Review on 🔍 Exploring the Versatility of Siglent Technologies SDS1202X Oscilloscope Channels by Mark Lodge

This is an overview of Siglent Technologies digital oscilloscope. I'm relatively new to Arduino and electronics, mostly building stepper motor controllers, camera interfaces and experimenting with ESP8266 devices. For everything but stepper motor controls (joystick control) I settled with multimeters and literally touched LEDs on different pins to see what was hot. When I started building and had trouble keeping the engines running, I was disappointed. Luckily I found a YouTube video that explains how to use an oscilloscope to see what kind of signal the Arduino (PCM for speed control) is outputting. I needed my own scope and without needing anything out of the ordinary I bought a kit that cost about $20. I built it and then assembled everything. Nothing. Bought another one and was able to get it to work. Unfortunately it was wrong. I learned a lot about soldering and would recommend it, but it was pretty unstable (my own fault) so I needed the right product. So I searched the internet and found many topics. Most disliked Siglent Rigol, notably promoting the number of channels in the latter. Other threads talked about the maximum frequency supported by each and how that affected the readings. It ended up costing about twice what I was willing to pay for a 4 channel high frequency oscilloscope. While Rigol and Siglent had excellent reviews, I chose Siglent as it would be easier for a beginner to do the calculations and setup. The main thing I like about this device is the high frequency (200MHz) support, which may allow me to troubleshoot more complex devices (like graphics cards, radios, etc.). Two channels is one more than I currently use. Even for a beginner, it was easy to master the layout of the dials. Others have reported that repeatedly pressing keys to access math and other functions was annoying, but to be honest, I use things like saving to USB and some math functions so infrequently that it doesn't bother me. The display is easy to read. Calibrating the probes was easy with the included screwdriver and built-in reference signal. I understand that $300 is expensive for an amateur (well, maybe :D), but after researching this was the most complete feature in this price range. I am very happy with this purchase and hope not to outgrow it anytime soon.