be precise... (MXO44-2415@tequipment).
So it's not a problem I'm likely to encounter 😅