The attempt of a Micsig (A/S)TO11xx general purpose thread ... :-)

[Pfriemler]

FOREWORD: I have just received my (second) Migsig STO1104C and feel very comfortable with it. Of course, there are more questions than answers, especially at the beginning. I therefore think it would be good, especially for beginners or those interested, to put together a few pieces of information that were not entirely clear to me in my initial research and that are scattered over many individual threads here, some of which are even off-topic.
Although some operating peculiarities are additionally solved differently with the "button variants" (STO), many general questions about software and operation (also the operating system interface apart from the actual oscilloscope) and solutions should concern the entire Migsig scope family. Some things seem abnormal, but are not.
I would try to collect by edit the questions and answers bundled in the first post and keep them as up to date as possible and also collect links to other migsic-scope related topics there. I know something like this from other forums and it has proven itself and saves newcomers from having to read through a long thread with hundreds of posts.
If something like that is rather undesirable here, please just let me know. Maybe there is already something like this somewhere else and I have just overlooked it so far.


Here are my initial questions/statements to the Migsic community, which I would like to ask the Migsic community to answer and confirm or object to.

Hardware
---
H1: Contrary to what portability might suggest, the Scope is of course grounded as long as it is powered by the AC adapter ... 

H2: The probes supplied have a 1:10 division ratio and cannot be switched to 1:1  ... I miss that!

H3: It seems to make sense not to "shoot down" the scope by a long keystroke, but to switch it off by a short keystroke and popup menu. 


Android system
---
A1: Updates offered should be treated with caution. Never change a running system...

A2: The WLAN symbol on the desktop is often displayed with an exclamation mark (disturbed Internet connection), but everything apparently works anyway.

A3: I can set an IPv4 address in the network for the LAN connection, but I miss the settings for a WLAN connection. No way?

A4: I am still looking for a way to actively push screenshots and data away from the scope to a network storage instead of getting them from the computer via FTP server.

A5: I miss a PDF reader. Is the WPS Office to install the only way? The scope's manual is in pdf and can be displayed on scope, by what means?

A6: Installing my own apps would be nice, but the system won't allow it (for now and also reasonably). Has anyone already managed to do this? Could Migsig be asked to add a freely available app to the store? (a file manager with ftp support would solve my problem A4, ...).


Scope
---
S1: (STO) There is a back button to exit a channel menu without having to turn off the channel.  ) Tapping on somewhere else on the screen works just as for the non-STO devices, thx Fungus

S2: (STO) There are buttons to move the cursors, you just have to activate them with [Shift] first. The buttons in the left lower corner are the only way for the non-STO. I had to read the manual again and again to find that, after fiddling moving the cursor with fingers ... 


Other useful threads in this forum:
---

[1] Review and discussion regarding the (knobless) TO1104
[2] Noise on open inputs (without probe)
[3] Feedback on Micsig scopes ("should I buy it or not") - and have a look at this thread, too
[4] Migsig posted some videos about their scopes here
[5] Create (and use) own apps on the Micsigs?
[6] If using Linux, maybe you should keep an eye on that...

 



(tbc)

any hints and questions are welcome, thx!!!

[Fungus]

Scope
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S1: (STO) There is a back button to exit a channel menu without having to turn off the channel (facepalm).

Just touch the screen anywhere outside the channel menu. 

[Pfriemler]

Scope
---
S1: (STO) There is a back button to exit a channel menu without having to turn off the channel (facepalm).

Just touch the screen anywhere outside the channel menu. 

Don't try to accidentally put the focus on something else on the screen.
Honestly, why don't the menus have a "Cancel" or "Back" button. That's not style.

Fungus, you do have the WPS Office on your scope. Useful or not? ... I give it a try ...

[Fungus]

Scope
---
S1: (STO) There is a back button to exit a channel menu without having to turn off the channel (facepalm).

Just touch the screen anywhere outside the channel menu. 

Don't try to accidentally put the focus on something else on the screen.

It doesn't focus if the channel menu was open. It just closes the menu.

