2018 Roadshow, scope owners not invited!! Really??

[Technician]

Thanks Phil I'm on to it straight away.

[Martyn]

Your email has been received and you will be contacted later today by the Roadshow team

[Mark Dalton]

This post sounds like it's more about the availability of training than who's allowed to go to roadshows.
Roadshows are always going to be about flogging product, that's why it's called a show.
For the guys who are commenting about the lack of training. Do you want training on how to use the product OR how to interpret what the product tells you?
In terms of it's product support I think in some ways Pico has gotten into things that are an aside to it's product and it's easy to get sucked into thinking Pico is an Automotive Diagnostic Company.
Pico are experts in making Oscilloscopes, that's their thing. To support the sale of there product they've shown us a whole load of tests we can do with it, how to set it up and and what results we might expect.
But at the end of the day Pico's customers are supposed the be the car experts, not Pico.
My analogy here would be to an Arduino or Rasberry Pi. They have a product, tell you it's capabilities, after that it's up to you to get on with it.

[PhilS]

Hi Mark

thanks as always for the contributions on the forum.

The Roadshow is absolutely aimed at non-scope, and beginner (maybe up to intermediate) level scope confidence. As you say, it is not training for intermediate/advanced users (there are many other places to obtain that), but is more about us meeting a larger group of technicians who face diagnostic challenges and haven't really considered scopes or had not been confident in using them.
Our goal is to meet a lot more people than we would see through exhibitions, and have a group that might (like last night) have some discussions between themselves.
We will continue to do more in this area and are looking at ways where we can provide more online access (webinars etc) for the many technicians who will not be able to attend a roadshow. We can probably extend this to giving more online (as opposed to the videos we have on YouTube) access to the Pico experts.

Although we do have some outstanding technician experience within the team (Steve Smith, Ben Martins and Philip Rutt), their focus is to support the product with more help, guidance and examples of how to use the product and tackling real diagnostic problems with the scope. They do try to help forum users with vehicle problems as you will see from many examples, and case studies are always real-life issues, but we do not offer a technical hotline or resource for help with 'fix my car'. There are quite a few companies who offer that service but do charge for it in order to fund the army of experts available to answer questions.

So thanks to you and the many other technicians on this forum who do choose to help each other, based on understanding the problems and sharing that experience.

Best regards
Phil

[Shooter]

Mr Dalton has hit the nail on the head !

It seems that there is a shift in the "technicians" thinking.

With the purchase of a Scan tool the expectation was very simple: What sensor do I replace to fix this car ?

Now, months, years, decades later, the scan tool didn't live up to the promise, that onus has now been placed on the Scope. Pico, victims of their own success, are expected to show "which sensor" in a waveform.

The Pico is one of the best resources a technician can have in his armoury, but you do have to first and foremost be a technician to gain from the Pico.

I would worry if a hospital porter was left to analyse my Heart ECG (Which is a scope)

If you do not know what signal to expect before you make the measurement then why make the measurement.

[prviet]

I don't know if there will be another roadshow this year or not? If yes, will the activities be better every year? What do you think if this year is reorganized?

[Technician]

Mr Dalton has hit the nail on the head !

It seems that there is a shift in the "technicians" thinking.

With the purchase of a Scan tool the expectation was very simple: What sensor do I replace to fix this car ?

Now, months, years, decades later, the scan tool didn't live up to the promise, that onus has now been placed on the Scope. Pico, victims of their own success, are expected to show "which sensor" in a waveform.

The Pico is one of the best resources a technician can have in his armoury, but you do have to first and foremost be a technician to gain from the Pico.

I would worry if a hospital porter was left to analyse my Heart ECG (Which is a scope)

If you do not know what signal to expect before you make the measurement then why make the measurement.

There is a very true saying, it goes something like...

Don't ask a question unless you already know the answer.

The vehicle manufacturer has made the electrics of a vehicle very reliable nowadays, and when problems do occur, seldom does changing parts cure the problems we face.

The good thing about hospital equipment is that the design is such that it does not rely on the staff to monitor it or read it, although they can, the equipment software has built in controls that monitor the patient and signal alerts when parameters are out of range.

Now wouldn't it be good if say the scope software could analyse a sensor input voltage/frequency and have a built in program that compares the data it reads to alert the operator that the sensor is working out of range!

A few years ago I posted a thread on here about a MINI and minimum operating voltage levels about some sensor (sorry can't remember which) but then this other forum member (Master Tech) he said he was jumped down my throat and slammed my post because of his understanding of voltage logic levels and the electrics being 12V. Some people, maybe a few only understand that some electronic components will operate a very low voltage levels. I remember back in the late 1980's at college when we tested a single point injector triggering. The idea of the test was to establish the minimum voltage the injector would trigger at reliably to ensure good fuel delivery. I can't remember the exact figure but something around 7 to 7.5V I think we got to and the injector was still good to go.

Look at crankshaft sensors, say the inductive type, what sort of minimum voltage level would a tech expect that sensor to trigger at and still give reliable output control!

I've got to say that I don't see a lot of component failure present when problems are present. Some of the diagnostics are very deeply involved in networking thesedays and the information in each data frame and buffer is not available when required.

Maybe I'm opening a can of worms and Pico might think about the future of their written software to incorporate some ideas like these to help scope users determine the root cause of system failures!