This is the first post regarding the Lecroy WaveAce 224 DSO. As it currently seems I have material for at least a few short posts. Currently I’m having issues with one important knob and the triggering system.
Unfortunately I don’t think I will see a firmware / manual update any time soon, as this is the bottom-end range of their scopes, rebranded Chinese product I think.
Nevertheless I’ve decided that I will pester Lecroy support for much longer than they will desire. If you should have this model as well and have “issues”, please let them know.
I observe this issue with firmware “1.01.01.18R2”.
Triggering on a certain slope (e.g. 148s/µs):
This feature is darn finicky. Sometimes I have the feeling it doesn’t really work. I try to use it to trigger on rare pulses. You set upper and lower voltage levels + the time in between these. The DSO is supposed to evaluate the average (I think) slope in this zone. Most of the time it doesn’t work. When choosing a small voltage window to get a better estimate for the local slope it usually fails to trigger at all.
The manual is pretty sparse with information other than “set this to that”.
Adjust knob (brightness, hold-off …):
The adjust knob for the ‘slope time’ (as well as hold-off and some other stuff) is a pretty sad thing. It comes with a push-button, but doesn’t use it sensibly. Currently one has to keep spinning the button for MINUTES to get from value A to a far away value B. One option would be to use the current time-axis s/div value when pressing the button. That could speed up things considerably.
If the slope-trigger chooses to trigger on something, it may not even be what you want…
Next up: “Pulse Trigger”
The interface seems to have been ripped off the Rigol scopes, or the Rigol scopes ripped the interface design off them.
I wanted to get a Rigol first (import it from the US), but the dealer refused to ship it to me. Apparently Rigol explicitly forbade re-imports. The prices in the US were considerably lower than in the EU at that time. Some time later Lecroy had a promotion offer for their bottom-end WaveAce scopes. Essentially they sold them without sales tax, so I got this one. At work I had used their scopes before (old WaveRunner series), so I thought “why not”.
The issue with the adjust knob is simply insane. I don’t think the programmer of the firmware has ever had to use that button. Otherwise it would have a fine/coarse mode or a workaround as I have suggested.