4 ms·

I encourage you to read this sentence out loud, real slowly. Maybe look at a picture of an oscilloscope while you do it. If you take all the critical chips out

I encourage you to read this sentence out loud, real slowly. Maybe look at a picture of an oscilloscope while you do it. If you take all the critical chips out of an oscilloscope, remove the silicon dice from their encapsulation, you still take up more area than any smartwatch. Just the main processor is typically larger than an Apple watch. On top of that you need 1-2 ADC chips of a similar size, several hundred MB of RAM chips, a ton of discrete components that form the very sensitive frontend, then you also need a battery and a display, ports, and mounting hardware. This is like saying Intel has been selling i7 processors for decades, so they should be able to pack it into a watch. Packing an oscilloscope into a watch is several orders of magnitude more complex than you seem to think. Oscilloscopes of any configuration are many orders of magnitude more complex than you imply here.

Aurornis 3y ago
> you still take up more area than any smartwatch. Just the main processor is typically larger than an Apple watch. On top of that you need 1-2 ADC chips of a similar size, several hundred MB of RAM chips, I think you’re overestimating the functionality of this smartwatch. They didn’t really make a full oscilloscope with hundreds of megabytes of RAM and high sample rates and many effective bits of precision. They just used a microcontroller with a built-in ADC and exposed those ADC inputs with some input protection and filtering. Yes it’s more than a watch, but making a simple oscilloscope out of a micro with an ADC is a relatively simple EE project. It’s often done as a small project for EE students. The real challenge was making a UI, packaging it, and shipping a hardware project to a small number of people.
aeyes 3y ago
Maybe I should have written it out: They sold several "oscilloscopes" with similar feature set in very small form factors before. The smallest device being 5x3cm in size. This is the website where you can see the product line up: https://www.gabotronics.com/ https://www.gabotronics.com/ Of course this isn't a full featured oscilloscope, it never promised to be one.
- turnsout 3y ago
  Have you ever shipped a new hardware product of your own design? It doesn't matter if you already have the electronics ironed out. It's still hard.

Aurornis 3y ago

> you still take up more area than any smartwatch. Just the main processor is typically larger than an Apple watch. On top of that you need 1-2 ADC chips of a similar size, several hundred MB of RAM chips, I think you’re overestimating the functionality of this smartwatch. They didn’t really make a full oscilloscope with hundreds of megabytes of RAM and high sample rates and many effective bits of precision. They just used a microcontroller with a built-in ADC and exposed those ADC inputs with some input protection and filtering. Yes it’s more than a watch, but making a simple oscilloscope out of a micro with an ADC is a relatively simple EE project. It’s often done as a small project for EE students. The real challenge was making a UI, packaging it, and shipping a hardware project to a small number of people.

aeyes 3y ago

Maybe I should have written it out: They sold several "oscilloscopes" with similar feature set in very small form factors before. The smallest device being 5x3cm in size. This is the website where you can see the product line up: https://www.gabotronics.com/ https://www.gabotronics.com/ Of course this isn't a full featured oscilloscope, it never promised to be one.

turnsout 3y ago
Have you ever shipped a new hardware product of your own design? It doesn't matter if you already have the electronics ironed out. It's still hard.