Latest innovation by Owon: AS101

[Daruosha]

Just look at this "new" oscilloscope:



They claim it's the best replacement for a CRO 

Check out the link yourself: https://www.owon.com.hk/products_1_channel_oscilloscope

Owon always finds a way to surprise me 

[001]

Why it so deep? Is it to provide compatibility by dimensions with analog  scopes? 

[nctnico]

  Look what it says in the description: ideal scope to keep using educational material written for teaching to use analog scopes. How is that going to help a student? At the first work place there will be a DSO with which the student will be totally unfamiliar with.

[Hydrawerk]

This is crazy as hell. Analog oscilloscopes are dead nowadays. They are not produced any more. (Well, MCP seems to be the last producer... http://www.mcpsh.com/pr.jsp?_pp=0_305_183_-1)
Analog oscilloscope is like a CRT television. There is no point to work with it at school in 2019.

[Daruosha]

This is crazy as hell. Analog oscilloscopes are dead nowadays. They are not produced any more. (Well, MCP seems to be the last producer... http://www.mcpsh.com/pr.jsp?_pp=0_305_183_-1)
Analog oscilloscope is like a CRT television. There is no point to work with it at school in 2019.

It's a DSO, it has run/stop mode   

[Hydrawerk]

It is quite cheap... https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000067361714.html
But 20MHz is shit nowadays.

[Calvin]

Hi,

couldn't get that stupid thing to work .... am used to push buttons on my CRO 

jauu
Calvin

[Alex Eisenhut]

Cute. If it was 50$ with free shipping I'd get one just for giggles. It's adorable.

[colorado.rob]

They are probably going to sell a ton of these to schools in places like India and the Philippines.

I spent a good deal of time a couple years back helping newbies on a popular C++ web site.  So many of the questions would be from engineering students in these countries which could not get modern C++ examples to work because their coursework was based on an ancient Borland C++ compiler, a compiler that was older than the students.  It was very frustrating for both the students and the people trying to help them.  "WTF is conio.h?  Why is that in your code?"

I'm sure Owon are not idiots.  There's a market for this sort of thing or they would not be building them.  And it saddens me to think that.

[BravoV]

When in need, a scope, even inferior, is better than no scope at all, simple logic that some people will never understand.

[GregDunn]

For $150 you can go to a flea market or even the Bay, and get a superior scope to this!  Perhaps even a DSO.

[MadTux]

At least it has a handle, to chuck it into nearest dumpster....

[nctnico]

When in need, a scope, even inferior, is better than no scope at all, simple logic that some people will never understand.

You are not getting the point. The whole problem is, is that it is aimed at the educational market. Sure Owon is not to blame because they just make what customers want to buy.

I also disagree that CROs are only used in lesser developed countries / areas. A couple of years ago I visited a local EE school and much to my surprise they had a bunch of CROs for the students to use  . Their reasoning was that they where easier to teach.

[001]

I also disagree that CROs are only used in lesser developed countries / areas. A couple of years ago I visited a local EE school and much to my surprise they had a bunch of CROs for the students to use  . Their reasoning was that they where easier to teach.

In fakt it looks intersting for my simple purposes
But two things are "minus" - the deep dimension is WERY strange (no reason to buid deep enclosures without CRTs now) and display is poor for 2019 
Now any cheap $50 tablets provided with 6-10" colour displays
The one reason to buy one cheap scope is to DISPLAY waveform

[SilverSolder]

It doesn't seem completely crazy to start students off on a very basic scope with no "frills"...   it may make sense to learn how to ride a bicycle before you have a go at a 1,000cc motorcycle!

[nctnico]

It doesn't seem completely crazy to start students off on a very basic scope with no "frills"...   it may make sense to learn how to ride a bicycle before you have a go at a 1,000cc motorcycle!

That is why some DSOs have educational modes in which some advanced features are turned off. That is a much better way then the other way around. And there is always the 'default' button to take the DSO back to a pre-defined setting.

[001]

It doesn't seem completely crazy to start students off on a very basic scope with no "frills"...   it may make sense to learn how to ride a bicycle before you have a go at a 1,000cc motorcycle!

That is why some DSOs have educational modes in which some advanced features are turned off. That is a much better way then the other way around. And there is always the 'default' button to take the DSO back to a pre-defined setting.

