Reverse engineering FNIRSI-5012H

[Alarus]

Is there any settings to change language?
Thanks

Maybe to change the language you need to press a combination of buttons and turn on the power. For example: press down arrow when turning on the power hides the splash screen, and the up arrow turns it on. It is also possible to enter the firmware update mode.

[ataradov]

There is no firmware update mode since there is no way to get anything into the device. It has no external interfaces. Apart from the analog input, which would be a cool way to update the firmware - like in the old days, play a file from a tape .

I also tried holding down buttons in various configurations. Some will make the device hang, but no other activity that I could see. The hangs may be interesting to investigate later, but I don't think they will do anything useful, probably just some flaw of scanning the keyboard.

Also, I did not abandon the project, in fact I'm working on it every time I have a few hours to spare. It is coming along quite nicely.

[JustACat]

Also, I did not abandon the project, in fact I'm working on it every time I have a few hours to spare. It is coming along quite nicely.

Thank you for your effort! Hope it will lead to something wonderful eventually.

[cliffyk]

I don't see any settings to change the language. So it looks like you are stuck with Chinese. Thankfully there are not that many menus you actually need to use past the initial setup.

Alex,

The one I had, purchased through Amazon from a vendor named Eple and branded as a "YEEPOOK" (you can't make this stuff up)-- had an English UI...

[ataradov]

The one I had, purchased through Amazon from a vendor named Eple and branded as a "YEEPOOK" (you can't make this stuff up)-- had an English UI...

Majority of them seem to have English UI. EL-TRONIC got a very unique unit.

I've made a lot of progress this weekend. It starts to look like a real scope. Still a lot of work ahead, but the more structure takes place, the easier it gets.

[wasp09]

Hi there,

Couldn't find my CRT scope any more, just ordered a 5012H this evening.  And I hit this interesting thread. 

I noticed that there are more that one make of 5012H available online .  The FINRISI uses 2 relays but the Denis has 4.   Hence the input section may be different. 

Is there a hardware version making on board?  I ordered a noname 5012H for its bigger 5000mAH battery. I'll check mine when it arrives.

Regards.

[Bud]

Couldn't find my CRT scope any more

Have a big house? 

[ataradov]

No, there is an older version with a lot of relays and newer version with just two relays.  From what I gather all the old versions are sold out by now, so you get the new one from any vendor. Unless they are so obscure that they could not manage to move old stock.

Also, don't buy that 5000 mAh battery claim. All new devices come with TFT LCD and 3000 mAh battery. Some less honest vendors "forget" to update the description.

[wasp09]

Too late.  I have placed the order.  I'll see what I get when it arrives.  Probably it is the same no matter where I order from. 

The CRT and vacuum tubes based scope was bought in the 70's.  If my wife had not thrown it out, it should still be hinding somewher in my basement. 

BTW, is 5012H really capable of 500M samples/sec?   It sounds tight comparing to the MCU clock unless the ADC buffers enough making repeated snapshots possible.

[ataradov]

BTW, is 5012H really capable of 500M samples/sec?

The answer is in the first post of this thread. No, it is 250 MSPS at best. And I actually have good reasons to doubt that its sampling at 250 MSPS is reliable. It uses 250 MSPS clock, but I think it misses samples and they simply don't care.

With the stock firmware it is a really bad scope.

[wasp09]

Sorry I did not read through the entire thread.  I even missed the details in your first post. 

If you measured 125MHz at the clock, it would unlikely do 1 samples per edge to make 500MSPS, unless the unmarked chip has 4 channels instead of 2.  AD9288 is only spec'ed upto 100MSPS per channel at best.

If you improve the FW it is great.  We worry about how to load it up after. 

[ataradov]

If you measured 125MHz at the clock, it would unlikely do 1 samples per edge to make 500MSPS

No, it is just Chinese 500 MSPS. The same way as your battery is "5000 mAh".

There is just no hardware on the inside the MCU that can capture a stream that fast.

AD9288 is only spec'ed upto 100MSPS per channel at best.

They can be pretty reliably overclocked. They will lose some of the performance, but they still have plenty for this application.

But there is also evidence that this is a pin-compatible clone, which can really have any performance characteristics.

And there is no uploading new firmware. At this time the only option is a chip swap. The chip that is there is locked.

[all_repair]

@ataradov
I wanted one of this, given up after learning about the triggering issue.  Now there is one shipping on the way waiting for your code.

[wasp09]

Don't really have capability to work on smd.  Can't do chip swap unless it comes with some sort of socket .  Are you sure we can't erase and rewrite? Mine is still waiting for shipment.  Not sure if it would ever be shipped.  Item turned no longer available a couple of day after placing order.
How bad is the stock FW assuming I don't really need 500 msps?  The battery did look bigger on one review youtube than another. Perhaps we have a Chinese 5000 vs 3000 mAH.

