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Micsig Tablet Oscilloscope tBook mini TO1104 review (100Mhz 4 channel 'scope)
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exe:

--- Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on July 09, 2017, 10:45:54 am ---The FW with serial decode is not officially released yet, but seems they will provide it if you ask.

--- End quote ---

Micsig said serial decoding will be available on or before 1st of August. But I asked for beta version just in case of delays or something.
exe:
I received my TO1104 a few days ago and I would like to share my mini review.

1. UI is cool, but a little bit slow. Does not distract, but not "iphone" experience. But, after all, I like this touch interface and I don't want to go back to knobs (never thought I would say this one day).
2. I like the way it displays information about verticals. For example, it shows 10mV/div and right there two buttons to change it. Cool! Although, I wouldn't call this a killer feature, just a good approach to UI.
3. Arbitrary BW limiting. I like it, it is very useful feature in my noisy environment. Is it implemented in hardware or software?
4. A bit of learning curve is present, but after a few hours of playing with it I'm comfortable
5. Probes are 10x only. Well, some people claim this is an advantage (less things to break, less mistakes, no chance to overload circuit with 1x probe). Still, I'll buy a pair of cheap probes with 1x for low-speed low-level circuits. The hook does not work well :(. Definitely I've seen better probes.
6. Stability. Mine works very stable so far. No problems with uptimes up to 4h. Software version 7.14.0.227.
7. It's floating. Perhaps, this is bad when doing mains and HV stuff, but good for my pet projects, especially because I can put my probes anywhere and don't bother that my signal generator is already grounded.
8. They significantly improved software over last six months or so. It differs quite a lot from what I can see on Mike's video. Very good!
9. Free beta decoding option (at least for me:)). Haven't tried it yet, but from other reviews looks to be more than enough for me, I don't need advanced stuff.
10. Video recording. Perhaps, not that needed feature, but "nice to have".
11. No serious bugs discovered.
12. Portability and size. I don't really need this, but it's good I can take it to work and show to my colleagues.
13. Fast to boot. Not instant, but good.
14. WIFI (haven't tested yet and I don't have this option enabled, but should be good for sharing screen captures)

Things I don't like
1. BNC on top are not very convenient for me. Also not very easy to attach / detach probes.
2. Fan is noisy, esp. after 1h of work. I'll have a look at tear down to see if I can replace fans.
3. Micsig site is not updated and in a very messy state. A lot of broken links, email didn't work for me (I communicate via aliexpress)
5. Angle of screen is bad for my setup. Not just viewing angle is bad, it also perfectly mirrors my table lamp. But I put a piece of wood under the stand, now it's fine.
6. Power button is too easy to press. Not good for a mobile device. But I haven't tried to carry it with me, so may be this not a problem.
7. Zooming does not work when triggering normal. That's annoying because I have to manually "re-arm" trigger after every measurement.

My wishlist (let me know if any of these are already present and I just was not able to find):
1. May be a bit faster UI update rate? I'm not sure this slownes of UI. It might be they don't want to, e.g., load CPU too much to extend battery life / thermal performance. I'll try to check if it's possible to do something from the shell.
2. Gain measurement? Phase measurement is already here, lovely.
3. Force trigger. Cannot find how to do this when triggering normal.
4. Cursors and scales on FFT
5. Multiple math channels
6. A few spelling mistakes. Don't really annoy me, just reminds the origin of the scope.

Haven't tested yet:
1. Networking and web UI
2. HDMI
3. USB
4. Video recording
5. Saving / exporting data. Hope it saves not just waveforms, but on-screen measurements as well.
6. FFT, just had a quick look.

Overall impression. So far so good. Doesn't feel like a super-professional scope, but suit my modest needs (characterizing opamps and power supplies, phase and gain measurements). I don't want to pretend I'm a big specialist in scopes and I'm very biased. And at this price range you have to make priorities. But I definitely recommend this unit for consideration. ALthough, I didn't spend much time with this scope yet, so I may change my opinion (hope not).

OK, now I'll try to get shell access to see if I can do something useful from inside. Who knows, may be it allows writing own plug-ins to implement new measurements or something.

PS thanks nctnico for suggesting this unit.
lukier:
exe: I have similar impressions, although I don't mind fixed 10x probes.

One thing that I think is a missed opportunity is the lack of gigabit ethernet. Even NanoPi boards based on the same CPU have it. With that Micsig could do remote desktop like R&S RTB2004.

One idea for Micsig came to my mind. Serial decoders are just first step, but later one could use a terminal. Adding a terminal app (launched from the desktop menu) and enabling usb-serial dongle kernel modules could be very useful in the field.
exe:

--- Quote from: lukier on July 20, 2017, 11:26:26 pm ---One thing that I think is a missed opportunity is the lack of gigabit ethernet. Even NanoPi boards based on the same CPU have it. With that Micsig could do remote desktop like R&S RTB2004.

One idea for Micsig came to my mind. Serial decoders are just first step, but later one could use a terminal. Adding a terminal app (launched from the desktop menu) and enabling usb-serial dongle kernel modules could be very useful in the field.

--- End quote ---

I think so :). Now I'm trying to re-enable telnet again (so far I managed to unpack firmware file using encryption key published here). Once this is done we can discuss further steps. I don't know how much bandwidth for remote desktop is needed, but even 100mb/s is enough if done properly. I'm more worried about CPU and memory resources required. It looks like it has just 256MB RAM available, this might not be enough for many ideas (like real-time screen capturing and video encoding). But loading kernel module is certainly possible. And enabling wifi (just a matter of launching the script).

What I would like to try is to cooperate with MicSig. May be they won't mind enabling some of the features in official firmware. I'll write if we achieve something with new features.
nctnico:

--- Quote from: lukier on July 20, 2017, 11:26:26 pm ---One thing that I think is a missed opportunity is the lack of gigabit ethernet. Even NanoPi boards based on the same CPU have it. With that Micsig could do remote desktop like R&S RTB2004.

--- End quote ---
Gigabit ethernet is not necessary for this kind of equipment (not even for remote desktop). The typical processors inside can't handle this kind datarate. For example: The RTB2004 reaches speeds of (approx) 12Mbit over it's network interface.
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