Rigol DHO800 / DHO900, on Linux 6.12
NovaOS is our own oscilloscope software for Rigol's DHO800 and DHO900 scopes. It replaces Android 7.1 and the stock app with the Rockchip 6.12 kernel and an acquisition engine written from scratch, while the stock firmware stays on the scope, one switch away.
CH1Which scopes
The DHO800 and DHO900 share one platform: a Rockchip RK3399 (two Cortex-A72 and four A53 cores, a Mali-T860 GPU) next to a Xilinx Zynq FPGA over PCIe, with the same front end and 12-bit acquisition. That covers the DHO802, DHO804, DHO812, DHO814, DHO914, DHO924 and their S variants.
Developed and measured on a DHO924S. The rest of the family shares the board design; we will confirm each model on real hardware before saying it is supported.
CH2What changes
| What | Stock | NovaOS (measured on a DHO924S) |
|---|---|---|
| Operating system | Android 7.1, Linux 4.4, Java app | Linux 6.12.112, Yocto, systemd, Rust |
| Boot to a live trace | 44 to 50 s typical from kernel start (ten logged boots) | 12.1 s from kernel start (later boots, median) |
| FPGA bring-up | fixed waits totalling about 15 s | 2.0 s, probing for readiness |
| Waveform rate, 20 ns/div | being measured the same way | ~31k wfm/s in fast mode |
| Density display | colour grade | every waveform counted, temperature palette, log scale |
- Analysis: eye diagram and jitter (TIE, RJ/DJ/PJ, bathtub, mask templates), Bode up to 78 MHz with the built-in generator, mask testing, counter and DVM, histograms, user math, power analysis.
- Identify: one tap names what is on screen and offers the decoder, trigger or measurements that fit it.
- Decoders: the stock set (UART, I²C, SPI, CAN/CAN-FD, LIN, FlexRay, I²S, MIL-STD-1553 and more) plus DMX512 with RDM, Modbus RTU/ASCII, 1-Wire, SWD, JTAG and USB-PD, on the analog channels and the 16 logic channels.
- Remote view: the screen as hardware-encoded H.264 on another display, about 0.1 s behind, with touch control.
- Compatibility: SCPI follows Rigol's command tables, so scripts, VISA tools and Rigol's Webcontrol keep working.
CH3Not a licence hack
NovaOS doesn't use option codes, licence files or patches to Rigol's software. It is a separate operating system with its own engine that drives the FPGA and front end directly, so what the scope can do is set by the hardware alone. Rigol's firmware is left as it was, and the scope's factory calibration is read but never written.
If you know the DHO800/900 threads on EEVblog: this builds on the same curiosity, and was inspired by Norbert Kiszka's work running Debian on these scopes (github.com/norbertkiszka), taken a step further into a complete replacement scope stack.
CH4Status
NovaOS runs our DHO924S every day. It isn't available to download yet. Tell us which DHO you have and what you would want from it: [email protected]. More in the FAQ and the engineering notes.