Beware of Rigol DG5252 ARB generator

Dear Colleaques,

I have acquired a Rigol DG5252 signal generator some time ago, and
just have used its built-in waveforms so far. Recently I tried to
activate its ARB capability, which has turned out to be a nightmare.
The instrument apparently eats .RAF waveform files, but the user guide
gives no hint about how to generate them. I was thinking it's as
simple as processing a datapoint table through some utility, and move
the file to the generator on a USB memory stick. Not a chance. The
instrument came bundled with a CD-ROM, but the installation
instructions were limited to a very terse readme file:

1¡¢Download the USB driver from NI website-"NIVISAruntime.msi".
2¡¢Execute "NIVISAruntime.msi" to install the driver program.
3¡¢Execute and install the application software.

I already hated the idea of installing the NI runtime, as I have
encounterd too many mysterious conflict and instability problems
before, and would prefer not to install anything which is not
absolutely necessary. Still, after NIVISA installation, the Ultra
Signal Studio (sounds like the program for creating the .RAF files,
although I didn't find it documented anywhere) installer just popped
up a window saying 'archive not found'. After surfing here and there
in the Rigol web pages I finally found out that one needs to first
install the 300-megabyte Ultra Sigma software and run that at least
once (the fact was not documented in material found in the CDROM).
Well, a whole lot more crap code to install, likely to destabilize my
PC. And as it comes from China I don't know how many keyloggers and
pieces of spyware I got installed with it, either.

Let me digress a bit, as the european Rigol web pages were really not
functioning well at all - I got a feeling that they are hosted in
China, and suffer from their web censorship. At least I felt the same
as when surfing in a hotel in Beijing last summer: weird omissions and
unavailable files, as well as latched-up connections which take
forever to load. The north american Rigol web pages were much better,
maybe hosted somewhere in the West. Anyway, access to the FAQ and
download sections requires a registration, which is OK, but the
registration pages don't work well. For instance, the 'forgotten
password' service requires typing a CAPTCHA, but the picture does not
show up - the browser shows the red 'X' indicating that the picture
file is missing. So I was stuck, no help from here either, had to
proceed with trial and error.

The final A-HA was that the Ultra Signal Studio installation file
must be moved to the directory where the Ultra Sigma software is
installed, and launched there (this too is undocumented - there's no
instructions beyond the readme file, see above). Now the application
window opens, but asks me to type in an 'Attest' code from the
Certificate of Ownership, and refuses to work. I do have the
instrument (with the S/N in the back panel), I do have the warranty
card (with the S/N printed in), I do have the installation CD-ROM, but
I don't have the slightest idea about the Certificate of Ownership.
Looks like they are paranoid about their waveform-creating software
getting pirated.

So I now have megabytes after megabytes of all sorts of crap
installed, I have registered and shall no doubt receive piles of spam
which I'll have to figure how to block, and I still cannot create my
first 'hello world' -style waveform. The Rigol is a nice sine and
squarewave generator, but if you're after arbitrary waveforms, stay
far away. It's a pity, because the hardware looks quite nice actually.

Maybe I shall still collect my remaining stamina, go back to the
Rigol web page, trying to figure out how to get the 'attest code'.

Regards,
Mikko

P.S. Has anyone reverse engineered the .RAF file format? It might be
easiest to generate them form ones own C code...

 

I believe my AB rigol gen came with a CD with the software on it
however, I do not have your model. Not sure if the software with mine
would work on yours?

I have a 25 Mhz model..
Jamie

 

Hi Jamie,

Did you install your software, are you now able to create the ARB
waveform files? Is their filetype extension .RAF ?

I also have an installation CD, but there were no instructions and
the installation procedure turned out to be rather cryptic. Actually,
I finally got the Ultra Signal Studio working last night (it allows 15-
day evaluation period without validation, but it did not tell me that
before I shut down and relaunched the program), but I could not figure
out whether it can write the .RAF files before I went to bed. I got an
impression that the software can talk to the generator only over the
LAN, USB or GPIB connection, and the waveforms dumped to the generator
that way cannot be stored.

