[TriEmbed] MSO may grow on you Re: Budget minded oscilloscope

[Pete Soper]

If you think you might be starting to play a long game consider getting 
a "mixed signal" 'scope that can capture, trigger on, and decode a set 
of digital signals as well as providing analog measurements, and 
consider I2C/SPI/UART/USART decoding essential, if only as an option 
(i.e. don't drop the money for something that can't eventually decode 
these dead common serial modes unless you know you're only dipping a toe 
in). I went a long time with my Rigol without an "unavoidable use case" 
for logic signals involved with debugging new hardware, but when those 
use cases finally came around it was nice to have the capability and not 
be looking around for another piece of equipment, most especially when 
you need to see what's going on with several signals at once. In about 
seven years I think I've topped out with two analog and seven or eight 
digital signals with one set of gadgets. The integration of digital and 
analog is a real plus, for instance where you need to jump around 
between figuring out a noise issue vs something basically wrong with a 
serial line like with I2C. And of course you can correlate analog such 
as with A/D converters with digital signals feeding them to sort out issues.

-Pete