EEVblog #810 - Micsig MS310 Handheld Oscilloscope Teardown

[EEVblog]

The review seemed a little generous to me - you're getting soft Dave!

edit:
Dare I say it almost felt like a very gentle paid advertisement for Micsig.

I kept wondering when he was going to say "Just kidding! This thing is crap!"

It's quite a nice unit apart from the manufacturing issues they really need to fix.
As an actual handheld scope, I like it.

[EEVblog]

Micsig is very new

Shenzhen Micsig Instruments Co., Ltd. is ... Established Year 2004

As I understand it they have only gotten into test equipment design in the last few years.

[EEVblog]

The review seemed a little generous to me - you're getting soft Dave!

Perhaps. Maybe I was in a good mood that day.

Dare I say it almost felt like a very gentle paid advertisement for Micsig.

Yeah, sure, one were I show solder dags and loose pins and dodgy connector soldering so the whole world can see. Manufactures pay great money for that kind of exposure!

[Stonent]

I was excited at first, thinking this was the much assumed vaporware Micsig tablet in the video.  That's what I really hope to see at some point.

Dave, do you see Micsig being the next Rigol?

[EEVblog]

Dave, do you see Micsig being the next Rigol?

They are starting off with the opposite attitude to what Rigol did, aiming for high end specs and price bracket.
That's not good or bad, it's just different. I think Micsig's approach is probably riskier in terms of getting market traction and growing the company.
Way too early to tell if Micsig will be able to get decent traction in the market though.
It took Rigol more than decade, and many product revisions to get where they are now.

[Orange]

Hey,

I proves my point that you should not take chineese stuff apart for a teardown video. Just use it until it breaks down, then take it apart 
 

[rf-design]

What is possible under the soldered shield?

The isolation circuit.

I found only a single chinese patent for an isolation circuit. The patent WO2008061444A1 describe the single chinese isolation circuit useful for the channel isolation. The issued year is 2006. And I think they want to become one of the serious players of isolated scopes.

[EEVblog]

I found only a single chinese patent for an isolation circuit. The patent WO2008061444A1 describe the single chinese isolation circuit useful for the channel isolation. The issued year is 2006. And I think they want to become one of the serious players of isolated scopes.

Nice find!

[Smokey]

That 0.1in header with the pin in it is probably just a cheap way to make a polarity key so you can't install the mate backwards.  They probably stuck that pin in there on purpose, and just used a header with one pin missing in that spot.  That used to be more common when more things had 0.1in ribbon cables running all over the place.

[crispy_tofu]

That 0.1in header with the pin in it is probably just a cheap way to make a polarity key so you can't install the mate backwards.  They probably stuck that pin in there on purpose, and just used a header with one pin missing in that spot.  That used to be more common when more things had 0.1in ribbon cables running all over the place.

Yeah, that would explain why the pin had no solder on it at all. 

[PA0PBZ]

They probably stuck that pin in there on purpose, and just used a header with one pin missing in that spot.

I bet I know why there was a pin missing on one side and one extra on the other side.
_{(hint: a side cutter)}

[SeanB]

The 8051 used throughout is nice, they probably have a lot of code for it which at least is stable and well documented. The one by the keyboard is most likely doing all the power management as well, along with battery charging and likely some of the control of the power to the channels so you can switch off unused parts. Probably uses the serial ports to communicate with the main CPU and give status messages and key data. Using on the isolated side is likely to use the same compiler and codebase, just to keep cost down and have less work for the developers. Known code, known responses and less to go wrong with it. Plus is it will be cheap, and have a lot of built in peripherals without issue.

[hamdi.tn]

What is possible under the soldered shield?

The isolation circuit.

I found only a single chinese patent for an isolation circuit. The patent WO2008061444A1 describe the single chinese isolation circuit useful for the channel isolation. The issued year is 2006. And I think they want to become one of the serious players of isolated scopes.

 

[AF6LJ]

What is possible under the soldered shield?

The isolation circuit.

I found only a single chinese patent for an isolation circuit. The patent WO2008061444A1 describe the single chinese isolation circuit useful for the channel isolation. The issued year is 2006. And I think they want to become one of the serious players of isolated scopes.

 

Cool, I was wondering how they were doing that and I had it partially figured out.
I wonder what frequency the transformer kicks in, and how they manage to accomplish the crossover from opto idolator to transformer as frequency increases, most likely in firmware I guess.

Coolness.
 

[hamdi.tn]

while it's nice circuit , will be fun to retro engineer it, i think TI have some isolated OP-Amp with large bandwidth (have to double check that ) , they are not cheap though, but i guess could do the job nicely.

[TerminalJack505]

Are the Chinese cloning Altera parts now?   

[geartechbrandon]

Will there be any more info about the 3D printer controller board using the TI TMS320 chip? Really curious about what is going on with that.