Liquid Instruments Moku Lab

[EEVblog]

Released today, Australian designed:
http://www.liquidinstruments.com/
Some nice specs, but USD$5k 
And iPad only, just so it can look jazzy as a stand for it?

I can't see the market for this, anyone? 

[pascal_sweden]

From the website: "Note: iPad sold separately. Minimum requirements: iPad Air or iPad mini 2 running iOS 8.4 or later. Choose your model from www.apple.com/ipad."

For this price they could have thrown in an iPad in the deal!

There is a company in Belgium that has made a similar product.
https://www.lab-nation.com/

The specs of the SmartScope from LabNation are much lower, but so is the price: 229 USD.
The device is connected with the tablet through USB.



There is also an alternative from Velleman which uses Wifi for the connection:

http://www.microwave-eetimes.com/en/no-screen-oscilloscope-uses-wi-fi-to-connect-to-tablets.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222905736

http://www.velleman.eu/products/view/?id=416586



For these cheaper devices, there can be a market. But for 5000 USD you better buy some real gear

[EEVblog]

I've spoken to them and they said the key will be in the (eventual) FPGA custom programability, like NI have with their stuff.

[jimon]

Doesn't look like they have intensity grading ...

[BravoV]

What kind of 1st tier brands scope you can buy with US$ 5K ? 

[Icarus]

Specs aren't good enough. Memory depth is too low. I can buy a Siglent less than $1000

[EEVblog]

Doesn't look like they have intensity grading ...

Of course, because it's not a real scope. Like most instruments like this it's a 12bit digitizer that you can use as a single shot capture scope. No real vertical front end etc.
You would not buy one of these if you wanted a real everyday use scope.

[EEVblog]

I've spoken to them and they said the key will be in the (eventual) FPGA custom programability, like NI have with their stuff.

To be fair, none with a 2CH 1GS/s 200MHz 16bit analog outputs.

[amyk]

I can't see the market for this, anyone? 

It's clearly for Apple fans.

[pascal_sweden]

Apple fans are computer dummies, girls with a fashion blog, or graphical designers, who can not operate complicated test measurement equipment like oscilloscopes :O)

[eas]

Apple fans are computer dummies, girls with a fashion blog, or graphical designers, who can not operate complicated test measurement equipment like oscilloscopes :O)

Ahem, dude, your ignorance and prejudice are showing.

I can't see the market for this, anyone? 

It's clearly for Apple fans.

Meh. Clearly not.

I can't imagine who the market would be for this at this price point. In some ways, the specs slightly exceed that of the NI Virtual Bench, but in others it falls far short -- at more than 2x the price.

Also, anyone notice how they claim the wired Ethernet is an asset in environments where WiFi isn't permitted...but the interface is an iPad app, which might be fine, if they even dangled the carrot of a API or protocol.

If the are leveraging work they've done and already gotten paid for, this kind of debut might be excusable. If they started from scratch, it seems completely barking insane.

[Hydrawerk]

The scope has 200MHz and 500MSa/s? This is poor for the price.

[pascal_sweden]

Dave should advise the Aussie company owners to buy this book called The Lean Startup

They obviously haven't read this book, and haven't figured out what their target market is, and how they will differentiate among the competition, whether that is through the product, or through the services.

If they have backing by risk angels for this project, these investors are certainly not people from the test industry.

The first questions should always be easy to answer before you even consider further effort in exploring a product:  "who is my target group?", "what problem are we trying to solve?", "how are we going to solve this problem", "how much easier/cheaper is our approach compared to the approach from our competitors?", "are we going to make money on the product or by selling services around?", "is our solution a one time shot, or can we use it as the foundation for an innovative platform with more products to come out of it later on?", "why haven't other companies thought about this?", "are the benefits that high, that consumers and companies will be that eager to update/replace their current products?", "is our scope really a new kid on the block, or is is it just another next-door scope in the row? ".

If it takes too long time to answer these questions, or if the answers are very complex, conditional, and come with hazzle, go back to the drawing board

[GlowingGhoul]

What were they thinking? 

Is this the "Pay a (big) premium for less functionality from an unknown brand" sales model? 

[MagicSmoker]

The scope has 200MHz and 500MSa/s? This is poor for the price.

Agreed - my beloved Tek THS720 has 500MSa/s for a 100MHz bandwidth... and it's 20 years old.

I do think that a tablet would be the perfect display for all sorts of instruments as it would either save a lot of cost and development effort and/or allow more time/money/effort to be spent on the signal processing part of the instrument.

Sadly, the Moku Lab does not seem to deliver on either benefit.

[benizl]

They obviously haven't read this book, and haven't figured out what their target market is, and how they will differentiate among the competition, whether that is through the product, or through the services.