Fungus, you do have the WPS Office on your scope. Useful or not? ... I give it a try ...

I installed it but I never used it. Maybe if it's the only computer you have and you connect a mouse and keyboard.... I dunno. It's not exactly the world's best office suite.

I have used the web browser occasionally to bring up datasheets and stuff. It can also play media files and view youtube but the sound isn't very good.

Mostly I use it as an oscilloscope. The only app I really use a lot is the ftp server for grabbing screenshots from my PC.

I'd like to use my HP15C calculator app on it but as you say, we don't have permission to install  .mkv files even though the file system looks for them and lists them under the apps category.

I don't remember but I think PDF files open just by clicking on them.

[Micsig_support]

Above 3 hardware question.

H1, Yes.
H2, We found fixed 10:1 probe quality is better. and many suppliers use same way. you can buy one more probe. buying more tool, earning more money. 
H3, many android device shut down by pop up menu. so we are same.

Using the scope is simple like to use a cell phone. 

I hope i can become a member of this scope community. 

[voltsandjolts]

H2, We found fixed 10:1 probe quality is better.

  Fixed 10:1 is the way to go.

I find switchable probes are annoying, especially the ones that are too easily switched.
If you think you need 1:1, and the low bandwidth that comes with it, stop and ask yourself why.
If you answer 'low signal level', then you need a pre-amp and 10:1

Also, the Micsig supplied 10:1 probes are quite nice quality. Similar form to P6139A.

[Fungus]

If you think you need 1:1, and the low bandwidth that comes with it, stop and ask yourself why.

Measuring power supply ripple? 

[Fungus]

I hope i can become a member of this scope community. 

I think you already are!

Can you tell us about firmware development? eg. I sent some requests to Micsig in January and they said they really liked them but there is nothing new yet. Does Micsig plan to update firmware?

[Pfriemler]

H2, We found fixed 10:1 probe quality is better. and many suppliers use same way. you can buy one more probe. buying more tool, earning more money. 

Meanwhile, I found this more often and there are clear advantages of pure 10:1 probes. 
Nevertheless: my 10 years old (absolutely) beginners scope have two switchable ones, and for low frequency things I found it useful to take those probes for a universal pickup and put the signal to more than one device at the same time. They managed to built the probe up to 100 MHz (in 10:1, 1:1 only for some MHz). I will use one of them with the MicSig in future. Everything's fine ... 

H3, many android device shut down by pop up menu. so we are same.

Almost all do so. But in scope mode, there's no Android anymore. The STOs can be operated only by means of the knobs, why not switch 'em off this way? You put the "shoot off" feature on a (rather short) long power button pressure. Most PCs you can "kill" by a 4 seconds power button pressure, most Android devices can be hard resetted by a 10s pressure or so.
As long as it will cause no problems, the long power shoot off will be a workaround, but as I understood (saving scope's settings and so on) it's not healthy to do so.

Take it as a suggestion: Make the hardware shoot off longer (>4s) and take a 1 s button press for a command AND ack to make a normal shutdown.

This leads to another point: My smartphone is switched off once a month, maybe, but I use the power button to put it in STANDBY, from which it comes up in half a second. Comparing to other scopes, they all have no standby feature and boot times of 1 min or more. But here, we may have a chance to get a real standby, with switched off display and stopped fan and a fast coming up? As far as I understood, when pressing the home button, leading to the android desktop, the scope's hardware stay powered (only wfm aquisition is stopped, thus the scope app is back in a second). This will not work for a standby here, as I think the scope's hardware has no sleep mode, but then shut down the scope app and put the rest of the system to a kind of sleep condition (just as a S3 on PC), so the system is back in 1 second and users have to wait only for the scope app restart and hardware initialization, which seems do be done in seconds (like my old UNI-T, which has a cold boot time of 4 seconds).

If not for my, maybe for further scopes?

Using the scope is simple like to use a cell phone. 

For all who are familiar to use a (android) phone.

I hope i can become a member of this scope community. 

