Thanks, Quix.  I just read that.  Peter did a good job on that article. 

I also saw the article by Jacques Gordon "Freeze Frame' where he touts the Escope as "the most powerful oscilloscope I've seen".

Guess he never saw a Pico.   

Rick,

I have seen the Escope but have not had one to analyze fist hand.  It does have some neat features.  However, if you look at the specs it's not capable of acquiring many faster automotive signals.  The max sample rate is only 200KHz.  That's using only one channel.  It's gets divided down after that with more channels deployed.  So..you samples will never be closer than 5us at best.  No rotor notches, high speed can bus, etc can be sampled that slowly.

Modis can outperform an Escope.

They do have another one out now that is better but still not even close to Pico.  Pico can sample at 1MHz per channel on each of four channels with two seconds on a single screen and then put gobs of screens into the scrolling buffer.  Nothing else even comes close.

Certainly:

Choose 50ms/div on the screen for a capture time of 13.1 seconds sampling at 10KHz.

Choose 100ms/div on the screen for a 26.2 second capture sampling at 5KHz

One channel or all four...sample rate is the same.

It's anti-zoom remember   

Hi Marc, call me Rick.  Yes I have the escan and I use it. It works for me as an additional tool for driveability problems but thats mostly because I am scan tool challenged around here. It certainly is no substitute for having the oem tool for the application.
    It is basically a generic obdII scan tool. It does a good job of graphing things like O2 sensors and fuel trims which was good for me because at the time I only had an mt2500 for a scan tool. I like scan tools that graph which the mt 2500 didn't. It also does a pretty good job of translating mode 6 data for what it's worth. It also has the maf and catalyst testing in it. I use it but I would not pass or fail either of these devices soly on what it tells me about them. If you've followed any of the threads on this tool at the iatn site then you know this part of the tool is highly controversial as to it's accuracy. I use those tests to see if it backs up any trends or data I already have but I don't use those tests to look for the problem.
      The tool kind of fills a hole in my tooling for me and that's what I primarily use it for.  I don't think the tool is what you would call in it's final version either.  With time I think the folks at ats will add more and new features to the tool as well as improve whats already there and the folks at ats are top notch when it comes to customer service. If you have any specific question about it I'll try and answer them as best I can.

Hi Tom. That was my primary reason for buying the pico. Sometimes I was a bit disappointed with the detail in the e-scope captures especially at longer time bases. The difference is immediately obvious as soon as you use the pico and even at the longer timebase captures the way the detail is still there when you zoom back in is marvelous.  I now find myself using the pico as the first choice in a scope and better yet I can use the e-scope to modify signals and watch the results on a scope where as before I would have to use triggers to get the e-scope to save a screen capture of the modified signal. In other words you could leave the scope running in the background but you couldn't use the timeing menu unless it was opened because as soon as you go back to the scope screen the signal generator will quit.  Now if I could figure out how to get the e-ignition interface to work with the pico I could have an awesome ignition scope. I'm not real clear on how the e-scope works but it's best used at the faster time bases. For example if you have your time base set to 1ms per division or 10 ms per sweep you can go to deep record and it will stream 10 seconds of data continuously at that time base and the detail will be good at that time base. If you set the time base at 20 ms per division and go to deep record it will stream 20 sec of data continuously at that time base but the detail won't be near as good as it was at 1ms per division. Mine is the earlier e-scope that works through a pcmcia card.

Hi Marc yes I have had it on vws. Like I said you'll only be able to access what info is on the generic obdII side. As far as the ve and cat efficiency test go I would not use them to condemn a maf or catalyst. From what I've seen they don't always tell the truth but I do use the test when I've acquired data that leads me to believe one of these is faulty. At this point I'm still acquiring a data base  to know when I can believe the test and when not to so I don't go looking for a problem based on what these tests tell me only to see if they backup what I already know. I think it's been said that the ecm in question knows far more about when cat efficiency is bad than any data we can acquire monitoring sensors. Basicly when I see a bad cat code I go looking for things that may have caused the ecm to make a bad decision and if I can't find anything then I believe the ecm and change the cat. The maf is another story but again I want to see data showing me it's bad other than just the ve test e-scan does. I see lot's of them that don't set a code yet after testing driveability problems they will show up as the culprit

Hi Nerdz  

I found the article online  
http://www.search-autoparts.com/searchautoparts/Tech+Advisor/Dissecting-the-myst...
Click on the Ignition waveform primer picture
as I don't have the paper magazine available over here.

Jan.