Hi Pascal, I'm one of the Engineers at Liquid Instruments and thought I'd quickly jump in on that point. We grew out of research labs in a University, recognising that while there's competition and value in the mainstream T&M market, we get thoroughly ripped off in the more niche products. The Moku as it stands replaces a $5k siggen and a rack of NI gear whose only purpose in life is to make slow, high-precision measurements. With some of the instruments under development, it will also replace and improve upon a $10+k PID controller, various filter boxes and other exciting things I can't yet talk about .

We know (of course!) that it doesn't yet compete as a straight scope, or even for most Engineer's lab benches where you might occasionally use the siggen but almost never use anything else.  That's for rev 2!

Ben.

[ywara]

we get thoroughly ripped off in the more niche products...a rack of NI gear whose only purpose in life is to make slow, high-precision measurements.

I can't count the number of times I looked at an NI product and realized I could bill $100/hour for my time and still be more affordable by creating my own solution.

I am guessing the aim of this product is less being a piece of regular test gear and more being a viable data capture/generation module for experimental, usually computerized, systems like our favorite overpriced NI boxes.

[nuno]

Can we have more than 1 instrument active at the same time (when it makes sense due to shared hw), like the scope and fun gen? Sharing the screen?

[EEVblog]

The Moku as it stands replaces a $5k siggen and a rack of NI gear whose only purpose in life is to make slow, high-precision measurements. With some of the instruments under development, it will also replace and improve upon a $10+k PID controller, various filter boxes and other exciting things I can't yet talk about .

In that case it's understandable and a viable replacement. The million dollar question though is how many other people does that serve a need for?
IME those who buy that $5K Keysight siggen and NI rack generally aren't looking to replace it all with a single $5K instrument.
And also, the physical form factor could be a deal breaker for many of those customers as well, because probably more often than not such gear goes into a rack or dedicated test station that need more permanency and robustness than a fancy looking desk thing with an iPad propped on top.
That being said, there is a niche for everything, and there is a lot to be said for being #1 in a niche market.

[dadler]

Is the target market hipster EEs, concerned primarily with aesthetics? Starbucks-based product design?

Ooh I can't wait until someone comes out with the Scope Watch, just like the Apple Watch.

Maybe it will pair with this device so you can probe on the go.

[nukie]

This thing goes out of fashion as quickly as Apple devices.

Sorry I am old fashion lunch box benchtop device. Most advance connection for me is USB not some proprietary connector from a fruit company selling gold plated watch with a LCD screen.

[benizl]

Can we have more than 1 instrument active at the same time (when it makes sense due to shared hw), like the scope and fun gen? Sharing the screen?

Yep! Some pairings work extra-nicely together, e.g. osc can trigger from siggen outputs without using up one of your input channels, specan (will, soon) optionally use the siggen as tracking generator etc.
Ben.

[pascal_sweden]

They obviously haven't read this book, and haven't figured out what their target market is, and how they will differentiate among the competition, whether that is through the product, or through the services.

Hi Pascal, I'm one of the Engineers at Liquid Instruments and thought I'd quickly jump in on that point. We grew out of research labs in a University, recognising that while there's competition and value in the mainstream T&M market, we get thoroughly ripped off in the more niche products. The Moku as it stands replaces a $5k siggen and a rack of NI gear whose only purpose in life is to make slow, high-precision measurements. With some of the instruments under development, it will also replace and improve upon a $10+k PID controller, various filter boxes and other exciting things I can't yet talk about .

We know (of course!) that it doesn't yet compete as a straight scope, or even for most Engineer's lab benches where you might occasionally use the siggen but almost never use anything else.  That's for rev 2!

Ben.

Thanks for the background information! I seem to have misjudged and was too early in drawing any conclusions.

Wish you good luck with your product! I am an entrepreneur myself, and know the challenges for launching new products and finding the right niche.

[MagicSmoker]

...We grew out of research labs in a University, recognising that while there's competition and value in the mainstream T&M market, we get thoroughly ripped off in the more niche products. The Moku as it stands replaces a $5k siggen and a rack of NI gear whose only purpose in life is to make slow, high-precision measurements....

Ah, that is an interesting value proposition. Two suggestions for tackling this market: 1) you have to prove to university profs that your equipment will give equivalent results to the standard NI gear, preferably via side-by-side comparisons using experiments reported in recent journal articles or technical papers; 2) you have to be in business for a few years before the profs (and/or their purchasing managers) will feel confident buying your product - very much a Catch-22 situation, there.

So, to deal with the latter issue where you have to be around for years before you get sales but won't likely be able to survive for years without sales, I would start with less-ambitious and less-expensive products for the same market to act as a gateway drug to the hard stuff.