Tag Archives: Waveform Generator

Siglent

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For decades, lab-grade test equipment came from either HP or Tektronix. There were other providers in niche areas (R&S, Anritsu, IFR, etc.), but nearly all lab-grade gear was too expensive for mere mortals. With few alternatives, hobbyists and small businesses scrounged eBay and corporate liquidations to find used gear from these manufacturers.

Times have changed and while those companies still make great test gear, the competition from China has steadily improved and in many (most?) cases, it makes more sense to buy new gear from a budget Chinese manufacturer than 20-40 year old big-name gear.

I’ve bought (and liked) products from Rigol and Owon, but my budget manufacturer of choice is, increasingly: Siglent. My recent purchases include:

Siglent (like Rigol) sells gear that is easily hacked to add functionality including bumping a lower-end model up to a higher model in the same line. This is smart marketing: it lets them get higher prices from larger companies that won’t hack while still providing very attractive price points to hobby and small business users who couldn’t otherwise afford the higher models, but are willing to hack the lower models.

For the most part, I’m quite pleased. The Siglent gear always seems to meet or exceed its specifications and the specs are quite decent. There is a huge community supporting them in places like eevblog with in depth reviews of SDS1104X-E, step-by-step guides to hacking the SDS1104X-E as well as usage, repair, and enhancement tips.

I buy much of my new test gear from Saelig and TEquipment, both of which have provided excellent service and I recommend. If you’re thinking about buying new bench gear, you might give Siglent a look!

Siglent SDG2042X hack

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I purchased a used Siglent SDG2042X which is a 40MHz arbitrary waveform generator with bonus 200MHz frequency counter to replace my aging 25MHz arbitrary waveform generators. Test gear from Chinese manufacturers like Siglent and Rigol has steadily improved over the years and is now quite competitive. Despite my appreciation for the amazing quality of old HP/Agilent gear, in many cases, it makes more sense to buy something new from Siglent.

This generator works well and is feature-rich, but I was curious about an easy hack mentioned on eevblog (see The Siglent SDG2042X Thread) that describes how to upgrade it to 120MHz which turns it into the top of the SDG2K line: SDG2122X.

It turns out that the hack does indeed work and is easy to do; see results below. I don’t know if manufacturers intentionally leave these hacks available to make them attractive to hobby users while still selling the higher priced models to businesses who would be less prone to hack them, but either way, it’s much appreciated (and is a very nice signal generator)…thanks Siglent!

Note that the scope in the pic below is also easy to hack to 500MHz at 5Gs/s and moderately easy to hack to enable all optional functions.

The bonus frequency counter works quite nicely too, providing details like min/avg/max, sdev, duty, and frequency deviation in ppm relative to a reference frequency you specify. It needs about -10dBm (200mV) of signal at 200MHz, but lower levels at lower frequencies (e.g. it works at -20dBm ~= 63mV at 35MHz). Because the SDG2042X can be slaved to an external 10MHz standard, the generated frequencies and counter measurements can be very accurate; I usually keep it and other gear slaved to an external DOCXO standard.