EEVblog #1317 - $140 2CH 100MHz Fnirsi Tablet Oscilloscope Review

hi a while ago we took a look at this $70 hundred megahertz as pocket oscilloscope from thirsty or nursey however you want to pronounce it fir see a Chinese company and it will it left a lot to be desired but no it was 70 bucks that probably had some nice use as well they've sent their latest whiz-bang one check this out for twice the price are still a ridiculously cheap hundred and forty hundred thirty-eight Yankee bucks delivered this is their new dual channel touchscreen a hundred megahertz sort of like tablet e-type scope even they're not quite sure what it is cuz if you have a look at the manually it's the two channel plate oscilloscope you're good test tool or is it a table oscilloscope which is what they've got on the box I don't know a table oscilloscope plate oscilloscope tablet oscilloscope anyway it's thick as bro look at that but let's check this out because a lot of people are interested in these low-cost scopes I mean a hundred and forty bucks even though it's ridiculous the amount of performance you get being per buck you get in a modern like a four channel sub 400 US dollar oscilloscope like your regular bench oscilloscope absolutely fantastic but some people of course still don't want to spend that much and if you're doing a lab on a budget I've done videos on that then these low cost things for a hundred and forty US dollars this looks like to be vastly better value then the little pocket thing we saw before so anyway let's check it out hopefully this one's um yeah a lot more usable than the last one actually they're really not sure what this is is it the table oscilloscope is it a plate oscilloscope or is it I just noticed a flat oscilloscope your channel flat oscilloscope 100 megahertz one geek sample are per second two channels 800 by 480 as a capacitive touchscreen now that resistance rubbish the three nanosecond rise 240 K memory depth which is more than enough you need on a portable scope like this no worries whatsoever although it does claim to have one gig of memory total so I can store up to a thousand screens plus a thousand waveforms and you know stuff like that but yeah whatever and 50 millivolts to 500 volts input well you're not gonna get 500 volts unless you get proper probes through it anyway in times 1 mode it is our 40 volts rated so yeah to get you 400 volts rating you actually need to use the times 10 probe with it so you got the external a divider building six thousand milliamp hour battery don't know what that is in what hours and standby standby time a usable time of four hours so the claim I won't be testing that here it's not a bad form factor I rather like it I'm not don't really like trying to get this up it's almost impossible nice and neat fits on the bench don't know about the probes coming out and top probably would have been better on the side but yeah is what it is and on the top we've got a real clunk and power switch a microUSB people who would like to send us BC these days but near lovely USB micro fanboys out there we've got a one kilohertz test signal on here noise for a compensating year times 2m pros just two inputs no our probe detection of course 440 US dollars you wouldn't expect it over I guess over load I guess is that like some peak I don't read the manual hang on anyway this thing is a thin R&D weapon it's anti Burnage humanized it's hydromatic why it's greased lightning [Music] [Applause] [Music] and it counts with two switchable times ten probes supposedly hundred megahertz you know they adapt they seem okay remember this one hundred and forty bucks delivered with probes ie Wow and as with the previous one the manuals been how you doing anyway I can't find anything about what that over lead is leash I use graphic display function cat what I don't know is that some sort of new method anyway um this is a flat panel oscilloscope yeah they could stand to improve their manual but anyway it looks to be of course a vastly better user interface than what we got on the previous little pocket thing as you'd expect with you know a large 800 by 600 touchscreen display and yeah they got you know analysis of common problems and and stuff like that Commons circuit test methods and they've tried that sort of you know you had crystal measurements exactly like we got before I believe you know okay any weight enough mucking around yes I will do a teardown but let's turn it on first it's the 10 13 d by the way for those playing along at home and fur see and that boots up pretty quick I like that sorry I'm gonna have to fix the glare unfortunately is very glare you can see my camera there with my microphone and whatnot there we go if I move it over here I've got mostly wall or reflecting off the background there but let's let's have a look yep I I thought we might be able to move him and we can just drag the waveforms so that's pretty neat so there's the interface that we had before on this thing it lifts a lot to be desired this one's up much better it automatically defaults to your Peter peak and RMS and frequency and stuff on there so that's really quite nice channel 1 and channel 2 they almost physically line up 10 microseconds per division like it would have been nice to have at least some manual controls but if we want to change I mean we can I presume we can pinch no no well that's disappointing I expected to be able to expand the time base instead all I get is moving so that's hugely disappointing move fast gotta go like how do you