Fiber isolated probe quick look: Tek VS Micsig

[scoper007]

Got 2 x optical isolated probes in the house: Tek's IsoVu and Micsig SigOFIT  , both 1GHz bw, ran a little test on a fast edge input signal.
Not familiar with this kind of probe though  , Micsig just came and sent a demo to test, not bad so far! Tough call for boss, haha.

[Sighound36]

The Tek iso-vue probe imho is not that accurate, have compared a MSO6 with iso-vue to the Wavepro & DL-ISO on a couple of occassions in the last 12 months, given the cost of these probes is at retail more than than many scopes they would be attached to  Would also suggest that the IS0-Vue isn't that well constructed either imho.





Spoiler alert I'm a bit of the Teledyne appreciater, however it was obvious that the Lecroy unit was repeatably and consistantly more accurate then the Tek offering, they was also a small cost saving as well. For chaps on here that small saving would equate to a Rigol top of the line 12 bit 4000 series!

I do have a couple of HVFO108's I use for some of the work we reguraly perform on switchers, although we the new gan projects we require a higher bandwidth probe set up. However the probe costs here are NOT insignificant in any way!!!!

The Micsig looks intersting in the UK I believe the 1Ghz version is around £13K so around 50% reduction, our distributor will have some shortly for us to try.

In the mean time Shahriar looked at the Shaker 50Kv offering a couple of weeks back, I will be looking at one of these as well in the coming weeks to.



This maybe a quality alternative, we will see in the coming weeks.

One finial observation I would recall, one esteemed seat of leaning here in the UK has been using the Iso-vue probes for a couple or years or so, recently a couple of these probes failed (bear in mind the cost starts at £28K here in the unit with out the probe tips etc) Tek shall were very resistant to repairing these as they were  'just' out of warranty. The head of that  particular dept wan't overly enammered with that reply to his request and looked at other options including scopes. When Tek realised the situtaion on how suppilers could change  Overnight they 'decided' to replaced those iso-vue probes gratis.

Anyhow, will report back in a few weeks.

[scoper007]

Spoiler alert I'm a bit of the Teledyne appreciater, however it was obvious that the Lecroy unit was repeatably and consistantly more accurate then the Tek offering, they was also a small cost saving as well. For chaps on here that small saving would equate to a Rigol top of the line 12 bit 4000 series!

Never used a Teledyne though, but Tek's probe tip is quite troublesome to setup, and the half-hour warm-up time + 1 minute self-calibration waiting time is really pain in the xxx. Micsig does a better job, guess it's time for Tek to redesign their 300,000 CNY little gadget. 

[Sighound36]

Apart from a basic 150pS rising edge what else did you test the Iso-vue probe on?
I agree the iso-vue isn't the easist of probes to actually set up up, however its primary use is high side gate measurements for looking at small floating voltages on a larger bus outputs not a basic rise time device.

You could use a bodnar for this and thats 30pS lol

What situations did you actually use the iso-vue probe with in real world measurment points of interest can you show those examples for us please that would be more useful for the forum to digest imho

[JohnG]

You may also want to look at this offering from PMK. PMK appears to be the OEM for many scope probes. I saw one of these in action at a trade exhibition recently, and they look really nice. No affiliation with manufacturer, and I don't have one, etc.

http://www.pmk.de/en/products/firefly

John

[Sighound36]

Hi John

Looks like they make the basic high BW low impedence active probes thats pretty much all of the top four use make these probes.

May require a seperate psu for some models, can't seem to find any pricing on these?, any indication of costs at that show at all?

Thanks

Sighound

[Marco]

The Firefly seems to be using a FDA, good for bandwidth, less good for LF input impedance. No gate driver is going to care though.

[JohnG]

The probe includes a replaceable Li-ion battery in the probe head, good for 30 hours at room temp, though it decreases at other temps. An isolated power supply will also be made available.

I believe the price was around $10k-$15k (USD), but again, going on memory here.

The page I linked has datasheets for almost everything.

John