Until a few months back I was using a Fluke 123 Scopemeter to debug my digital circuits, but as the circuits got more and more complex and specially the serial communication needed more and more bytes to be sent, then the 512 bytes memory length of the Fluke 123 become too short for such amount of information.
So it was time to take the Fluke 123 of the bench to give room for a new instrument. After a couple of months analyzing the characteristics of the low cost oscilloscopes available on eBay, I decided that Rigol DS1052D (photo above) was the best for my needs.
A 1MB memory depth for a single channel or 512KB for dual channel along with their 16 channel logic analyzer makes this scope one of the best low priced scopes for most digital circuit debugging.
A 1MB memory depth for a single channel or 512KB for dual channel along with their 16 channel logic analyzer makes this scope one of the best low priced scopes for most digital circuit debugging.
Until a couple of weeks ago, everything was perfect, but then, while exploring the menus, accidentally I selected a 'Special Mode' menu (if you have one of these oscilloscopes, do not press this button unless you are really bored and want to try 4096 code combinations to have your oscilloscope back). That's right, after pressing the 'Special Mode' menu button I got myself a MSO with a locked keyboard that could only be controlled through the PC via a USB cable.
Well, next step, e-mail Rigol, then wait. And while I'm waiting why not to try some codes? I've tried about 500 codes, including the more obvious, ie, 111111, 222222, etc, with no succeess. A few days later, while still waiting for reply, and with my fingers starting to hurt, I come to an idea. "If I can control the oscilloscope with the PC I must be able to send the key combinations as well.". That was my next goal, while still waiting for a reply from Rigol.
After trying (with no success) to communicate with the oscilloscope via the RS232 port, I searched the net to find something about the USB communication. So a little search and I found all the information I needed at http://www.circuitsonline.net/. So was time to code. I wrote a small program that sent sequential codes for the oscilloscope and instead of taking about 15 seconds for each code I was now trying a code every second, after a couple of hours I had my DS1052D unlocked, while still waiting for a reply from Rigol.
Any way, it is a excellent oscilloscope with a professional look and feel. By the way, the code was 424132 just in case you need it, I don't know if all the oscilloscopes have the same code but if so I hope this is useful for someone because I could not find anywhere on the net information about this. Please comment and if you try this code let me know if it works.
