TSP #199 - Digilent Analog Discovery Pro 3000 Series (ADP3450) Review, Teardown & Experiments

In this episode Shahriar reviews the Analog Discovery Pro 3000 Series, particular the ADP3450 model. The instrument offers a combination of mixed signal oscilloscope and dual-channel arbitrary waveform generator. The WaveForms free software can be used to perform a wide range of measurements. You can find more information about this product at:

The review is organized at follows:

00:00 - Introductions
00:35 - Instrument overview, functions, specifications and design
04:53 - Detailed teardown and architecture overview
11:17 - WaveForms software, oscilloscope capabilities, catching glitches, trigger functions
19:18 - Mixed-Signal measurements, logic analyzer, cross-domain triggering
22:19 - Serial decode, digital trigger, correlated measurements
24:03 - Waveform generation, synchronized signals, modulations, sweeps, FFT, 3D spectrogram
28:46 - Network analyzer functionality, measuring linearity and frequency response of DUT
33:42 - Impedance analyzer functionality, measuring complex impedance across frequency
36:29 - Additional capabilities, tracer, scripting, etc.
37:39 - Concluding remarks

[DigilentInc]

Great, very thorough and fair review, Shahriar! Do any viewers have any questions that we might be able to answer about the ADP3450?

[cda]

That software looks fantastic, hope they bring out a model with a teeny bit more bandwidth

[FesZElectronics]

Great review! I have and worked with the AD2 (Analog Discovery 2) and well, the software support is the same its just limited in other HW ways. I have to say, I find it quite strange that room for a shield was not foreseen from the beginning - on the AD2 of course there was no space, so there was no point in even trying, but here, the device is so large, a shielding box should have been foreseen from the beginning. Also considering the price tag, you would expect a bit more attention to such things. Also the 50R input termination should not have been a major price adder, and again space was available.

[risfutile]

VIEWERS OF SHAHRIAR,
who are you and why are you here?

I'm an electrical engineer from Germany and since I'm mostly spending my time at Excel and PowerPoint, I enjoy the hands-on videos that display a deep understanding of high frequency circuits. It's like second hand lab time and I love it 😃

[bluetrepidation]

I also like how the Waveforms app runs on Windows Mac and Linux including ARM.

[larcomj]

ive been using the analog discovery 2 for a few years and this looks like they finally answered some of my wishes. great review.

[gregorymccoy]

Better software analysis than some of my standalone instruments 😑. I really enjoyed that walkthrough. We are truly living in a golden age of instrumentation.

[Lbn]

Limit the resolution by 2-4 bits and increase the bandwidth by 2-4 and I'm in 🙂

btw: review as good as always 👍

[nezbrun]

An excellent demo of the Waveforms software.

I just followed along running your same tests on an Analog Discovery 2 (I happen to have the same N2918A eval/demo board). There's nothing in these demos that you can't do on an AD2! There are some minor differences regarding the sample rate and memory depth (125MHz vs 100MHz, & AD2 has half the memory depth), and the SFDR isn't quite as good, but otherwise everything ran perfectly well.

There's one benefit with the AD2: you can power the demo board from it as the AD2's power supplies go to +/-5V.

The only things I can't figure out are with the software:

1. How do you get taller Logic channels?
2. How do you get the decoded I2C values to show up as a "bar chart"?
3. How do you rotate the 3D Spectrogram?

[gammaleader]

Seams like a pretty thought through product.
It might be a very good choice for someone starting with electronics and searching for an all in one instrument.
But it also seems handy for doing some automated testing of a small scale production environment.

[bmihai]

Very nice review! I have the Analog Discovery 2 and the Digital Discovery from Digilent and their Waveforms SW is quite nice (available also for linux). I also like the company policy with a strong focus on academic support.

[lmamakos]

It would be interesting (at least to me!) to have you review one of the inexpensive nanoVNA devices that can be had for $50-$150. I just ordered one for myself since I've decided to get back on HF as an amateur radio operator after many years. The nanoVNA seemed like a great excuse to fill an "antenna analyzer" need vs. some very specific solution. My needs (now) are mostly in the sub GHz range, and these device seem accessible to very many people. Thankfully, I'm not trying to debug mm wave 5G systems with one, though!

[lasersbee]

7:45... It looks like on the left hand side.... they shifted the middle Relays to the left to make room for the mounting screw.

[aneeshprasobhan]

The software seems amazingly smooth. Very well put video. Thanks.

[uwezimmermann]

I have looked at the Digilent instruments before and they possibly would be a good idea for a student lab setup in undergrad education - but they are an overkill for our application and would probably not survive long in a real student environment either. For a typical undergrad engineering lab application probably a 2 MHz analog bandwidth and 8 bit sampling would be enough - in a breadboard-type of environment you can hardly reach higher signal frequencies. For this particular instrument I also dislike the use of a proprietary scripting language (from what I could see) - everyone else i migrating to python now and for good reasons.
I had a student working on a similar project with enough capabilities for this type of environment and we got some quite good results, but of course we were undercritical and the project ended a little more than halfway. It was based on a single STM32 microcontroller and some jelly-bean opamps - total cost could perhaps be as low as 50 USD, low enough for students to afford it themselves, or to give it away/restock failed hardware quickly and cheaply.

[pup]

I have no idea what most of this is but I will learn thank you for the review!

[HendrikLipka]

From the data sheet it seems the AD9648 runs both channels at 125MSPS at the same time, so you should still get the full sample rate with all channels turned on.

[Factory]

Wow - some really fantastic usability features in the software and the 14bit dynamic range is very nice. I don't have any application at the moment where a 50Mhz bandwidth would not be deadly though.

[Migueldeservantes]

For a moment you really get me going!! I thought you have a Video Signal Decoder... I have tons of security video around me in the 900 Mhz band but I can not see any... would you recommend any device to see what is been broadcast??

[avramitra]

The software is just mind blowing! I never liked pc based oscilloscopes, but I'd buy this one in a jiffy (if I had the money, lol).

For now I've to live with my hantek DSO5102P.