| Products > Test Equipment |
| Picoscope- yay or nay? |
| << < (10/18) > >> |
| mendip_discovery:
I like pico as the temp logger just works. I quite like the form factor of a 56k modem and it's very light, small and robust. Of the service engineers I talk to it is the one thing they all keep in the laptop bag as it saves them time when they are trouble shooting onsite with a customer looking about. Going back to the issue the OP had, the Mac support is crap, but it is supported which is better than most. |
| David Aurora:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 23, 2023, 06:53:33 pm ---As I get it, the OP's question is not with Picoscope gear per se - I think many of us can confirm that these work fine - but with Picoscope gear on MacOS. The OP may have wanted to add this in the thread title to avoid useless posts. I personally have no experience with Pico on MacOS, but have used their products on various Windows versions and Linux with little pain. I can second the performance issues on Linux though. Compared to Windows, on Linux their software has very high CPU usage. As to their new v7 software, I have tried it a while ago, and I personally think the new UI is pure garbage. --- End quote --- Yes and no. The OS question was part of it, but it was what it said on the box- a yay or nay question about Picoscope. And after briefly owning one, it's a hard nay from me. OS issues aside (although they are important given that the sales pitch is that it's cross platform, it's not like I was trying to hack the damn thing to work on Mac), they seem like a pretty shitty operation overall. V6 is clunky and half baked at best IMO, and V7 appears to be vapourware. It's apparently been coming forever based on threads I found at the time (plus I've got an email from May last year when I owned one claiming "... we're confident that we'll release the PicoScope 7 T&M stable version in the September / October timeframe."), but I'm guessing by the time it arrives it'll feel about 20 years old like like V6 does. On top of that, their attitude to tonnes of legitimate bug reports/feature requests/suggestions I read on their forum at the time was very much the classic Principal Skinner "Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong". Oh, and they even said in the same email I quoted above "I'm sorry if that sounds like we're asking you to act as a beta tester. (In a way, we are!)". Fuck that. This isn't a Kickstarter campaign or a friends startup, it's supposed to be a finished T&M product. I really, reeeeeeeally wanted to like the thing. It would have been so handy if it was properly developed, but it isn't. As mentioned in other posts on this thread I ended up getting an AD2 for the task and there's absolutely no comparison in either the software or support. The Picoscope obviously wins as far as form factor (the header without any BNC thing on the AD2 is just plain weird, and the adaptor is a pain), but at the end of the day for a computer based scope the software is the most crucial bit. If pigs fly and they ever actually get their shit together I'd love to chuck one in my callout bag. But based on what I saw of both V6 and V7 I suspect that as convenient as the hardware is the software is always going to suck compared to other options. |
| 2N3055:
David, you are just bitter that it doesn't support Mac. :-DD Software works just fine, and has many capabilities no other scope has. It is a specific product though. Not a good match to people that expect digital CRT emulation. It is very good for decoding, and for those writing their own software or pulling data for analysis. And prices are a mixed bag. Pico has 16bit scope that is unique, and their 8ch 12 bit scope is very good price for the capabilities. But their product are not for everybody. AD2 is really a toy, although I like some features of software. |
| David Aurora:
--- Quote from: 2N3055 on January 24, 2023, 06:32:44 pm ---David, you are just bitter that it doesn't support Mac. :-DD Software works just fine, and has many capabilities no other scope has. It is a specific product though. Not a good match to people that expect digital CRT emulation. It is very good for decoding, and for those writing their own software or pulling data for analysis. And prices are a mixed bag. Pico has 16bit scope that is unique, and their 8ch 12 bit scope is very good price for the capabilities. But their product are not for everybody. AD2 is really a toy, although I like some features of software. --- End quote --- Have you read even a single word I have said in this thread? Rhetorical question, clearly not, but lets pick through these points anyway: - Yeah, I was pissed off that it doesn't support Mac given that the manufacturer claims it works on Mac. Again, I wasn't trying to do anything special, just wanted to use a tool I bought that was supposedly Mac compatible. - No, the software does NOT work fine, that's the whole point here. It apparently works fine on some Windows setups, fantastic news for those users. But it's marketed to work on a wider range of OS than that and it fails miserably there. Lockups, missing features and all sorts of quirks. This isn't just my opinion, it's backed up by the many complaints on their forum. - It's not even remotely a "specific product", it's a USB scope/AWG. You call it expecting "digital CRT emulation", I call it "working XY functionality". My other digital scopes handle it just fine, the Picoscope was the only one that didn't. - OK cool, if I need it for decoding I'll keep that in mind. But the decoder is a bonus feature on that, the core of it is supposed to be a scope/AWG. - I don't care about its price or the 8 channel thing you keep bringing up, neither of these points are relevant. The price of the Picoscopes would be absolutely fine if it worked as advertised. Any price is too much when it doesn't. - No, they're not for everybody. They're mainly supposed to be for people who want a cross platform USB scope with AWG, and I was one of those people. Fanboy as much as you want over Picoscope gear, but at the end of the day all I care about is whether a tool works properly or not. This isn't a hobby for me, I use test gear to make my living. The AD2 worked great from day 1, met its marketing claims and has well and truly earned its place amongst the rest of my test gear. Given that the AD2 has remained in my setup alongside stacks of Tektronix/HP/Fluke/etc gear and the Picoscope got shitcanned in less than a week I definitely can't agree with your premise that the AD2 is a toy and the Picoscope is a professional tool. Maybe all you do is decode data on a Windows box and it works great for you, but over here in the real world it doesn't meet the manufacturers claims of being a usable cross platform USB scope. End of story. |
| 2N3055:
I'm not a fanboy of anything. Emulations and virtual machines are not supported on many a device that need windows. They don't advertise that Linux and Mac version have parity. X-Y mode not only works fine, but works even with math channels which no other scope (in normal price range) supports. It works perfectly as advertised. You wanted to use it way you expect it to be. Your problem. They are not primarily used as "cross platform USB scopes" but way I explained.. Fact that AD2 that is literally a didactic toy, works great for you is great. I'm glad for you. You seem to have very specific requirements you happen to address with AD2. Great. That doesn't make Pico bad in any way. Just not for you... No need to use rude and abrasive language if you don't like something. I, on the other hand, have no use for AD2 (too limited in every single aspect of it's capabilities), but have and use 3 Picos in everyday work for many years. And they are worth every penny.. |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |