Author Topic: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab  (Read 54379 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline jancumps

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 1272
  • Country: be
  • New Low
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #75 on: December 04, 2015, 02:11:44 pm »
Hats off. I’m impressed.

They need an artist. The stuff on the bench looks unrelated to each other.
...
You are right two times here :).
Great products, but could use someone to beautify 'm and give them a house style
 

Offline Macbeth

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2571
  • Country: gb
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #76 on: December 04, 2015, 02:28:39 pm »
At one time he mentioned that they are using Linux in some of their products,
but I can't find any reference to this nor any link to source code in their site.
Maybe my google-fu is not strong enough...
It would be really interesting to see what kernel and rootfs the are using...
I understand they used Windows CE, Linux, and their own custom OS, but currently all development is Linux based.

I will have to watch it again now it's been subtitled as I only got half of it first watch.
 

Offline GNU_Ninja

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 200
  • Country: gb
  • Mostly Harmless
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #77 on: December 04, 2015, 02:54:40 pm »
Who gets the most important job of all - rubbing part numbers from the ICs? Is that out sourced or due to its sensitive nature kept in house? Is there a job description in China for "Parts obfuscator" and is there training on how to do this effectively? Perhaps apprenticeships or vocational qualifications?  :-DD

Damn! I nearly laughed my coffee all over my workstation  :-DD

To be fair, it's not just Chinese companies doing that.
 

Offline free_electron

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8517
  • Country: us
    • SiliconValleyGarage
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #78 on: December 04, 2015, 05:47:12 pm »
Dave; if someone provides a YouTube compatible English subtitles-file, would you attach it to the vid? It's a straightforward upload into the "edit video" interface in YouTube. Mr Qin has great English, and I'm not sure if it's worth it, especially if it's added a day or two after the fact, but some viewers may benefit from it.

Yes I can do that.
Not sure if he would be offended, because I think his English is decent too. But could be hard for others who don't have English as a first language to understand.
I once saw a chinese man trying to explain something to a japanese man , both with only a rudimentary gtasp and very bad pronunciation... eyewatering ...

the alice for the lingosilelle in poi fai miko teknology ...

the netlist for the ringoscillator in point five micron technology.
Professional Electron Wrangler.
Any comments, or points of view expressed, are my own and not endorsed , induced or compensated by my employer(s).
 

Online @rt

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1059
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #79 on: December 04, 2015, 06:26:18 pm »
It’s the new girl that does it :D
PCB assembly is done outside, but everything else in in-house. System assembly, test ,programming, calibration, packaging etc.
Who gets the most important job of all - rubbing part numbers from the ICs? Is that out sourced or due to its sensitive nature kept in house? Is there a job description in China for "Parts obfuscator" and is there training on how to do this effectively? Perhaps apprenticeships or vocational qualifications?  :-DD
 

Offline Richard Crowley

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4317
  • Country: us
  • KJ7YLK
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #80 on: December 04, 2015, 06:44:12 pm »
Perhaps that "new girl" who submitted the DMCA TakeDown got busted down to Nomenclature Obfuscator after the Ebay debacle.  She seems more suitable for that kind of task.
 

Offline gardner

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 151
  • Country: ca
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #81 on: December 05, 2015, 12:11:15 am »
Who gets the most important job of all - rubbing part numbers from the ICs?

I wonder if there is a contract manufacturing angle to this.  Does obscuring the part number help ensure that your contract manufacturer uses the parts you give him instead of sourcing crappy knock-offs from the night market the next street over?  Or do they do the rubbing off after board assembly?
--- Gardner
 

Offline nixfu

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 346
  • Country: us
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #82 on: December 05, 2015, 12:22:49 am »
Peeked on the chinese site.
Price starts at 36800 CNY ==> 5740,- USD.
Not exactly a bargain...
We know the "buck", I´m curious about the "bang".

$5700 US.   

Disappointing.   Does no other company have the guts to challenge Rigol in the ~$1000 digital SA market?

« Last Edit: December 05, 2015, 12:35:03 am by nixfu »
 

Offline Macbeth

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2571
  • Country: gb
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #83 on: December 05, 2015, 12:30:40 am »
Siglent will remain number 2 if they can't beat the number 1 from its spot. Which I took as Rigol rather than Key$ight. Apples and Oranges guys! Though it's fairly obvious that Siglent is only one single character change and a shuffle to Agilent.
 

Offline TheSteve

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 3752
  • Country: ca
  • Living the Dream
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #84 on: December 05, 2015, 01:11:09 am »
Perhaps that "new girl" who submitted the DMCA TakeDown got busted down to Nomenclature Obfuscator after the Ebay debacle.  She seems more suitable for that kind of task.

