This is an sweet digital storage oscilloscope (DSO) appropriate for an electronics repair shop or hobbyist use; Amateur radio operators should love this piece of electronic test equipment.  It is a dual-channel, 100 MHz band width oscilloscope with a gorgeous,  beautiful, 7-inch liquid crystal display (LCD) multi-color screen.  Pay attention to the model number, though, because the ADS1102CA has the smaller 5.7-inch screen (320 horizontal pixels by 234 vertical pixels), versus the ADS1102CAL with its 7-inch screen (480 horizontal pixels by 234 vertical pixels).  The smaller screen model is still being sold, and it’s still a nice DSO, but go for the larger screen.  Also ensure you’re not buying the ADS1062CAL, which has a lower band width of 60 MHz (unless you’re just doing audio work, in which case a 60 MHz band width would be fine).

The DSO comes with two memory storage options:  The ADS1102CAL model has 40 kB of memory, whereas the ADS1102CML model has 2 MB of memory.  The additional memory will add about $100 to the cost.  If the fast Fourier transform (FFT) function is important to you, consider investing in the additional memory.  My unit is the CAL model, which does a decent job in its FFT mode (more on this later).  But if I had to do it over again I would go with the CML with the additional memory.

This DSO is widely available on eBay, Amazon, and other sites, so be sure to shop around.  The DSO is manufactured in Shenzhen, China by Atten Electronics Company, Ltd., so also inquire whether it’s the domestic Chinese version or the North American export version.  If you buy the domestic Chinese version you will get a unit with the hard copy owner’s manual printed in Chinese, and it will come with an International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) C13 to Australia/New Zealand 3112 power cord that won’t work in the U.S.  Whereas the export version has a C13 to North American Manufacturers Association (NEMA) 5-15 power cord.  This power cord is commonly used by PCs and printers, and you probably have several of these lying around from former computers or printers, without realizing it.  So having to substitute a useable power cord is not that big of a deal.

The Chinese instruction manual also isn’t the disaster it would first appear to be, because surprisingly it is printed in black and white.  This seems unclear on the concept, because many of the DSO’s buttons are color-coded, and all of the screen readouts and traces are in color.  The good news is that you can download a PDF version of an English manual from the Atten web site, and that manual is in full color.  The bad news is that it’s 133 pages of 8-inch by 10-inch color printing, but that seems like a small price to pay for a English and full color instruction manual.

Some of the translations in the English manual are a riot.  At page 28, for example, where the manual is describing the FFT function, it refers to analyzing the “humorous” content and distortion of a signal rather than the harmonic content and distortion of a signal.

Perhaps the most serious disadvantage of buying directly from an international vendor is that the warranty card will be in Chinese, with a Chinese mailing address, and lots of luck mailing that from the U.S.   However, returning or exchanging a defective unit would probably be even more of a problem.  There is also no option for on-line warranty registration on the Atten web site, which seems bizarre in this day and age.

Also if you plan to buy your DSO directly from an international vendor, expect your bank to freak out when you try to place the order.  I suggest calling them first, with a head’s up, to ensure they will not block the charge.  I used an escrow service called Ali Express, which worked fine, but if that makes you nervous, buy from a U.S.-vendor.

My unit arrived about ten days after placing my order, via DHL.  It had to go through U.S. Customs, which opened the box for inspection, and then used a large amount of clear packing tape to re-seal the box, along with “opened for inspection” labels.  All of the accessories arrived intact, though.

The shipping box was made out of the cheapest, lowest-quality cardboard I have ever seen, but the open-cell protective foam inserts cradling the DSO did their job.  So while the outside of the shipping box looked like it had been through a war zone, the contents came through in pristine condition.

It is amazing how small and lightweight a modern-day oscilloscope can be.  Dimensions are 12.0 inches wide, 6.1 inches high, and 5.2 inches deep; weight is 5.1 pounds.  My digital wattmeter shows a power draw of 50 watts.  The DSO is happy with any AC voltage from 100 to 240 volts, and any line frequency from 45 to 440 Hz.  Heck, even my local utility, Pacific Greedy and Electric, can’t screw that up.

The DSO has a boot up routine that takes about 30 seconds.  It will do a diagnostic and calibration as part of that process.  If you get the Chinese domestic version it will boot up with Chinese language screen displays (the screen display resolution is amazing, rendering even the Chinese characters cleanly and crisply).  Your first task will then be to find the utility menu and re-set the language to English (in my case this took some experimentation, since the then available manual was in Chinese and the screen “help” prompts were also in Chinese).  Other available languages are Arabic, French, German, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese.  Think of it as Rosetta Stone software on the side.

The DSO comes with two nice quality test probes, with a BNC fitting and a spring-loaded hook that is designed to latch onto a small-gage wire.  The probes have the usual capacitance-adjusting thumbwheel, to give a flat frequency response.  You can use the DSO’s built in 1 kHz square wave reference signal to adjust the probe’s capacitance.  The probes have a slide switch, for 1X or 10X, with the 10X setting giving higher probe impedance but with a ten-fold attenuation factor.

Warning:  When the probe tip is connected to a test point, be careful not to apply excessive side-ways torque, or you will bend the spring clip.  Then the probe’s hook will no longer retract into the protective plastic sheath, and you will get to buy a replacement probe.  Which, fortunately, are available on eBay and not too pricey.