I would extremely welcome your comments on all the questions and points here and wish you to read and consider everything.

And yeah, this could be the thread to communicate wishes and bugs, too.

So, what do MicSig think about an automated data synchronisation in background to a ftp server? (see my point A4).

[Fungus]

H2, We found fixed 10:1 probe quality is better. and many suppliers use same way. you can buy one more probe. buying more tool, earning more money. 

Meanwhile, I found this more often and there are clear advantages of pure 10:1 probes. 

Yes. It's a good decision. I'm much happier with a higher quality 10x probe than a cheap switchable probe.

The fixed 10x probes are also much safer for the oscilloscope in the hands of newbies.

[Micsig_support]

I am so sorry for this issue.

Pls try to use Wi-Fi to upgrade to see if your concerns are solved already..

here is the video link to say how to upgrade.




By the way,  i always are wondering why every RD project will be delay. they said, same delay in the world. 

[Micsig_support]

 
So, what do MicSig think about an automated data synchronisation in background to a ftp server? (see my point A4).
[/quote]

Do you when you save the data in oscilloscope, then the data will be uploaded to your PC mean time?


Just like our pictures will be uploaded to the Cloud when we are taking the picture in our cell phone?

[Micsig_support]

Hi every one here.

We really start to like this thread now.  because we are always hoping to listen our customers' opinion, we think this is the best way to improve our products. now, We found here is the good place for us.

So everyone who have the suggestions or advice to our products. please email us to write here. We will take all suggestions of our customers seriously.

Thanks very much!. 

[Pfriemler]

I am so sorry for this issue.
Pls try to use Wi-Fi to upgrade to see if your concerns are solved already..

You mean me?
May I remember that - maybe, if not a hardware issue, think my old device is still on the way back home - this update made my device unusable? 
edit: OK, installing the SysUpdate-App will not harm the device, but I did use this app and made the offered upgrade before I started to work with the scope.

And before that, a "what's new" or changelog would be nice to read... In principle, I would be quite willing to do updates and tests.

Just like our pictures will be uploaded to the Cloud when we are taking the picture in our cell phone?

nohohooo, not mine  - but yeah, in this way. There is no need to invent the wheel twice - there are enough Android apps that can monitor one directory in the background and synchronise it with another.

Code: [Select]

Do you when you save the data in oscilloscope, then the data will be uploaded to your PC mean time?Something like that - not to a PC, but any FTP/WebDAV/Samba. It's not that necessary, since I found a workaround with my smartphone - using a file manager bookmark, connecting with the FTP Server on the MicSig and my NAS and copy all (new) files from MicSig to NAS allows me to finish work and switch the scope off without the need to run the PC. Even renaming screenshots is easy this way (for additional infos, it happened to me that I could not recognize the reason why I did 'em  ). Better: a prompt for some text before saving the pic. But I didn't found that function yet, in any cam or screenshot app.

[Fungus]

Can we install our own apps? That would be a great help.

nb. Not apps from the Google App store(*) but loading our own .apk files would be very nice.

(*) I know that to access the Google App store you have to do all sorts of licensing things things that Micsig should never do because it will lose customers, eg. force all users to create a google account before they can use their oscilloscope 

[Fungus]

We really start to like this thread now.  because we are always hoping to listen our customers' opinion, we think this is the best way to improve our products. now, We found here is the good place for us.

So everyone who have the suggestions or advice to our products. please email us to write here. We will take all suggestions of our customers seriously.

Thanks very much!. 

You will find this forum an excellent place to get good feedback. I sent some suggestions to Micsig in January and they said they liked them but I don't know anything more since then.

I can repeat them here. I tried to keep them in the "spirit of Micsig" - nothing crazy, no big changes to the UI

Here we go, one suggestion per post:

[Fungus]

Suggestion 1: Improve the text readability.