Basic idea of abstract scope is to plot curve U=f(t) only
Marker measurments and signal recording is pretty whistles of digital technology but it unnesessary for some LF applications like simple biasing of common audio amplifier or power supply ripple testing

[tautech]

It doesn't seem completely crazy to start students off on a very basic scope with no "frills"...   it may make sense to learn how to ride a bicycle before you have a go at a 1,000cc motorcycle!

That is why some DSOs have educational modes in which some advanced features are turned off. That is a much better way then the other way around. And there is always the 'default' button to take the DSO back to a pre-defined setting.

Basic idea of abstract scope is to plot curve U=f(t) only
Marker measurments and signal recording is pretty whistles of digital technology but it unnesessary for some LF applications like simple biasing of common audio amplifier or power supply ripple testing

Once you have a scope you always want/need more functionality, Single shot, Stop and USB recording of waveforms are mandatory features these days.

[snoopy]

How is that going to help a student? At the first work place there will be a DSO with which the student will be totally unfamiliar with.

You need to understand China to know why there's a market for CROs.

In China, the government has absolute power over public universities, and that power extends to the ministry of education. Unfortunately, those people running MoE (thus dictating textbooks) are pretty old minded.

As such, textbooks used in public Chinese universities are heavily outdated. Borland C is literally used (or at least, was, when I did my C 101 in 2010), and due to the lack of compatibility of Borland C on modern Windows, VC++ 98 was commonly used instead (maybe still now).

People are willing to patch cracked VC98 to work with Windows 10 rather than using the free VS2019. Most Chinese university kids (before being exposed to real projects) never used VC++ 201x or gcc.

The same goes to electronic education. When I did mine, we used a Kenwood 25MHz CRO (that's when I bought my first DSO, Owon VDS7102). Similarly, we used an ancient Pentium 4 running Windows 98SE for WinSPICE, and real hardware 8086 emulator for computer architecture & interface.

Universities with less government funding support and more enterprise funding support (mostly in the southern part of the country) use significantly more modern and advanced educating tools than northern universities. Put it simple, they don't have to give every bit of shit to whatever MoE wants since they don't want much from it.

As much as a believer of totalitarianism myself and I enjoy the efficiency of technology/economy development from it, I have to say such a system really doesn't do well when it comes to education.

The old, "senior" people just have way too much power, and many of them pretend to know everything and want to regulate everything (think of Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter).

I've got a copy of Borland Turbo Pascal somewhere if they want it. It comes on 5 and 1/4 floppy and runs under MSDOS

[SilverSolder]

It doesn't seem completely crazy to start students off on a very basic scope with no "frills"...   it may make sense to learn how to ride a bicycle before you have a go at a 1,000cc motorcycle!

That is why some DSOs have educational modes in which some advanced features are turned off. That is a much better way then the other way around. And there is always the 'default' button to take the DSO back to a pre-defined setting.

Basic idea of abstract scope is to plot curve U=f(t) only
Marker measurments and signal recording is pretty whistles of digital technology but it unnesessary for some LF applications like simple biasing of common audio amplifier or power supply ripple testing

Once you have a scope you always want/need more functionality, Single shot, Stop and USB recording of waveforms are mandatory features these days.

Of course.  But if you are organizing the course material for thousands of students where the curriculum consists of learning the basics of AC circuitry,  the best scope is the one that "doesn't get in the way" with too many settings that can be messed up by the students.  This product totally fits that bill, and of course you or I would never buy one! :-)

[borjam]

"WTF is conio.h?  Why is that in your code?"

In Spanish, reading "nio" as "ño": cunt, twat. A very popular curse. "Coño, I burnt my finger!"

Explanatory enough.

[Dwaine]

We need a Dave tear down.  You will see these show up in high schools.   We’re the budget dictates what students learn.

Anyone buy one?

[001]

Anyone buy one?

It looks 100% good for me except case dimensions and small display

[bd139]

I bet there's bugger all inside it. It looks like someone bought a few pallets of power supply enclosures and now needs something to put in it.

Honestly though I like the form factor. Looks like your hands and cables don't get in the way of the screen, a perpetual PITA with other form factors. Also you can probably wedge your engineers and students in tighter spaces

But Video here. It's a piece of shit:



TI83 of scopes?!

Edit: oh look a power supply...

[Gyro]

Edit: oh look a power supply...

Now that's the one that bugs me... PSUs with crap UIs. Screens crammed with numbers, keypads, arrow keys, etc.

Give me coarse, fine voltage and current limit knobs, simple voltage and current readouts, and well behaved regulation instead!


Just because you can doesn't mean that you should.