The DSO has USB interfaces on both the front and rear; the rear USB port can be set to “computer” or “printer;” if you are using the provided EasyScope software, be sure that the rear port is set to “computer.”  There is also an RS-232 port on the rear, in case you are a Rip Van Winkle tech who just awoke from the 1970s.  Also a “pass/fail” BNC for repetitive tests, and user-specified limits can be custom programmed in.  Not an application I need, but for any sort of production work, a nice option.

The screen display can be inverted; for some waveforms this improves visibility.  The inverted screen display also applies to any screen captures and print outs.  Nice.

The DSO allows both conventional amplitude-vs-time (Y-T) mode, and X-Y mode; for example, Lissajous displays for phase angle measurements.  Again, nice.

There is a third front panel BNC input for a triggering signal.  There is every possible trigger option:  edge, slope, pulse width, video, slope and alternative.  Even fancy delayed triggering is available.  This DSO would have no problem, for example, examining the vertical blanking interval of an NTSC TV signal, although analog TV transmissions in the U.S. are on their way out (full-service analog ceased in 2009, and secondary LPTV and TV translator stations will cease in 2015).  But other countries will continue with analog TV for a while; for example, the Mexican analog TV deadline isn’t until 2021.  Canada converted to digital in 2011, though.

The DSO has an initially overwhelming number of screen displays, but you will get the hang of it before long.  The built-in digital frequency counter is great.  The frequency counter range is from 10 Hz to the scope’s upper band width (100 MHz for the 1102).  Time base accuracy is limited to ±0.01%, and there is no provision for an external frequency reference.  The frequency counter display is six digits.  But still pretty impressive, for the price.

Besides the conventional algebraic addition or subtraction of the Channel 1 and Channel 2 signals, you can also multiply and divide the two waveforms, which can generate some amazing displays that would not be remotely possible with a non-storage oscilloscope.  Channels 1 and/or 2 can also be inverted, and, of course, shifted vertically and/or horizontally.

The FFT function is amazing.  FFT mathematically converts a signal from the time domain to the frequency domain.  The split screen display option, with time domain on the top, and frequency domain on the bottom, is something I had previously seen only in professional, high-end Tektronix and Agilent oscilloscopes.  If you’re into FFT analysis, this is where the additional memory would be important.

The EasyScope software is PC-only, so if you have a Mac, you are going to have to bite the bullet and install a program that will run Windows.  Hopefully your Mac OS will not hold a grudge.   I chose the Parallels software for my iMac rather than Apple’s Boot Camp software, for reasons that I won’t go into here.  Be sure to update the Windows antivirus software before inserting the EasyScope CD; you never know.  Also, Atten provides both a full-size and a mini-CD; do NOT attempt to insert the mini-CD into an iMac.  It will jam the disc reader, and you will have to take your iMac to an Apple repair facility to have it fixed (no, this didn’t happen to me, because I learned about the problem before trying to insert the weird size mini disc).

The EasyScope 3.0 software is pretty neat, and if you have applications where to you want to document or automate measurements it’s a powerful tool.  The EasyScope software on the CD that came with my DSO was, you guessed it, again in Chinese, but I found an English version on the Internet (on the LeCroy web site, not the Atten web site).  But Windows made me first un-install the Chinese language version before it would let me install the English language version.

Here’s my best discovery:  The DSO is capable of writing to a USB thumb drive that can be directly read by a Mac, without going through Windows.  The “secret” is to format the thumb drive as “MS-DOS (FAT),” not “Mac OS (journaled).”  I found out MS-DOS (FAT) stands for MicroSoft disc operating system (file allocation table).  My iMac then had no problem reading the screen capture .bmp files generated directly by the DSO.  Each of these files is about 330 kB, and their transfer using the front-panel USB port takes only about 5 seconds, versus almost a minute using the rear panel USB port (I think that’s because the rear panel connection to your computer, for the EasyScope interface, is apparently the slower USB1, whereas writing a .bmp file directly to a memory stick using the front panel USB port apparently uses the much faster USB2 speed).  Transferring a screen display via EasyScope using the back USB is so slow as to be annoying.

The DSO has a built-in file management scheme for manipulating the .bmp files that’s okay, as long as you don’t have too many of them.  Since that was my case, I haven’t investigated whether there are more powerful PC-based file management approaches.

I have had my Atten ADS1102CAL DSO for about four months now, and I love it.  I never thought I could have obtained an oscilloscope with this much capability for under $500 U.S.   I have to hand it to Atten, this is a sweet piece of test gear.  Atten appears to also make this DSO branded as the Owon 7102T, the Uni-T DSO4202B, the Hantek DSO5202B, the Le Croy WaveAce212, and the B&K 2542.  There is even, apparently, a Tektronix version, the TDS1012B (with a significantly higher price, but the same specifications).  I am not sure who is cloning who, but a sub page of the Atten web site does indicate that it will make custom-branded versions of it's DSO, so that is why I think Atten makes those other versions.  There may, however, be differences in the internal electronics, so carefully check the specifications.

If you select the Atten ADS1102CAL, I don’t think you will be disappointed.

Recommended: Yes