Worst set from better company, or better set from cheap company. Do sets make se - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: bercow
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: August 24, 2025, 12:01:06 am
content: HelloI'm considering not so much the hardware choice, but the ecosystem.I have a rough idea of ​​who offers what, but I don't have practical experience with software from different company or interoperability via external software (like MatLAB). A multimeter, an oscilloscope, a power supply, and everything controlled via ETH so they can be connected, login data, and triggered together. Maybe some Python, probably LabVIEW.What's important to me is that they work together +... well, If can you make better hardware out of cheaper hardware by uploading code from the internet... that's just a plus, a big plus, thousands saved.Mainly home and hobby use + industrial signal analysis, DI/DO from/to PLC (logic probe), 4-20mA, 0-10V, RTD, high-speed counter, encoder. Automated testing of generated signals from PLCs. My signals are probably slow, max 5 1/2 digits. Maybe extra other protocols (RS..., CAN, Profibus)Siglent, Keysight, Hantec xDD, Rigol, GW Instek, KeithleyThe difference between Keysight's Education and Rigol series in the same series is huge.Is there even a point in thinking about working within a single ecosystem, or is LXI + LabVIEW the only solution? For me, the DMM7510 is the best of the best, and I'd prefer it over the Rigol/Siglent, but the equivalent MSO5354 (MSO5074) is incomparably more expensive.

author: Fire Doger
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2025, 01:21:18 am
content: Hello.1. Instruments have external trigger input. Triggering via software is all over the place. It may or may not be acceptable by your requirements.2. Log of data is responsibility of the controlling software (or DAQ but that's an other story)3. What benefits do you expect from "ecosystem" ? Professional tools are not iphones, they have standards, like scpi, which is the way of communication and command set that they must implement based on the type of the instrument. There are differences between manufacturers but they don't deviate from the standard, it's due to features of the instruments.Since you mentioned LabVIEW, all the logic will be in LabVIEW, if for example you need a 10V range, from inside LabVIEW you need to send a scpi command to configure the instrument to 10V range. The exact format of the scpi command is irrelevant to the process of building the test flow. You won't feed data directly from one instrument to an other to have incompatibilities between them.But, you need to be sure that each instrument offers exactly what you are looking for. For example triggering from a CAN message requires that your scope can give you that kind of interrupt or the polling rate is fast enough for your application.Each instrument has a programming manual with all the supported scpi commands

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2025, 07:19:07 pm
content: There is no single "best answer" here.Personally I avoid commercial software, even if the functionality is less. I would probably go in the direction of using python scripts to communicate with LXI / SCIPI and things like matplotlib and Jupyter.If you want to create bode diagrams, then an oscilloscope with a built in function generator, or one that can directly control a function generator (probably same brand?) is likely a good idea.