Embedded Developer

For the last year or so, the goto scope in the lab has been a Rigol MSO5104. This is a 100MHz, 4 channel scope with 16 digital channels. Connectivity options include USB and wired LAN. The LAN connection allows the scope to be controller via a web control panel which is great for interactive control from a host computer but is not much use for automation.

Enter pyvisa.

Hackaday Article

Hackaday published an article Grabbing Data From a Rigol Scope with Python in late November of 2023. It appears that I am not the only one looking to control a Rigol oscilloscope from a host computer.

The article discusses using pyvisa to communicate with a DHO900-series scope not a MSO5000-series scope, let’s see if the same commands will work with the MSO5104.

Communicating With The MSO5104

First up, try to connect to the scope over the LAN:

import pyvisa
visa = pyvisa.ResourceManager('@py')
scope = visa.open_resource('TCPIP::192.168.1.95::INSTR')

So that seemed to work, so let’s try to get the scope to identify itself:

scope.query('*IDN?')
'RIGOL TECHNOLOGIES,MSO5104,MS5A*********,00.01.03.03.00\n'

So far, so good, the * characters represent part of the devices serial number. Now let’s try a few commands to see if we can make the scope to do something:

scope.write(':SINGLE')
9

This changes the mode of the scope to single shot and the Single button turned on as if it had been pressed. The return value is the number of characters sent to the scope.

Conclusion

It appears that the original Hackaday article is going to be part of a series of articles as a follow-up article was published a few days later (see Scope GUI Made Easier). This could turn into something useful.

Tags: Electronics