change the time base what I want to click on that wait how do I change the time base channel one okay there we go we can pop down the channel one menu channel one off on or off open FFT okay so you turn your FFT on from your channel menu okay well nothing popped up couple in AC or DC coupling and the probe mode times 1 times 10 or times 100 so that's handy if you did have a external times 100 high voltage probe so yeah with 50 millivolts are per division minimum then like on times 1 then really you're not going to be able to get really low-level stuff on this so of course I haven't read the manual because you shouldn't have to you should just be able to turn on a scope and it should work intuitively and sure enough you know you tap on entire channel 1 but how do you change the volts per division setting like I can't pinch and zoom but I haven't figured out how to change the time base yet and once again I haven't figured out how to change the vertical let's have a look what's in the menu system setting picture view waveform view USB connection ok not too concerned about that grid brightness okay baseline calibration like it looks like these controls over here are permanently here and like okay you've got run and stop up there why you just wouldn't have it over here I don't know but okay I plugged my probe into the 1 kilohertz let's try our auto set shall we oh by the way you can hear the relays clicking which is nice it's got input realized Wow really it can't even auto set a 1 kilohertz calibration signal are you kidding me wow that that is a complete and epic fail oh oh it's so much hope for this thing oh I figured it out look just by bumming around control volts plus - well you know it's easy once you know but gee ok channel - geez II can barely even read that it says channel channel 2 there I yeah the reflection is just bad in the lab here because of the angle of the bench and the lights and stuff like that but the screen is really quite we got trigger menu auto trigger see I like why do they have split the words up like that that just looks ridiculous normal single or it's just no that's just our triggering channel one let's try auto setting our auto set works but you've got to select the channel one it can't or do across channels okay but it should have like it should have din more on that but oh there we go it auto set differently this time Wow hopefully you heard the relays there oh I didn't choose that time base to begin with I don't know hmm inconsistent auto set functionality anyway has set the trigger to the middle so we can actually adjust how do we adjust our trigger level can we just drag I'm dragging it down look and it springs back why it's like an auto 50 percent trigger level and it always chooses if you can't override it what maybe you can do it in normal mode perhaps let's go to normal mode ah there you go yep is that the same as the other one yeah you've got to choose normal trigger mode in order to set the trigger level that's not how other oscilloscopes work that's just that's just wrong and really for single-shot mode like I would like to see like a single shot button here like a run stop single like cursors like bury those away okay so we run in now and so you can see it updating there why it can't get the frequency of that like why that is the easiest signal possible to get a square wave like that we got more than enough divisions on the screen anyway if we stop it right the thing is we've got 240 K points of memory it looks like it's got some data outside the screen what got two screens worth or something like that but 240 K points is a a fairly decent amount of memory for a scope especially for this price it's more than adequate for most tasks and I still haven't figured out how to use it horizontal time base why am i flatline is my signal suddenly vanished I'm a continuous one kilohertz signal move fast move slow it's what's this ripple on the top what is all this garbage like this is some sort of a listen so eight here the time base increases the key area that is the way from his push horizontal in the streak the area to the left of the center line is the key area what I got it look you've got to tap over here on this side 200 microseconds per dat whoa it's not even it doesn't even respond properly and tap on this side is it so that's going up in your time base but doesn't always respond and then tap on this side of the screen presumably anywhere but it doesn't respond most of the time Wow and I'm in fast mode don't move I seem to be in a sweet spot am i here we go here we go oh it's ad wise it would you see that that waveform shifted wow this is just this is terrible Muriel okay it seems to be reacting now why it wasn't doing it and then yeah it's some aliasing thing okay now it seems to be operating okay either side of the center line there seems to do it so if you accidentally touch it you're gonna change your time base but anyway look right let's assume we're gonna do 240 K memory let's stop and then ah there we go we can zoom in okay there we go great and then we can oh look we can't we can't zoom in and see the rest of the data that is ridiculous why it only allows us to shift like two screens worth but I can go up like that okay cuz that's where we that's the data we sampled a when you zoom in you can't then scroll through the rest of it why what what sort of limitation is that that's just nuts that's a real shame it's a decent usable amount of memory no I just don't like this at all and how do you reset your horizontal