I dunno - maybe she will mess up and remove the part #'s on jellybean 74 series parts while leaving the good stuff exposed for all to see!
VE7FM
 

Offline Smokey

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2572
  • Country: us
  • Not An Expert
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #85 on: December 05, 2015, 01:26:40 am »
Siglent will remain number 2 if they can't beat the number 1 from its spot. Which I took as Rigol rather than Key$ight. Apples and Oranges guys! Though it's fairly obvious that Siglent is only one single character change and a shuffle to Agilent.

#2 what?... #1 what?
Sales?  Not likely.
Performance?  Nope.
Reliability?  Nope.
Support?  Nope.
Customer service?  Nope.

Siglent is the #1 company named Siglent in the whole world test equipment market!  They are so far ahead in this regard that no one will EVER catch them!  They single handedly innovated the entire company named Siglent industry!

Realistically Rigol is still a joke when it comes to high quality equipment, so if they consider them #1 what does that make Siglent.  Just because they make cheap stuff, and maybe sell a lot of cheap stuff, that doesn't make them a market leader.  No one is going to pay $5700 for Siglent quality stuff.  If you proposed that to your boss you would be laughed at.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for Siglent.  The stuff they make is great value for hobby use and I agree it really does open up a lot of equipment to people that previously couldn't afford it before.  That alone is killer.  I have one of their cheap function generators at my house.  Just quit the marketing BS about how you want to be #1 in the industry (whatever that means).
 

Offline Stonent

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3824
  • Country: us
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #86 on: December 05, 2015, 02:58:57 am »
Dave; if someone provides a YouTube compatible English subtitles-file, would you attach it to the vid? It's a straightforward upload into the "edit video" interface in YouTube. Mr Qin has great English, and I'm not sure if it's worth it, especially if it's added a day or two after the fact, but some viewers may benefit from it.

Quote
Kudos to Mr. Qin for making the effort to accommodate us "foreigners".

Totally agree!

I was trying to have it on in the background while working on something else, but I was having to concentrate too much on what he was saying.  I haven't worked with many Chinese English speakers, so my understanding of how the accent inflects upon English isn't as good as say Vietnamese or Korean (much more common where I live)
The larger the government, the smaller the citizen.
 

Offline Monkeh

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7992
  • Country: gb
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #87 on: December 05, 2015, 03:30:29 am »
The firmware is quite a large part of the value of the goods.
Why would we expect that they would reveal the source code? 
It isn't advertised as Open Source in any way, is it?

If they're using Linux and the immense amount of userspace code required to support it, the license requires certain things. You should read the GPL some time.
 

Offline rs20

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2318
  • Country: au
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #88 on: December 05, 2015, 03:32:40 am »
#2 what?... #1 what?

"I think in the current time, if we calculate the quantity of oscilloscopes, I believe we're maybe around number 2?"

He clearly stated he was referring to number-of-oscilloscopes (as opposed to total sales, which would be total-$-value-of-everything). Obviously it is a metric that favours a low-cost producer, but an impressive achievement nevertheless.
 

Online pascal_sweden

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1539
  • Country: no
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #89 on: December 05, 2015, 04:26:11 pm »
On the About page of the Siglent website, there is a brief Company History:
http://www.siglent.com/ENs/about.aspx?id=2

In 2005 they launched their very first scope with model number ADS7000.

This made me curious, so I started googling about this model number, as I wanted to find out more about the specs of their very first scope, and I also wanted to find out how it looked like :)

First I was googling on "Siglent ADS7000" and could not find this scope.
But then I realized that they started as an OEM company in the early days, and that the scope might have been released under a different brand.

One of the queries resulted in Atten but a different model number.
Then I realized that ADS might come from Atten Digital Scope. So maybe it is indeed an Atten.

So then I googled on "Atten ADS7000", and found several results.

http://toolboom.com/en/Digital-Oscilloscope-Atten-ADS7202SA.php

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Digital-Storage-Oscilloscope-ATTEN-ADS7102-100MHz/413213_623867377.html

http://www.mondoplast.ro/eng/Digital-oscilloscope-Atten-ADS7102CAn-pg_ft-3289

https://books.google.no/books?id=-lZgBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA387&lpg=PA387&dq=atten+ads7202c&source=bl&ots=IWBV_0A3po&sig=TckMAZSm7H4Y5e_jyKtvlKUD1Uk&hl=no&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjM1O_Uj8XJAhWl8HIKHWccAjMQ6AEIKDAB#v=onepage&q=atten%20ads7202c&f=false

The Atten ADS7000 looked really good actually!
They even had some color models. See the images below :)







Even more googling, I stumbled on the following post:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/rigol-ds1102e-vs-xytron-dso1102cal-aka-%28atten-ads1102cal%29/msg172409/#msg172409

Very interesting! Apparently Atten and Siglent have the same company history. It is a 1:1 duplicate.
So they both have the same roots from DinYoung technologies Co.,Ltd.
But then at some point they split in two entities? Anybody who knows more about this?
« Last Edit: December 05, 2015, 04:29:08 pm by pascal_sweden »
 

Offline alan.green@gmail.com

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 12
  • Country: au
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #90 on: December 06, 2015, 05:49:11 am »
Qin in Chinese reads as Chin, not Queen.

