Rigol Ultrascope under Linux with VirtualBox

Ultrascope in Action

I recently bought a Rigol DS1102E (um, well… maybe it was a DS1052E and I own a serial cable).

Being a Linux user, I wondered if Rigol’s software, Ultrascope, would work somehow on Linux. The device is USB and it shows up perfectly well as a usbtmc device, so if you want to write your own software on Linux, that’s pretty easy.  But it also means not much chance of Wine running Ultrascope (although maybe with the serial cable; I didn’t try that). However, I have XP running under VirtualBox for just this sort of thing.

I installed the drivers and Ultrascope off the CD. Big mistake. The CD has the service manual on it and the operator’s manual, so don’t throw it away. But don’t install any software off of it either. Here’s what you need:

1) Latest NI Drivers: http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/1605/lang/en

2) The Rigol USB drivers have the wrong USB ID or something on Linux is changing the ID (vendor=1ab1,pid=0588 in Linux/VirtualBox, the Rigol.inf file vendor=0400,PID=05dc). Of course, I was so smart, I changed the INF file and got it mostly working. WRONG. Use the NI driver. What that means is in Device manager, it should say “USB Test and Measurement Device” NOT “Rigol USB Test and Measurement Device”. If you already have the Rigol drive installed, do an update driver, tell it to Install from a list and “Don’t search I will choose the driver to install.” If you have the NI stuff installed you should see two choices: Rigol USB Test and Measurement Device and USB Test and Measurement Device. You want the one WITHOUT Rigol in the name.

3) The VISA version of Ultrascope (this was my big mistake, using the “regular” version). See http://www.rigol.com/templates/T_Support_en/resources.aspx?nodeid=639&contentid=1582. Even on a “plain” Vista install the regular version had small issues.

Of course, for Virtualbox, you need to go to the Devices menu and “connect” the Rigol USB device (this one will say Rigol and that’s ok). You can also change your setup to add it automatically, but I’m going to assume you know how to do that.

And the results? Well, Ultrascope is probably of marginal value anyway. You can always dump data files and images to a USB drive right on the scope. I guess if you had a lot of setups, or wanted to use the measurement pass/fail feature. The Memory waveform will let you open the WFM files the scope dumps of waveforms, so I guess that’s something too.

Oh. And I haven’t tried it, but the fact that it is just using the NI VISA drivers tells me it ought to feed LabView with no problems. Of course, you could probably run that directly under Linux too.