this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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This is one of those things that seems like it has a high gadget desirability potential on the surface, but I really can't see replacing my existing perfectly functional (and probably significantly more durable) smartwatch with this. I already have one of those credit card sized pocket oscilloscopes. I can't see any need for a device more portable than that. Even for the purposes of just showing off to your nerd friends, you'd only ever really be able to do that once per nerd, and then what?
Why have I never heard of this
Bam.
To be fair, it's bigger than a credit card. But you get the idea.
Do you have any rationalizations I could use for buying this when I rarely even use a multimeter?
Well, you can hook it up to just about anything that generates any kind of signal source and use it as a decoration. Just, like, plug it in across your computer's speaker outputs or something and you'll have an instant visualizer, for instance. Or even a household outlet, and you can see just how close to 60hz your mains power actually is on a second-by-second basis. I know plenty of people who have retro tube oscilloscopes kicking around above their computer desks purely for the mad scientist vibe, and this will be a lot cheaper than one of those...
You're good at this.
They're cool, I used it as a volt probe a handful of times, or to check if a signal was moving (like, is the uart coming up at all).
I do chip/board bringup, it's a niche as hell usecase, I only used it if I didn't have a rigol around.
Later bought a portable hantek, it's basically a star trek tricorder, utterly amazing.
Theyre kind of trash, I rocked one for a while in my gear bag, used it a handful of times, mostly as a simple volt probe or "the signal is moving".
And my irl job is chip/board bringup so I'm the best use case.
The portable hantek ones though, I swear by them, they do everything and you can plug them in to usb and run them on Linux.
The credit card ones have shit probes and are just barely worth it, especially since I mostly work at higher frequencies, I wouldn't trust it past audio and I wouldn't trust the precision much around that.
If this was kickstarted 10 years ago, Smartwatches weren't nearly as prevalent back then.
I'm quite certain I was rocking an OG Pebble smartwatch in 2013. In fact, the Pebble's low power usage screen was probably the inspiration for the screen on this thing.