Yes, there are a few Chinese last names that are often mis-pronounced in the west. Qin should be pronounced as Chin or Tsin. I am surprised Eric didn't correct Dave on that (probably being polite).

Actually Tsin is better.

If you're going to pick on Dave's pronunciation of a Chinese surname, you'd better ask him to get the tone right too :P. FWIW I'm sure Mr Qin has suffered through many brave attempts by English speakers to say his name, and would have known what he was in for if he had watched even one mailbag.

Dave: Loved this episode. Am going to watch it again now that it has subtitles. Thanks!

 

Offline calzap

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 448
  • Country: us
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #91 on: December 06, 2015, 06:16:11 am »
I've lived most of my life in Yolo County, California.  Until this thread, I hadn't wondered where the name came from, so I looked it up.  Here is the real meaning of Yolo, courtesy of counties.org:

YOLO
Created 1850. In the original act of 1850, the name was spelled “Yola.” Yolo is an Indian name variously believed to be a corruption of an Indian tribal name Yo-loy meaning “a place abounding in rushes” or of the name of the Indian chief, Yodo, or of the Indian village of Yodoi.
------------------

Could it also be the origin of Yoda?

Mike in Yolo County, California


 

Offline analogNewbie

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 54
  • Country: cn
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #92 on: December 06, 2015, 12:37:12 pm »

Very interesting! Apparently Atten and Siglent have the same company history. It is a 1:1 duplicate.
So they both have the same roots from DinYoung technologies Co.,Ltd.
But then at some point they split in two entities? Anybody who knows more about this?

Siglent = Atten.

Dirty history about Atten:
http://translate.google.com.hk/translate?act=url&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://www.amobbs.com/thread-3540497-1-1.html
 

Offline Richard Crowley

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4317
  • Country: us
  • KJ7YLK
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #93 on: December 06, 2015, 03:08:44 pm »
I have no problems with this page, my ISP is TWC.
The error doesn't say that my ISP doesn't allow access to the website.
It says that GOOGLE is "unable to access".
Is this an artifact of the infamous Chinese web censorship?
 

Offline analogNewbie

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 54
  • Country: cn
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #94 on: December 06, 2015, 03:16:50 pm »
I have no problems with this page, my ISP is TWC.
The error doesn't say that my ISP doesn't allow access to the website.
It says that GOOGLE is "unable to access".
Is this an artifact of the infamous Chinese web censorship?

replace the "translate.google.com.hk" in the url to "translate.google.com"
 

Online pascal_sweden

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1539
  • Country: no
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #95 on: December 07, 2015, 04:33:03 pm »
I really liked the structure of the interview and the type of questions.
All questions were really relevant and the order they were built up, worked very well!

Cool to hear that he started the company with fellow students.

Some questions unanswered :)

1. How did they come up with the name, and how long did it actually take them to come up with this name :) My guess is that Siglent comes from Signal and Intelligent.
But still would be nice to hear other alternatives that made the first rounds before they decided on the final name. Apparently the name took really off, as the sales increased after they moved from an OEM business model to a branded business model.

2. Easter eggs in Siglent products. Maybe the CEO put in some easter eggs himself in the first model.
Well, at least they had 2,5 years to add one in :) And maybe even today there are some easter eggs left in the newer products.

3. Financing. How they pulled this together in the very early days of the factory.
Did they go to several banks for getting a business loan. Insight on the process back then, and maybe also some insights on the business climate in China today. Do they have incubators in China today? Is it as easy as in the US today or at least similar? Silicon valley spirit, Stealth phase approach, etc.

4. Siglent's take on High-Level-Synthesis and an "All-in-C" based design flow, where the hardware logic is not written in VHDL by hardware engineers, but developed by software engineers, who synthesize the high-level source code into RTL.

5. Siglent's take on Xilinx Zynq 7000 series (inspired by GW-Instek in Taiwan).

6. Engineering education in China. If the amount of engineering students is increasing. Popular engineering schools. Competition between universities in research papers. In Europe some countries are facing challenges as number of engineering students is declining: "Everybody likes an iPhone, but nobody likes to make one".

7. Factory tour in Siglent. Would be cool if this can be organized. To get a glimpse of how scopes are put together. There is a guy on Internet who does lots of these factory tours for Android tablet devices (armdevices.net). Still AFAIK I have not seen a factory tour of a Chinese scope factory.

