Author Topic: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review  (Read 21891 times)

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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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$140 for a 2CH 100MHz 1GS/s tablet oscilloscope?
Review of the $140 FNIRSI-1013D 2CH 100MHz 1GS/s tablet oscilloscope.
Is it too good to be true?
Fnirsi Aliexpress Store: http://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_d8nfjVK



FNIRSI 1013D Portable Tablet Oscilloscope PCB by Dave Jones, on Flickr
« Last Edit: July 05, 2020, 06:45:26 am by EEVblog »
 
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Offline SeanB

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #1 on: July 05, 2020, 07:24:05 am »
Any idea on the 2 LED's, I would guess the red is to indicate USB charge, and the green is for fully charged battery, as there is nothing reallt visible on the PCB there other than the charge controller and battery manager.
 
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Offline firewalker

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #2 on: July 05, 2020, 10:10:03 am »
This thing + attenuator + ignition probe could be useful as a cheap automotive oscilloscope.

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Offline fkfaraz

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #3 on: July 05, 2020, 11:29:08 am »

hello

sorry for my bad english and long post!!!
this o'scope has been in my list since released date. I even enquire about it in some thread here and one member promised to do a review after getting his hands on it....

for starters i am a complete noob. Although I have an electronics degree, but after degree I went to the service side of things where electrical and mechanical skill were required, so i have forgotten many electronics related skills etc, although i am picking up interest in electronics again.

now, i did not have an o'scope. and my interest is still in early stages so i do not want to burn some 6 to700 bucks for a micsig( with knobs). Yes, i know about rigol and siglent but micsig is battery powered and there is a lot of power issues at my place so.
i was thinking, is it useful for a hobbyist like me. even if it is useful for mare 10 mhz only.  :blah: :blah:
can i measure some basic ckts with it like voltage reg, op-amp, and those educational ckts which is in my electronics devices book??
 :popcorn: :popcorn:
 

Offline G7PSK

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Offline iak

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #5 on: July 05, 2020, 01:53:37 pm »
The main soc is All Winner is F1C100s  which is an ARM  ARM926EJ-S  core running at 533MHz, the same SOC is used in LicheePi Nano and the same SOC that somebody used to make a Linux bussniess card https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/12/my-business-card-runs-linux/. Its very cheap, 1.5$ a pop and there is a significant info about it online.

If the SD card does not have the main OS image, it  can be easily hacked to contain it, the pirmary bootloader and maybe tiny os on the winbound eeprom. It can be easily flashed with Uboot and made to read a linux image from the SD card. 
 

Offline exile

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #6 on: July 05, 2020, 08:41:00 pm »
If I have not missed anything then they are missing sample memory, because what is in fpga is only 270Kb ~ 34KB and it is not enough for 240Ksample.
Sure, the ARM CPU has access to DDR1 SIP memory but not FPGA.
 

Offline pickle9000

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #7 on: July 05, 2020, 09:48:43 pm »
It would be so interesting to see a manufacturer open up and publish the firmware for a device like this. It would be an interesting see if it kills the production run or has the effect of pushing sales. 
 

Online Martin72

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #8 on: July 05, 2020, 09:53:41 pm »
I would rather spend 140bucks for an old used one than on this piece.
So it seems that the tablet scopes from micsig are the only affordable ones who worked well.
No, must correct myself, it seems they´re the ONLY one who offers tablet scopes... ???
 
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Offline pickle9000

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #9 on: July 05, 2020, 10:10:25 pm »
I was thinking more along the lines of what could you use this for. Educational scopes are rare, same with automotive and so on. A purpose made interface that limits features or adds others is interesting to me.
 

Offline MadTux

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #10 on: July 05, 2020, 11:28:18 pm »
I would rather spend 140bucks for an old used one than on this piece.
So it seems that the tablet scopes from micsig are the only affordable ones who worked well.
No, must correct myself, it seems they´re the ONLY one who offers tablet scopes... ???
2Channels and no memory, nice toy with no use.
Would get a HP 54621A/D, HP 54622A/D or HP 54645A for that money. Old but still somewhat usable for simple things, compared to this toy. At least they have deep memory and mixed signal capability in D version.
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #11 on: July 06, 2020, 01:49:09 am »
i was thinking, is it useful for a hobbyist like me. even if it is useful for mare 10 mhz only.  :blah: :blah:
can i measure some basic ckts with it like voltage reg, op-amp, and those educational ckts which is in my electronics devices book??

