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<p>If you're intending to rely on remote control/logging with Rigol
and/or Siglent test equipment via ethernet and USB, know that both
are flakey to the point of rating a perfect zero stars label of
"Genuine Piece of Crap"*. I'm talking about the I/O interfaces,
not the basic functioning of the equpment. My DM3068 DMM and
SPD3303S power supply both perform fantastically when you are just
looking at the displays (but while I'm at it: be VERY CAREFUL with
the voltage/current limit control knob on the Siglent 3303 series
supplies, as they have random, viciously variable acceleration
behavior and you'll blow up your equipment if you forget to turn
the output off while making an adjustment. e.g."2.9 volts, 3.0
volts, 3.1 volts, 6.4 volts. Oops!").<br>
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<p>Also, as an FYI, Tequipment has dropped Siglent. The URLs via the
outside are still valid, but if you go to their site you'll find
no trace of this line. <br>
</p>
<p>Finally, to get all the rants out of the way, know that Rigol's
service organization in the US is modest with a four point type,
lower case "m". But I did get an official dispensation to break
the warranty seal and replace a fuse in my DMM and I thank my
lucky stars I didn't have to ship it to them.<br>
</p>
<p>I have workarounds for getting control/logging to work with Rigol
via vxi11 and with Siglent via /dev/USBTMC* that only took several
dozen hours of futzing to work out. For vxi11 you MUST set the
instrument object lock_timeout field to zero, and for USBTMC
operations where you are also plagued by error 110 (which just
manifests as OSError in Python), the fix is to resend the last
query as the Siglent has worthless crap in its USB interface that
doesn't seem to understand the concept of asynchronous I/O and it
drops queries on the floor randomly, just like Siglent. Maybe one
stole the other's super quality firmware? I could go on to
discuss the sterling quality of the sigrok-cli user interface
documentation and command line semantic handling, but I'll save
that for some other day, and besides I want to contribute drivers
to those guys and not get them PO'd from the get go.<br>
</p>
<p>-Pete.</p>
<p>*For more info on the "Genuine Piece of Crap" label, hear what <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_r9AnvHLjk">Neil Young
has to say</a> about the subject.<br>
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