Equipment/Rigol DS1052E

Digital oscilloscope
Model	DS1052E
Sub-category	Test equipment
Status	Stolen
Consumables	None
Accessories	Probes, probe tips, earth leads, IEC mains lead
Training requirement	use carefully, keep accessories
ACnode	no
Owner	Hackspace
Origin	Pledge
Location	See Phil. Will eventually be available through locker system.
Maintainers	Property "Origin" (as page type) with input value "Pledge:_Rigol_DSO|Pledge" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.

What

Rigol DS1052E 1GSa/s 50MHz 8 bit 2-channel with 1 megasample storage. FFT, USB.

(storage and sampling shared over 2 channels, so 500MSa/s 500k samples in 2 channel mode)

Please note this was stolen from 447 Hackney Road and has been replaced by Equipment/Uni-T_UTD2052CL - stealing is very uncool.

How?

The oscilloscope was made available to us by Bob (b3cft) at a substantial discount despite being in new condition. It was paid by pledge and available from january 2014. Akki14 found a convenient case to keep it safe & tidy at a camera show (but someone seems to have lost it).

Docs

http://www.rigolna.com/products/digital-oscilloscopes/ds1000e/ds1052e/

Hacking

It's widely known that this oscilloscope can be hacked to operate to the same spec as the 100Mhz DS1102E model. The hack involves downgrading to earlier firmware, executing some (subsequently disabled) remote control commands, and then upgrading again. There is a small, but not insignificant possibility of bricking, and also the possibility, not guaranteed, of recovering the bricking.

There is evidence that the modification is actually worthwhile : there is some programmable control of the front end which does indeed raise the bandwidth. The 1GSa/s limit is not changed, of course, but the display permits a higher maximum scan rate. Since the 1GSa/s limit is over both channels, this is only really useful in single channel mode : Despite Nyquist's theorum, in 2-channel mode the 500MSa/s sample rate is only really enough for 50MHz (10x bandwidth is usually the rule for reasonable fidelity on current DSOs). This is especially true of FFT mode.

There may be some uses for the DSO which would make this worth doing. However, it's at the limit of operation, and many needs for higher bandwith don't also require storage. If you have a need for 100MHz, note that we have an excellent, working, 275MHz HP1725A. This will do a far better job unless you have a simultaneous need for the storage or maths capabilities. Please seek the permission of the people who paid for the instrument before taking the (relatively low) risk involved in modifying it.