Sure it's useful, just expect a few issues with it. others have reported triggering problems under various conditions, but haven't checked that myself yet.
As I said in the video, perhaps a Hantek USB scope is better value, and cheaper.
 
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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #12 on: July 06, 2020, 01:50:31 am »
2Channels and no memory, nice toy with no use.

240k memory is hardly "no memory". Shame you just can't scroll through it in detail.
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #13 on: July 06, 2020, 01:51:28 am »
If I have not missed anything then they are missing sample memory, because what is in fpga is only 270Kb ~ 34KB and it is not enough for 240Ksample.
Sure, the ARM CPU has access to DDR1 SIP memory but not FPGA.

I didn't even think to check that.  >:(
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #14 on: July 06, 2020, 02:18:25 am »
If I have not missed anything then they are missing sample memory, because what is in fpga is only 270Kb ~ 34KB and it is not enough for 240Ksample.
Sure, the ARM CPU has access to DDR1 SIP memory but not FPGA.
What is the bandwidth between the FPGA and ARM? Perhaps a replacement firmware will allow use of the entire available RAM at lower sample rates.
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Offline ace1903

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #15 on: July 06, 2020, 07:53:59 am »
FPGA and CPU are connected using GPIOE 12bit port so do not expect huge bandwidth.
I used ARM926 core in custom ASIC around 2007. When you load internal memory with graphic you can expect performances of low-end smartwatch.
On manual is written 240kpoint like bits not like samples.  So one can expect ~30k samples.
My opinion is that this hardware is not worth to be open-sourced and used for scope development.
Raspberry pi + (FPGA + ADC card ) extension card will be much more worth spending time on.   
 
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Offline iscle

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #16 on: July 06, 2020, 05:44:57 pm »
I have bought this scope mainly because I needed one and this one runs Linux (yay!), and I can customize the firmware if other people is willing to help.

As ace1903 said, the FPGA is connected to the main SOC via a 12bit port, but they are only using 11 of those bits (as far as I can tell from the high-res pictures posted by Dave), so that limits the bandwidth even more. I don't think this will be a problem when using only 1 channel, but when using both it will be a bottle-neck for sure.

Can anyone dump the SPI flash (containing the firmware) so that we can start analyzing it?

Thanks!

 

Offline 3DA502

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #17 on: July 07, 2020, 02:46:07 pm »
EP4CE6 == EP4CE10

they have the same die, So it have 50kByte FPGA RAM
 

Offline iscle

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #18 on: July 07, 2020, 07:03:00 pm »
EP4CE6 == EP4CE10

they have the same die, So it have 50kByte FPGA RAM

The datasheet says 270Kbits... (Table 1-1)
https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/programmable/us/en/pdfs/literature/hb/cyclone-iv/cyiv-51001.pdf
 

Offline maginnovision

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #19 on: July 07, 2020, 08:04:53 pm »
So only ~38k bytes?
 

Offline iscle

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #20 on: July 07, 2020, 08:10:45 pm »
So only ~38k bytes?

33.75 KBytes, yes  :-\

If only using 1 channel, that would be 0.16875ms storage at 200MSPS (unless I'm missing something here).
« Last Edit: July 07, 2020, 08:18:51 pm by iscle »
 

Offline 3DA502

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #21 on: July 08, 2020, 02:26:06 am »
itis a trick,the datasheet willnot  tell you
 

Offline iscle

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #22 on: July 08, 2020, 03:57:54 am »
itis a trick,the datasheet willnot  tell you

Wow, and how do you take advantage of it? I know something similar happened with the flash memory in STM32F103C8T6 MCUs...
 

Offline CChin254

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #23 on: July 14, 2020, 12:41:18 am »
I did an IC Identification based on the image attached to the original post.
 
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Offline snoopy

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Re: EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review
« Reply #24 on: July 14, 2020, 02:12:16 am »
i was thinking, is it useful for a hobbyist like me. even if it is useful for mare 10 mhz only.  :blah: :blah:
can i measure some basic ckts with it like voltage reg, op-amp, and those educational ckts which is in my electronics devices book??

Sure it's useful, just expect a few issues with it. others have reported triggering problems under various conditions, but haven't checked that myself yet.
As I said in the video, perhaps a Hantek USB scope is better value, and cheaper.

I just bought one of these scopes and whilst it's not perfect I do find that I use it when the other scopes are tied up. Because it is portable and easy on the battery it is a great portable scope I can throw in the car anytime. Much cheaper than buying a battery for the TDS3000 ;) Hopefully they will offer some firmware upgrades and allow the auto triggering level detection to be switched on or off. 

cheers
 
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