I I just don't know you just got to drag it I guess oboe did I get rid of it there no I just got to drag it back to the middle like yes and I'm getting once again much more responsive control out of it now so I'm not sure what the deal was before but anyway yeah look yeah we're not exactly centered on our thing and if you try and move it drag it that way it just drags the entire waveform really so oh and also there's something very strange with the one kilohertz test signal it is not from ground here and yes I have verified this on benchtop scope and you put it in AC mode it doesn't automatically change you'll to get out of the menu and then it goes into a Simo but yeah I don't like how it all shifts around unfortunately one of the problems is is the limited volts per division up here and this is as low as we go so I'm feeding in a 1 volt p2p signal and that's the best we can get that you know it can't go any further than that so yeah this is not for low-level signals and the single-shot mode is just like silly I mean Auto don't even update while you've got the Menu on and you just because you don't have a dedicated single-shot button over here you go there and it stopped at waveform updating so you can go into single and and it doesn't like oh I think it just might have updated things so a bit of waveform change over here but yeah it's just its usability just leave so much to be desired really then if you go into measurement here you can choose to channel 2 and channel 1 why it's like swapped like that I don't know it doesn't match everything else bit crazy anyway you can turn on various things and it will add them down to the bottom here so that's kind of cool but unfortunately they're not transparent so it overlays your waveform and I do believe you can just save pic like that so you can just screenshot it and it will save it internally it should appear as they drive when you plug in the USB and it's got a similar like picture view and waveform review it's like these are just different screenshots so you can actually call them up like that it's it's a bit rudimentary but it's there ok so I'm just doing the baseline calibration here before I do some more performance tests on this thing to see if it really does have a hundred mega it's been with because if you saw last time it did but there are a lot of issues with it so I'm still go on okay I've been waiting for like five minutes or something this is getting ridiculous I I think it's locked up okay so test the bandwidth with a 50 ohm load directly on it we're in times one mode here at one megahertz we're getting our two volts peak-to-peak so we're looking for where it drops to one point one four volts if we go up let's change the time base it's not doing good all right let's call that about 22 megahertz so the claim of a hundred megahertz is absolute BS of course if you read the manual that says all you've got to use the times ten pro bla bla and it doesn't matter by the way whether or not you have it on x 10 position that's me and that's just going to change is scaling down here the front end and log bandwidth direct signal in is only 22 megahertz 3 DB down and they give you a solemn reminder the bandwidth of the x 10 one probe file is 5 megahertz yes I've actually done a video explaining why x 1 probes only have a like a 5-under 10 megahertz bandwidth the bandwidth of the timestamp probe file is a hundred megahertz when measuring higher than five megahertz you need to turn the switch on the probe to the tight end position oscilloscope otherwise this even we were greatly attenuated this is the case with the SIL Scopes bla bla bla ok let's try and calibrate this thing so I'm feeding in a one kilohertz square wave I've got a 50 ohm terminated load here and I'm using a proper BNC adapter we're on times 10 I'm using this supply the probe so everything's hunky-dory I've given a tweak at the correct tongue angle so we should be ready to go and we're supposed to be 3 volts peak-to-peak we're getting 3.2 yeah ok let's just run with that I can't get any better it's just that's what it is and check this out we're getting the same interleaved sampling problem that we'll get in on this cuz this thing did not have the claim 500 mix sample per second sample rate and I I think when we do a teardown of this we'll find this one doesn't have the claim one gig sample per second either and that's how they get in a way with the cheap price it is not a true 1 gig sample per second as they claim down here anyway I am now feeding in 5 volts peak-to-peak at a hundred well that's a hundred megahertz okay look at it going silly buggers if I go to 101 megahertz it's nice and stable if I go to 100 it's weird us to know if I go down to 99 it's stable look at that so there is some interleaved sampling weirdness going on there whoa we've got some peak there look at that at fifty Meg 60 Meg go down go down forty Meg it's just yet it's all over the shop that's terrible Muriel that is just weird go 200 megahertz and yet that's the fastest time base we can get it and it just it does not like that at all yet go to 101 megahertz and we at least get our sine wave and then it will eventually taper off no it's it's just ridiculous it's it's almost a joke if you want to look at the alst and we're at 101 megahertz here the fastest ten milliseconds per division can't go any faster than that we go down it's okay we go there my become a gutter and then of course it's the wrong frequency because there's OLS in so yeah and I'm at forty three