The Ultra Sigma installer dropped a User Guide as a .chm file into
its install folder, unfortunately the guide only handles the Ultra
Sigma usage (the part that communicates with the generator over the
LAN, USB or GPIB link), not the Ultra Signal Studio (the part which I
assume creates the ARB waveforms). The U.S.S. may have a help menu in
its application window, but it refuses to launch if it cannot see the
instrument, over the LAN in my case. This makes everything quite
tedious.

Why all this must be so complicated and tedious is beyond me...

But hey, thanks for your help.

Rgrds, Mikko

 

I have UltraWave with my CD and I personally did not install my copy
however, the guys at work also got the same unit as I when they were on
sale. I know they have install theirs and no one that I know of said
anything about a trial period.
I have the DS10x2 which is a 25 mhz model. I edit my AB's at the panel
and I am able to save those to the U disk (USB), just by simply plugging
in a USB mass storage in front. I only use a flash stick but I've been
told it'll also work with some usb drives.

There are 10 local storage memories for specific instrument set up
but those get over written.

Looking at the CD, it appears the supplied driver xxxx.sys is only for
95, 98 and NT. Maybe the driver isn't needed for newer PC's? This leads
me into believing that the interface maybe a standard FT232 or something
like it. Most newer OS'es know these chips.

Later on maybe I'll install UltraWave here and see what it looks like,
I don't have the GPIB/LAN option with mine.

Jamie

 

In the DG5252 it is also possible to create the waveform by entering
it from the front panel, point at a time, then store it to a .RAF
file. That is the only way of creating them which I'm aware of. But
I'd prefer to create the waveforms by software - filling the DG5252's
128Msample memory by hand is really too much. Not to mention getting
the amplitude of each point just right by turning the knob.

If pre-XP driver files are involved, I'm suspecting that your
colleaques' waveform files may be incompatible with the DG5252.

What I'd like to try is whether I could create a chirp, play it out
sync'ed with the data capture of our HP89640 vector spectrum analyzer,
and use the combination for measuring vectoral (amp+phase) transfer
functions of things. This was orginally motivated by my aim to find a
replacement for our retiring HP89410's, but the lowest RBW setting in
the HP89640 is 1Hz, so it really does not sound like a good tool for
extremely low frequencies.

Regards,
Mikko

 

Have you tried the UltraWave program? I'll have to look but, it's
possible the wave form extension is xxx.RDF here..

THe RAF format isn't a standard as for as I know, it is a raw format
and not fitted to any one vender. So you need to know where device it
was generated for. This means that in the header of the file, there are
lots of other information, most likely.

I think if you look around, some camera models also generate files
wit h that extension however, they are in no means the same as the ones
coming from the ABg.

I do write software myself and maybe it would be an interesting project
to reverse engineer a file that gets saved on the USB storage stick.

It would be interesting to know exactly how the USB link between the
ABg and PC is actually being used? Serial link or maybe it just looks
like a remote storage unit where you simply read and write to it as a
file.? I guess If I was to plug in the Gen into my PC, it should respond
with something to indicate either or.. I'll have to ask the guys at work
how it comes up..Or, I'll just use my XP min 10" acer and plug it in to
see what happens


Jamie

 

Guys, I believe that at least the Rigol DG1000 can also handle CSV and
ASCII format. Might be worth trying to find out.

It is. That would be the Royal Air Force

With most such gear it's the plain old FTDI serial port emulation. Which
is nice. When I needed to figure out why my check engine light was on
without paying $50-$100 at the shop I bought a OBD-II converter for
around $10, plug it in, and the netbook immediately connected to it
because it was FTDI.

 

Come to think about it, I think you are most likely correct because,
the Rigol I think has the same connection and that is serial. After all,
if you remember, that is how the 50mhz models got upgraded

It would be nice to have a document explaining the protocol being used
to interact with the devices. I can see some fancy software coming.

Jamie

 

OK, with the help from the Rigol support desk I can finally make it
play PC-generated ARB waveforms. But phew, what an ordeal it was!