Some of the text is very hard to read, especially the red text of the math channel. Here's a photograph of the screen:


The camera makes it look worse, but even on a screen capture you can see the problem clearly - many of the horizontal and vertical lines are hard to see because of the antialiasing combined with red color:


My suggestion is to draw the text in white (which is much more legible) and draw a border around it in the color of the math channel:

(compare the white text with the red text on the left - white is much more legible)

nb. 'White text with colored border' also matches the scheme used by the channel menus: 

[Fungus]

Suggestion 2: Add 'statistics' mode:

Some measurements are very hard to make, eg. noise measurements, because the values on screen are constantly changing.

With statistics mode the values on screen show the average of all readings taken. This number will stabilize over time and give good values.

My suggestion is to add a button on screen to turn statistics on/off:



When statistics are on you just accumulate the values of all readings then display that sum divided by the number of readings. Easy!

[Fungus]

Suggestion 3: Combine positive and negative duty cycle into a single reading.

Positive and negative duty cycle are just two numbers that add up to 100%, they can be shown using a single reading on screen:

Suggestion: combine them into a single reading:

Before:


After (both readings combined):



This makes "duty cycle" into a single menu item and creates extra space in the list space for suggestion #4....

[Fungus]

Suggestion #4: "AC RMS" measurement (RMS of signal with DC offset removed).

If I have a 1.5V signal with noise then I have no way to measure that noise. Eg in this image the "RMS" value shows 1.488 volts - not what I want. PK-PK is 180mV - not what I want either. I want the RMS of just that component of the signal. 



Suggestion: Add a measurement that shows RMS of (x – mean(x))



On other oscilloscopes this is called "Standard deviation" mode, eg. on R&S:

[Fungus]

Suggestion #5: Show peaks on FFT measurements

When I use FFT mode I have to use the cursors to find the frequencies of the peaks. This works but it's a lot of effort because the peaks move with the input signal and I have to constantly move the cursors to find the new values.


Suggestion: Label the highest peak on the FFT to show the frequency/dB value.


You could add a button to enable/disable the label but I'm sure I'd leave it on 100% of the time.

Much better would be to show a table of the highest peaks like some other oscilloscopes do:


Even a table with only the three or four highest peaks would be very useful because it lets you easily see if they are harmonics or not.

Maybe the table could be switched on/off using the "FFT labels" button. 

[Fungus]

Suggestion #6: More columns in .csv files.

Saving CSV files from the serial decoder is very nice but at the moment the data saved is like this:



Suggestion: Add more columns to show ASCII values and hexadecimal:

[Fungus]

Suggestion #6: Be able to lock the vertical position of channels.

When working with measurement cursors it’s very easy to accidentally move the channel traces by mistake – very annoying!

Suggestion: Add a "lock" button to the channel popup which locks the vertical position of the traces (only on the touch screen - the vertical control knob still works).



You will need an indicator on screen to show that the traces are locked (eg. at top-right). Touching the indicator could unlock the traces, making it easy for people to get out of trouble if they locked them and didn't know how to unlock them. You could even rapidly flash the 'locked' indicator whenever a user touches a trace to draw their attention to it and stop them from panicking and thinking something is broken.

[Fungus]

Suggestion #7: There is no suggestion #7!

I've had my Micsig for about a year now and that's literally all I can think of. Everything else is awesome! 

If those features could be added then the Micsig would easily be the best oscilloscope under $1000, IMHO. 

[Fungus]

Extra post for discussion:

My feature requests are:
1) Better text legibility
2) Statistics mode
3) Combine duty cycle into a single value
4) AC RMS
5) FFT improvements
6) More info in CSV files
7) Lock traces

In terms of priority, I think number (2) is the feature most people around here think is "missing" on Micsigs, eg. it came up here today. It's also very easy to implement.

After that, (4) and (5) are what would really raise the profile of the 'scope in these forums. I think I can say that many people here believe that (4) is essential in a scope.

(3) Seems trivial at first but if you implement (4) then you might need two more items in the measurement menu (AC RMS and AC CRMS) and there's only one space at the moment. Combining both pulse width measurements into a single item gives you an extra item. 

(7) Is annoying when you're trying to align cursors with the trace and you accidentally move the trace then have to go back and align the cursors again.