megahertz even though it's showing only 400 of these shows 43 occasionally there and watch this if I jump up to 44 boom look at that amplitude difference and that's exactly what we found on the pocket one two it had the weirdest response no it's not my CD and that's been confirmed with direct coax connections and all sorts of stuff so you know it's not the probing system it's the scope front-end itself the little pocket one worked exactly the same way so I think when we do a teardown of this it's going to be almost the same sort of our front-end and sampling system on this they've just got a much nicer gooey touch interface and yeah it exhibits that same weird thing at exactly hundred megahertz that we saw on the other one ninety nine megahertz a hundred megahertz it just comes and guts up we're in auto mode one hundred and one megahertz works fine if we go into normal mode they'll do exactly the same thing just comes a gutter yep there's some inally sampling it's this is not one gig sample per second yeah you'll find this is much lower it's doing inless interleaving sampling and it's not true real-time sampling rate that we've been used to in modern scopes for the last twenty years this is how they get the cost down so inside this thing that we do actually have some changes check this out we've got an out error cyclone for here we've got an internal Westar micro SD card slot so that would be noisy that I contained the firmware but I suspect it might just be the the waveform memory stuff like that so whereas before we just had an ARM processor in the thing but in the rest of it there's our battery up there so you could actually fit this with a larger battery if you wanted to you know increase our the capacity that'd be nice so one of the other major changes is of course aren't we've got a dual ADC down here now once again looks like they've rubbed the numbers off this thing but somebody did a reverse engineering on the previous pocket one and it was an analog devices 1890 to 88 so yeah it was nowhere near the sample rate that they were claiming so what are they actually running up here they've changed it aha that's an all winner arm process of the f1 see 100s I'll try and put up a datasheet for that but yeah they've they've changed that from the esti arm that they had before so so that's controlling the LCD interface you can see that there and they've just got you know like an 8 bit data interface or something going over to the cyclone over here which was which is the acquisition engine sure as you can see the ATC's can't see any markings on those at all so the front nd here is that certainly changed from the previous one I'll put up a side-by-side shot here of the old pocket one this new one actually has three mechanical relays here and it doesn't have the whole bunch of us switching trainees that we saw before so they've they have actually changed that but I'd suspect that the ADC is exactly the same as they are using before but yet it has changed unfortunately of the front-end seems to still have that weird peak in it and it's look know these things like a you know twenty thirty megahertz scope alright let's probe the clock on this thing let's assume it's an 1892 88 or clone equivalent so that's pin two 47 over here and pin 47 there you go wah wah wah wah that's a hundred megahertz sample clock it's got two different clocks one for it's a dual-channel 100 Meg sample ADC because this is supposed to be a hundred Meg sample ADC assuming it is that exact one but anyway it is running at a hundred make samples per second there are two different clock lines here because there's actually a dual channel ADC and yes I'm on ten nanoseconds per division among the highest sample rate and if I change that will see the clock change but I've already done that on the Pocket one and it's exactly the same thing so yeah they're lying this is not one example well it's one example effective sample rate or equivalent time sample rate as they used to call it back in the old days but yeah ever since the Tektronix tds 200 series scope was that 25 years ago now or something or jeez it's got to be pushing that they were a genuine one gig sample per second for 100 megahertz bandwidth you know ten times higher sample rate than analog bandwidth and yet no this is not a real time let's go this is why it's you know it's useful for pretty much anything over like you know 20 30 megahertz something like that yeah I mean you've got to have a really good triggering system to try and get equivalent time sampling of course you really ultra-high expensive high bandwidth you know scopes like you know your twenty gig bandwidth scopes and things like that though I usually operate on equivalent time sampling but they're got spectacularly good trigger systems and everything else and this thing no it's just built down to a price I've just got an all winner process we're going to now terror cyclone for FPGA here with the sample memory in it and just some chair too cheap possibly clone 100 mmm example per second ABCs and they're trying to do in a in a live sampling on this and they're just coming to gutter but it's actually gonna be 200 make samples per second why because each one of these ad C's is a Joule 100 makes sample ADC and they've got two separate clock inputs ones on this side and ones on this side over here here's the analog input so if they're driving both our clocks here you could actually drive them out of phase to each other so that you effectively get a 200 make sample per second