How To Reverse Engineer, Featuring the Rigol DS1054Z article and videos in it show what is inside a four-channel digital scope. With four channels of input, Dave Jones was wondering how the engineers at Rigol managed to stuff two additional front ends into the scope while still meeting the magic price point of $400, it was time to reverse engineer the 1054Z, and give everyone on the Internet a glimpse at how a real engineer tears apart the worth of other engineers.
4 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
How To Get 50 More Zed From Your Rigol DS1054Z
http://hackaday.com/2014/11/12/how-to-get-50-more-zed-from-your-rigol-ds1054z/#comment-2558437
[Chris] has been spending a lot of time in the wife’s sewing room lately, and things got pretty serious late last night as he hacked his shiny new Rigol DS1054Z to unlock the 1104Z capabilities lurking within.
The rumors are true, and ungoverning the software is as simple as looking up your serial number and knowing the right URL for generating a valid license.
he became the proud owner of 50MHz additional bandwidth, decoders for SPI, I²C, and RS-232, twice the storage depth, and all teh triggers that ship with the 1104Z.
Stick around for [Chris]’s video walk-through.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXehxmJxrI8
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Better Spectrum Analyzer for your Rigol Scope
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/22/a-better-spectrum-analyzer-for-your-rigol-scope/
The Rigol DS1000 series of oscilloscopes are popular with hobbyists for good reason: they provide decent specs at a low price. However, their spectrum analysis abilities are lacking. While these scopes do have a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) function, it’s limited and nearly useless for RF.
Rich] wanted a spectrum analyzer for amateur radio purposes, but didn’t want to build his own sampling hardware for it. Instead, he wrote PyDSA, a software spectrum analyzer for Rigol DS1000 oscilloscopes. This tool uses the USB connection on the scope to fetch samples, and does the number crunching on a far more powerful PC. It’s able to plot a 16,000 point FFT at two sweeps per second when run on a decent computer.
PyDSA is a Python script that makes use of the Virtual Instrument Software Architecture (VISA) interface to control the scope and fetch the sample data. Fortunately there’s some Python libraries that
Software Spectrum Analyzer for the Rigol 1000 series Oscilloscopes
PyDSA – A Spectrum Analyzer for your RIGOL Oscilloscope
http://rheslip.blogspot.ca/2015/09/software-spectrum-analyzer-for-rigol.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rigol MSO5000 Hacked, Features Unlocked
https://hackaday.com/2018/12/19/rigol-mso5000-hacked-features-unlocked/
Rigol’s test gear has something of a history of being hacked. Years ago the DS1022C oscillocope was hacked to increase bandwidth, and more recently the DS1054Z was hacked to unlock licensed features. Now, it’s the MSO5000’s turn.
Over on the EEVBlog forums a group has been working on hacking another Rigol, the MSO5000, a 70 MHz oscilloscope which can be upgraded to 350 MHz via software licensing. Various other features including a two channel, 25 MHz arbitrary waveform generator are also built-in, but locked out unless a license key is purchased. The group have managed to enable all the locked options without license keys.
The hack is quite simple. The Linux system running on the scope has a default root password of, you guessed it, “root”. After logging in over SSH with these credentials, the user just needs to modify the startup file to add the “-fullopt” flag to the “appEntry” application. This starts the application in a fully unlocked state, which gives access to all the features.
Tomi says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/01/18/a-rigol-scope-goes-wireless/
The Rigol DHO800 and DHO900 series use Android underneath, and as you might expect, this makes them easier to hack. A case in point: [VoltLog] demonstrates that you can add WiFi to the scope using a cheap USB WiFi adapter. This might seem like a no-brainer on the surface, but because the software doesn’t know about WiFi, there are a few minor hoops to jump through.