 

[jhpadjustable]

Don't really have capability to work on smd.  Can't do chip swap unless it comes with some sort of socket .  Are you sure we can't erase and rewrite?

As Alex said eariler, it appears to be level 2 locked. You are welcome to argue with the chip all day long, but I don't think it will be moved. Perhaps your local phone repair hut can do the swap for you?

How bad is the stock FW assuming I don't really need 500 msps?

Dave ranted about it in great detail.
 

[wasp09]

I did watch that video before ordering.  The complaints were mostly on the trigger and vertical dropoff at higher frequency.  The vertical may be something addressable hardware-wise. 

Is there a trigger input on board?  Do we have a circuit diagram?

[ataradov]

Trigger happens purely in the software. The first post here essentially describes the entire digital part of this device.

[alx359]

Also, I did not abandon the project, in fact I'm working on it every time I have a few hours to spare. It is coming along quite nicely.

So cool project! Found this thread while researching for a 5012H. After the initial creative burst though it feels a bit quiet lately. @Alex: may I ask if you're still willing to spend some more of your valuable time until delivering an open FW out of this? Cheers!

[ataradov]

Yes, I'm still actively working on it. It is getting close to a releasable state. But it is a lot of work to create good software.

The horizontal part is working pretty well now, I have triggering in both single- and dual-channel mode working reliably. Horizontal offset controls are also working well. In general the UI is pretty complete.

I'm currently working on proper trace display. I have a basic implementation, but I don't like it. When showing a large buffer on a small screen, it is not sufficient to just take every N-th sample. The results look like crap, so this weekend I will be working on finding the min/max values in the range of samples that corresponds to a pixel and showing a vertical bar instead of a single sample.

The steps for the initial public release:
1. Finish trace display
2. At least rudimentary vertical calibration. The signal is pretty close as is, but on some ranges it is quite off
3. Vertical offset control that is actually in Volts, not in DAC counts.
4. General code clean up. There are a lot of TODOs there.

[wasp09]

Great. I am still waiting for my 5012H.  Last tracking was Dec 27 2019 in China.  Haven't reached Canadian airspace yet.   

Is there any chance for releasing your FW in some form, like a daughter board with configurable MCU?

[ataradov]

Is there any chance for releasing your FW in some form, like a daughter board with configurable MCU?

Daughter board for what? The only way to get this firmware to run on 5012H is to desolder the old MCU and place a new one. There is no other way for now.

[ataradov]

I've made a lot of progress this weekend. All horizontal controls (position/scale) are working. Acquisition and triggering modes are working too.

Vertical controls UI part is working, but it is not actually hooked to the hardware (DAC). Vertical scale is working (relay switching part, not the actual conversion of the ADC values to volts for display).

Here is a picture of the current sate of the UI. Here you can see 3 kHz square wave being fed into the input directly from the signal generator without any probes. As you can see analog performance is not the best without probe compensation.

I will have a closer look at the analog part when I'm done with the digital. I'm sure it is fixable.

[webnavigator]

Excellent job.

It seems that there is a new device with firmware upgrade capabilities:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000571425898.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.12fa7d388Lzfjc&algo_pvid=6c34e913-1d3d-4385-ac47-d42bf2ff2b22&algo_expid=6c34e913-1d3d-4385-ac47-d42bf2ff2b22-0&btsid=5ef1452f-80b4-4876-9a21-5162ea7dc9a2&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_5,searchweb201603_53 

Be warned that the seller is new without any feedback, and he has only this item for sale ... 

There is a Russian page with more information about it and a firmware in Mediafire:
https://mysku.ru/blog/discounts/78121.html 

It's too risky to buy anything from the specific store, but if it is not a scam, there will be plenty of clones in the near future, with upgrade function.

[webnavigator]

The above aliexpress link is too lengthy, there is a shorter one :
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000571425898.html?spm=2114.12010615.8148356.1.74c77dc9ta0ACM

Again be very careful and wait ....

[ataradov]

It looks like something I was planning to do in the future. Put FPGA/CPLD for trigger detection and some signal pre-processing. Plus a better analog front-end. Plus a better display.

I really like the performance of GD32F407, so downgrade is rather unfortunate. I also see no need for external SRAM. But they probably got a better price on slower MCU+SRAM.

Specs are still BS, of course, but overall design seems to be more reasonable. At least there is a trim cap for internal compensation.

I'm personally sticking with GD32F407. This device is a beast.

And just from the button layout I can guarantee that controls will suck. The old one was right on point.