8. Where does Siglent buy their relative silent fans? Apparently they know, and maybe if they reveal, someone can pass the address on to Rigol :) And Where does Siglent buy the factory-remove screen protectors? Rigol should have them on their screens as well :)

9. Siglent's view on having a video output connector on test equipment. Why not have an HDMI connector on the oscilloscope and the spectrum analyzer. Or both VGA and HDMI to support older video projectors in the class room.

10. Licensing. Whether Siglent licenses some SW libraries and IP from other companies (algorithms, RTL IP blocks, patents on signal processing, interleaving methods, etc.) in their products?

11. Spectrum analyzer. Do they sell them in Europe? I could not find on their website.

Maybe these questions can be answered in a follow-up interview, or can be addressed by email exchange between the Australian interviewer (aka Dave) and the Chinese CEO (aka Yolo) :)

One more question to my earlier posted list:

12. The first oscilloscope that they worked on in the initial days. What hardware architecture did they use? Details on the FPGA, ADC, etc. What reference designs did they use (FPGA, analog front-end)?
How did they design the analog front-end in the first place? Are their books available with examples? =)
Which design tools did they use for the PCB (PCB schematic, PCB layout)? Which design tools did they use for the software (FPGA design tools, MCU design tools, RTOS tools). Which design tools did they use for the housing (CAD tools)? All this software is very expensive, so maybe they did this on the university campus, in order to make use of student licenses? In case they did not do everything internal, and outsourced, they could give some more details on the type of partners which they worked with. Even if they were good at the hardware and the software, engineers typically are not experts in CAD tools to make housing, and to make everything fit nicely together. What was the size of their first production run? And last but not least, what was actually the model number of their very first oscilloscope? Are the specs and pictures still available? Did that one run the proprietary RTOS which they were talking about? Which RTOS? :) All this information is from 2002, so it should not be sensitive anymore. It can be really educating for other startup newbies and electronic students. Siglent most likely will not have an issue with sharing some more info on this front, as it seems that Siglent is very pro electronic engineering education, given that their company mission is to make test equipment affordable for students and beginners. Moreover it will be free marketing for their company indirectly. Maybe the CEO, should write a book, that includes pictures from the early days, with the fancy title "The making of Siglent" providing insights from the early days - how a small Chinese startup has grown out to one of the top 3 Chinese test equipment manufacturers" :)
 

Offline lm3baker

  • Contributor
  • Posts: 15
  • Country: au
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #96 on: December 08, 2015, 04:37:43 am »

Very interesting! Apparently Atten and Siglent have the same company history. It is a 1:1 duplicate.
So they both have the same roots from DinYoung technologies Co.,Ltd.
But then at some point they split in two entities? Anybody who knows more about this?

Siglent = Atten.


Certainly seems that Siglent was called DinYoung technologies Co.,Ltd. and made scopes for Atten, but not sure if they were an OEM supplier to Atten or an actual subsidiary?
http://www.09635.com/company/2041764.aspx Says they are an Atten group subsidiary, but their wiki (??) page http://baike.baidu.com/view/8055878.htm does not mention Atten at all, and Atten no longer sell scopes. Maybe a question for the CEO, what happened between these two companies?

Siglent also appear to be / have been an OEM for LeCroy.

edit: the forum software apparently does not support either unicode in general or Chinese characters specifically.
« Last Edit: December 08, 2015, 04:39:26 am by lm3baker »
 

Offline drussell

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1855
  • Country: ca
  • Hardcore Geek
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #97 on: December 08, 2015, 06:33:31 am »
If they're using Linux and the immense amount of userspace code required to support it, the license requires certain things. You should read the GPL some time.

Huh?

The fact that the Linux kernel is GPL means that if you use it and/or modify it for your own purposes and embed it in your own product you need to make that public, yes, but it doesn't mean that every application you run under it must also be made compeletely open and public.  That would be just silly.

Of course, those of us that are actually sane avoid all those shenanigans in the first place by basing our products and spending our time and effort on things like BSD which are actually, truly, free and ignore the GPL brouhaha, but I digress....
« Last Edit: December 08, 2015, 06:36:42 am by drussell »
 

Offline Monkeh

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7992
  • Country: gb
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #98 on: December 08, 2015, 07:28:50 am »
If they're using Linux and the immense amount of userspace code required to support it, the license requires certain things. You should read the GPL some time.

Huh?

The fact that the Linux kernel is GPL means that if you use it and/or modify it for your own purposes and embed it in your own product you need to make that public, yes, but it doesn't mean that every application you run under it must also be made compeletely open and public.  That would be just silly.

That's not what I said, now is it?
 

Offline rs20

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2318
  • Country: au
Re: EEVblog #826 - Siglent CEO Eric Qin Visits The EEVblog Lab
« Reply #99 on: December 08, 2015, 07:38:56 am »
That's not what I said, now is it?
:palm: This conversation might be progressed more constructively if you clarified your point. For example, specifying what "certain things" you were referring to.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf