[DSO nano v3] Where did the SD card reader go in V3 ?

Just curious if you heard anything back from support?
I figure before I do any mods which would prevent me from returning the unit, I will raise a support ticket and see what seeed say about the device not including an micro sd card slot as advertised.
Thanks for the update!

The error is “No Card”, and yes, it doesn’t work, as you expected. Did not hurt to try, but, unfortunately, no change. As one of my favorite movie characters would put it, “our situation has not improved”…

zero… zip… nada… nothing… rest assured, if I ever get an answer, I will post here asap.

Noticed one strange thing last night.

Tried to save a hard copy of the screen, got the “no card” error.
Tried to save a profile, it said “ok”; wonder where it’s saved …

Meanwhile, I’ve ordered a micro SD hinged slot; thought I’d give it a try …

You probably saved it to “flash”, which is the profile it uses when it powers on. It saves to the stm32 itself. If you arrow over to change from flash to 001.cfg, etc, it will try to save to sd card. Card slot is worth a shot, but you may try to do a bit of tracing on the flash chip and make sure it doesn’t use the same pins on the stm32. Still, even if it does, it shouldn’t fry anything, but neither card slot nor flash chip will work with both installed at the same time, most likely. I’ll be excited to see the results. If they share, I’d also be interested to see if removing the flash chip would allow the card slot to work.

Ok, small update folks…

I got a response from techsupport as follows:

“Sorry for the inconvenience to you!
The DSO Nano we are shipping is a newer version with build-in storage and new app, of this version of DSO Nano, you could also save waveform, the manual is in its product page(seeedstudio.com/depot/dso-na … ?cPath=174)
Regards,
Deray”

I also looked at the manual and it now lists:
Waveform Storage 2Mbyte

So yeah, feel a little dupped now, because even the product pages still lists it as micro SD support…

Almost same reply here…

But that does not solve my problem.

Morning update; I’ve managed to get access to the www.minidso.com forum (google translate rules!) and posted there asking for help; this morning I was surprised to see a reply to my message with links to the 4.20 firmware.

Unfortunately, it still doesn’t work, but these guys were a lot more quicker to reply than Seeed’s support; I hope to be able to get my hands on the V4.00 (the original) firmware, so I can test.

In the meanwhile, I’m getting the hinged card slot today… I’m still wondering if it will work to solder it in and just use BenF firmware. I think I’ll give it a shot; judging by the bits of information I’ve got this far, most probable worst case scenario is it wont’ work, but I won’t completely brick it.

Thumbs up for the guys at minidso.com/bbs/read.php?tid=301.
As I said, the v4.20 did not work; I will try the others tonight.

Finally it works !
My DSO nano v3 is back to its original firmware, and I was able to save a hard copy to that 2Mb chip and retrieve it on the computer.

FYI : I’ve been using the following files

  • 201_L228.hex
  • 201AP264.hex
  • DS201V4.hex, which is firmware v4.00

Tried also firmware v4.11 and v4.20, but both freeze on startup and the Nano doesn’t boot up. Just in case anyone needs these files, too, I’m attaching them to this post.

Just to avoid further problems as more v3s will ship, maybe a sticky warning post stating that they should NOT update to BenF firmware, and if they do, they need to revert to the v4.00 firmware may help.
DSO Nano v3 Firmware v4.00.zip (88.5 KB)

I wish I had the source for the latest BenF, I could probably make it work, but the latest source is too old for me to bother. I don’t see any way the SD card slot could permanently brick it, either. Still like 50/50 on whether it will be recognized though. :wink:

Just to elaborate on your statement though, you CAN flash BenF, but not if you want to save waveforms/screenshots.

Right… After Stefanu123’s success with miniDSO forum, I thought I would also try and ask for layout and schematic details if available…

http://www.minidso.com/bbs/read.php?tid=304

In short the answer is:

I hope that this can clear up the setup of the flash chip, and if it is possible for people to easily replace it with a card reader.
Lets see next week…ish

Just had a look at the pics again and compared it to the M25PE16 data sheet. The two traces that are visibly shared between the cardslot pads and the flash chip are 6 and 5(on the flash chip), which are Serial Clock and Serial Data Input, respectively. They connect to 3 and 5 on the card slot pads, which are listed as Serial Clock and Serial Data Input for SPI mode, which seems to work in the same serial paged manner. Long story short, the flash chip and the card slot seem to be accessed in the same way, and still be wired correctly for both pin diagrams(both flash chip and card slot).

Upside is the card slot should work in the same manner as the flash chip, downside is you definitely have to pull the flash chip off the board while you’re trying the cardslot, or it will be paging two devices on the same channel, and neither will work.

For me it’s ok as it is right now; guess I’ll use the micro SD slots for other projects…
Made a simple calculation. One hard copy of the signal is 38Kb, which will allow me to save some 50 images to that flash chip, which is more than enough.

If you can stand the firmware, more power to ya. I don’t think I could move away from BenF after using it, with or without waveform saving. It just works so much better. As a point of interest, did they ever add 3-stage acquisition to the stock FW?

I already have a hard time with the original firmware (already posted a “stupid” question).

I managed to receive a V3 which looks exactly like the one pictured on the website, but cannot get it to read/write to the sdcard. There appears to be no internal storage. I’ve tried all of the firmwares posted in this thread and am getting pretty frustrated with it.

Dear friends,

Unfortunately DSO nano V3 with Internal memory(without SDCARD slot) will not support by BenF firmware as soon as.

Can someone clarify something for me? We can use the BenF firmware on the v3 (without SD slot), but will not be able to use the internal 2Mb storage correct?

Yes, it seems correct. Can’t tell which other functions do not work, but I can say for sure saving to that storage doesn’t.