ADC you've just got to feed the input channel into both and sure enough here is the output of this op-amp up here which drives that just looks like it's jumping under there it's going across here and it's going through this resistor here into you notice one of the inputs here and sure enough one of the other inputs here so they are driving and using both channels of that ADC it does seem to be an identical pin out to the 80 92 88 but you can see that the other one it goes over to this channel here so yeah there you know in theory they could actually are combine the two if you went single channel but I don't see them doing that whatsoever so I feed it in a 1 megahertz signal here into channel 1 I've turned off channel 2 just to see if it can actually use or for a DC's on the one channel but no it can't it's physically you can see it it's not feeding I've got a 1 mega it's test signal there it's there but it's not on the other a DC input chip so they're not linking the signal from one channel to the other to utilize both a DC's so yep sorry 200 make samples per second a real-time sample rate that's it good per channel that's alright and look I won't even bother and go in and check out the FFT and other you know little functions and things like that it's like me this thing is really built out of price you're getting exactly what you expect from a hundred and forty dollar u.s. dual channel portable scope like this you get what you pay for it's built down to price you're not getting your true one gig sample per second so you're not to get you true 100 megahertz bandwidth and the front ends a bit how you're doing and it's a response and performance and stuff like they note this thing once again just like this pocket one here it's a bit of a toy and well just like this pocket one for twice the price you do actually get two channels and 200 makes sample for second channel so as long as you limit this thing to say I say it's like twenty or thirty megahertz bandwidth then it's probably okay but it's got like software issues is like that triggering things and an automated frequency doesn't work properly and they actually tell you that in the manual of how to get around it and make it work and things like this and it's just the hard way is fine like I really like the form factor and the user interface is okay yeah it's it's just got no spit and polish whatsoever and it really good base hardware for like a dual channel portable 20 megahertz scope it's pretty fine as long as you don't want to do low signal measurement and maybe if somebody could come up with like an open-source software for it to make it you know a bit better and stuff like that that would be nice you know I it's disappointing I expected them to add more spit and polish to it over the the pocket one but obviously they couldn't do that for the price yet and you really don't expect it you can't expect miracles for 140 bucks delivered it it is what it is and hey it's a kind of a real handy tool if you're after like a dual-channel portable little 20 mega scope and you've if you've only got sub hundred and fifty dollars to spend and you want to scope it you know if you're a beginner it's probably gonna do alright so yeah as long as you don't expect much from it and you get to know it's you know quirks and limitations and things then it's a neat little tool anyway thank you very much first for us sending that one in I mean like as an oscilloscope you can't give it a thumbs up as a recommended thing but as always bang per buck is there anything else on the market for a hundred and fifty bucks in a portable form factor like this so yeah you've got to make up your own mind whether or not you know this thing is suitable for your needs and certainly if you only got 150 bucks well there might not be anything Betty can maybe argue it like a pc-based scope perhaps might give you our better performance for the that sort of low-end price but then again it's not doesn't have a nice little compact form factor battery-powered touchscreen 7-inch job' like this so yeah it's certainly an interesting option I'll Lincoln first sees Aliexpress store down below because 100 lights amazing we can get four hundred and forty bucks you would have killed for this 20 years ago yeah a bit more spit-and-polish would have been nice and I just don't even market it as one gig sample for second hundred megahertz it's just it's just ridiculous to even try that people would be happy if this was marketed as a dual channel 20 megahertz hundred mix sample per second thing with all the battery powered and the touchscreen and bit more spit-and-polish in the user interface and it'll be a total winner so yeah anyway let us know your thoughts down below it's an interesting device a hundred and forty bucks anyway hope you enjoyed it if you did give it a big thumbs up and as always discuss in the comments down below or over on the eevblog forum where i'm sure everyone will be talking about this thing and yeah like analyzing the hardware and stuff like that I put in some old post some high-res photos over and the eevblog four on thread for this one so anyway hope you liked it catch you next time [Music]

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 214,229

Rating: 4.7722096 out of 5

Keywords: eevblog, video, fnirsi-1013d review, fnirsi-1013d digital tablet oscilloscope, FNIRSI-1013D, fnirsi, tablet oscilloscope, portable oscilloscope

Id: 5iwtDwJlbWk

Length: 29min 58sec (1798 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 04 2020