Dear Colleaques,
I have acquired a Rigol DG5252 signal generator some time ago, and just have used its built-in waveforms so far. Recently I tried to activate its ARB capability, which has turned out to be a nightmare. The instrument apparently eats .RAF waveform files, but the user guide gives no hint about how to generate them. I was thinking it's as simple as processing a datapoint table through some utility, and move the file to the generator on a USB memory stick. Not a chance. The instrument came bundled with a CD-ROM, but the installation instructions were limited to a very terse readme file:
1=A1=A2Download the USB driver from NI website-"NIVISAruntime.msi". 2=A1=A2Execute "NIVISAruntime.msi" to install the driver program. 3=A1=A2Execute and install the application software.I already hated the idea of installing the NI runtime, as I have encounterd too many mysterious conflict and instability problems before, and would prefer not to install anything which is not absolutely necessary. Still, after NIVISA installation, the Ultra Signal Studio (sounds like the program for creating the .RAF files, although I didn't find it documented anywhere) installer just popped up a window saying 'archive not found'. After surfing here and there in the Rigol web pages I finally found out that one needs to first install the 300-megabyte Ultra Sigma software and run that at least once (the fact was not documented in material found in the CDROM). Well, a whole lot more crap code to install, likely to destabilize my PC. And as it comes from China I don't know how many keyloggers and pieces of spyware I got installed with it, either.
Let me digress a bit, as the european Rigol web pages were really not functioning well at all - I got a feeling that they are hosted in China, and suffer from their web censorship. At least I felt the same as when surfing in a hotel in Beijing last summer: weird omissions and unavailable files, as well as latched-up connections which take forever to load. The north american Rigol web pages were much better, maybe hosted somewhere in the West. Anyway, access to the FAQ and download sections requires a registration, which is OK, but the registration pages don't work well. For instance, the 'forgotten password' service requires typing a CAPTCHA, but the picture does not show up - the browser shows the red 'X' indicating that the picture file is missing. So I was stuck, no help from here either, had to proceed with trial and error.
The final A-HA was that the Ultra Signal Studio installation file must be moved to the directory where the Ultra Sigma software is installed, and launched there (this too is undocumented - there's no instructions beyond the readme file, see above). Now the application window opens, but asks me to type in an 'Attest' code from the Certificate of Ownership, and refuses to work. I do have the instrument (with the S/N in the back panel), I do have the warranty card (with the S/N printed in), I do have the installation CD-ROM, but I don't have the slightest idea about the Certificate of Ownership. Looks like they are paranoid about their waveform-creating software getting pirated.
So I now have megabytes after megabytes of all sorts of crap installed, I have registered and shall no doubt receive piles of spam which I'll have to figure how to block, and I still cannot create my first 'hello world' -style waveform. The Rigol is a nice sine and squarewave generator, but if you're after arbitrary waveforms, stay far away. It's a pity, because the hardware looks quite nice actually.
Maybe I shall still collect my remaining stamina, go back to the Rigol web page, trying to figure out how to get the 'attest code'.
Regards, Mikko
P.S. Has anyone reverse engineered the .RAF file format? It might be easiest to generate them form ones own C code...