I have always liked my Rigol Scope, well up until now that is, of late it has shown a rather annoying problem.
The problem shows itself in two ways, but both when switching the unit on.
State One
When switching the Oscilloscope on you get the Rigol Logo which stays on screen but the only LED that lights up is the ‘Intensity’ button and the scope will not go any further than this however long it is left. At this point no other lights appear and the only thing that can be done is to switch off thew scope and try again.
State Two
In this state the scope will get a little further, lights seem to appear in the correct order of things but it will end with the all of the channel lights lit but the main show of there being a problem is that the ‘Start/Stop’ Button is lit up in ‘Red’, and once this has shown its head it will not go any further.
I would not really mind at this point as when I was working, losing a few hundred quid was not a problem, but now that I am on disability and basically earning diddly quat it’s a bit of a spin, the other problem is that I expanded this basic scope to a much better model through firmware updated, so it not just the case of replacing a scope with another basic scope, to go through the same process of expanding another scope to the same level or do I just get a better version this time round, although this might take some time.
There is a point where switching the scope on and off again and back on again, and again will eventually make the scope appear and it will switch onto it’s normal working state, this means that I then have to leave it switched on all day which I am not totally happy with doing., but I suppose that it is at least working and I am able to plug in and play so to speak.
I think it will be the last time that I choose to have every option installed, it was just at the time a lot cheaper to do this than order a scope that has most of the options that I required at the time, and now that this has happened it seems to be a total waste of time and money, which I would not be too miffed about except that this arrive just prior to Cancer and has only been used for about 20 hours in total.
So I am now looking for a cheap scope again but I am not sure if I will stick with Rigol again, it looks like you can get a better deal these days with Siglent, that said it is still a hefty outlay for someone on disability that has to give most of his disability toi his carer to cover the complete lack of money that they get from the local government.
2 comments
I am very sorry to hear about your scope issue. I thought I would let you know that you can get a Rigol DHO804, which is a 70MHz scope that can be “upgraded” to 250MHz (same as 824) for about $250 from AliExpress with the available Ali coupon if you are patient. You can get it now due to the holiday (through the 8th), shipped from the US. It is a lot of scope for the money, but it does have some bugs. They are pretty minor now with the latest firmware 1.0.4, and I haven’t heard of anything as bad as what you are seeing with the older one. You are correct, though, that Siglent is a better scope. They have the SDS804X HD that is also 70 MHz with a similar “upgrade” path. They cost about $350 I believe. I have both, and the Siglent is the keeper. I am going to see the Rigol after I fix the trigger level encoder that died 3 months after I received it – keep in mind that I got it from Ali, so no warranty, and it could have seen rough handling?) If possible, I would strongly suggest the Siglent SDS800X HD series that comes with a 3-year warranty. It is a solid scope. The Rigol is sort of an Android tablet running a scope app. I WOULD buy the Rigol, though, if I couldn’t afford the Siglent, because it is a nice hobbyist scope, and most issues seem to be minor and software-related, so they should get resolved in firmware releases (and a lot of them have been). I hope this helps in some way. Happy New Year!
Thanks for this Greg, I am sorry that I have not replied sooner but been going through a rought time here. I settled on the Siglent SDS814X HD in the end after watching way too many YouTube Videos and found it to be a definite upgrade to my old Rigol, The new Rigol models have some nice features but the support from Rigol is existence and I just do not want to find myself in the same place again, I have replaced my Rigol DSA-815 Spectrum Analyser with yet another one so I not totally against Rigol but I have found the Siglent is a lot easier to use, so happy at present, 73.