It seems that the proper software for the DG4000 and DG5000 series
is called "Ultra Station". One must first install the "Ultra Sigma"
software, whose main purpose is communication and remote control of
the generator over a physical link (USB, LAN or GPIB). On top of the
"Ultra Sigma" one can install the "Ultra Station", which is the
waveform generating plug-in. When generating the waveforms, the
software must see the generator (it acts as a dongle, it seems), but
it is possible to save the created waveform into a .RAF file, which
one is then free to use. The .RAF file can be transfered to the
generator by a USB memory stick, and the waveform can be used even if
the generator is not connected to any communications (USB/LAN/GPIB).

The Ultra Signal Studio was their previous waveform creation
software (now replaced by the Ultra Station), and it was for-a-fee so
that I should have purchased a license. Hence my the problems with the
Cerificate of Ownership.

My problems were primarily caused by the abysmally bad documentation.
None of the relevant information was found on the CD-ROM which came
bundled with the generator. Some information was available in the
Rigol web pages, but behind registration, and registration was
impossible because their CAPTCHA figure was faulty. The part of the
information which *was* visible, namely the Ultra Station users guide
http://www.rigol.com/prodserv/DG5000/software/?act=view&itemid=511
does not open properly in my machine - it was just blank. And still,
the trick needed to make the Ultra Station to install (move the
installer to the Ultra Sigma directory and launch from there) is not
documented - I'm not sure if the help desk people still believe that
the trick is necssary, or that the users guide does not open, just
because everything works OK in their PC's.

Well, make your conclusions. My DG5252 works now nicely, anyway, and
with the above tricks the next guy hopefully can make his unit alive
much faster.

Regards,
Mikko

 

Sounds like the OBD-II interface I bought. Ok, only $10 which is a great
price. But zero written documentation, you kinda have to know that it
has a FTDI USB-serial interface in there. You also have to know that the
device will error until it sees 12V on the OBD connector in the car,
which only happens if you insert the ignition key and turn it on. Then
one has to scour the web to find where to obtain the error code list and
all that. But ... it saved me the drive to the shop which would have
taken longer than to find all this out, plus they'd have charged me $50
or more.

 

I tried that Rigol link; page was not blank, but got a lot of square
boxes with 4-character hex code. like this (faking it):

 

Well, most codes are standardized and I found it on the web in minutes.
It would have been nice if it came with the unit but ...

It's Chinese.

 

Actually, what I saw behind that link was a .RAR archive which
seemed to contain the chinese and english versions of the manual, in
the .chm format (complied HTML help file). My problem with the
Ultra_Station_HelpDocument.chm was that it opened all right and showed
a sensible directory structure (Contents, Index etc), but none of the
pages contained any text. It gave some sort of a navigation error
message in every page, which I would have intepreted as no HTTP
connection to the source file if it were over the Internet, but that
was supposed to be a local self-contained file. That was in two
different PCs at the office, provided by my employer. Now at my home
PC those .chm files display OK.

It sounds to me that Robert was seeing the raw contents of the
compressed archive.

What I find annoying is that the continuously increasing unnecessary
complexity of the IT world is taking a larger and larger fraction of
my daily dose of problem-solving skills...

Regards,
Mikko

 

That's what I am always lamenting. IT "professionals" even in large
corporations do not get it into their heads that there are other
corporations where people sit behind strict firewalls and can't see the
stuff they want them to see.

Case in point: I recently had to make a design decision where I came
upon a site of a large semi mfg that required (!) Flash. I moved on and
picked a competitor's part. That decision is now de-facto irrevocable
because my clients hardly ever second-guess such decisions. For the mfg
with the messed up web page this will now mean over a decade of lower
than necessary sales numbers for the part. Which can ultimately have an
impact on the number of jobs there, meaning this stuff affects real people.

 

Unfortunatly it seems to be impossible to beat this into the web designers
heads. The feedback (if any) never get to them.

?-(

 

Not if you write to the CEO. Which is what I did at one large
semiconductor company. What followed was a mid-size earthquake in the
executive tower, and things were fixed, prontissimo (with some help from
myself and others).

It usually makes no sense to write to the web master.