Jug ScopeHere is what the right setup buys you: a clear, steady picture on screen, every time you reach into a cylinder. That is not a small thing. The whole value of an inspection rides on the quality of the images, and the quality of the images starts with the borescope and a solid connection. Get this part right once and the rest of the job — capturing the eleven views, reviewing them, comparing them over time — is built on a foundation you can trust.
Good news: connecting is meant to take seconds, not minutes. You join the borescope, open Jug Scope, and the app does the rest — it scans for the camera, connects, and puts a live picture on screen. This section covers which borescopes work well, how to connect over WiFi or USB, and what to do on the rare occasion the picture does not appear.
For owners — You only have to learn this once. A borescope you can connect to in seconds, every time, is the difference between an inspection you will actually do twice a year and one you keep putting off. Pick a supported scope and the connection becomes a non-event.
For shops — A connection that just works is shop throughput. Every tech connects the same way to the same supported hardware, so nobody loses a billable half-hour wrestling with a flaky camera, and the picture quality is consistent across the whole team.
3.1 Choosing a borescope
The borescope is the one piece of gear Jug Scope cannot supply, so it is worth choosing well. For a piston GA engine you want a thin, articulating probe that can reach down a spark-plug hole, bend to look at a valve, and put a sharp, well-lit image on screen. The scopes below are the ones the app supports.
Supported borescopes:
- Vividia W03 from Oasis Scientific (WiFi, iPhone and iPad). The WiFi borescope Jug Scope's connection flow was originally built and tuned around; connects directly over WiFi with no separate box.
- Vividia VA-B2 AirBox (WiFi, iPhone and iPad).
- Oasis/Vividia U-101 (USB, iPad).
- Ralcam F4A — a cable borescope for iPhone or iPad. It connects over its own cable, Lightning or USB-C.
- Teslong TD500 — supported over WiFi.
- Depstech WF028 — supported over WiFi. A budget option; it has no articulating tip.
Caution — Probe diameter matters. Some installations are tight. Check the borescope's diameter against your engine's spark-plug holes before you buy.
3.2 Choosing how to connect
Use a WiFi borescope, the Ralcam F4A (it connects over its own cable, Lightning or USB-C), or the built-in camera. On iPad, the Oasis/Vividia U-101 also connects over USB with its USB adapter.
WiFi — works on any iPhone or iPad. Most WiFi borescopes (including the VA-B2 AirBox) create their own small WiFi network. You join that network from iOS Settings, open Jug Scope, and connect. The setup is portable — no cable to manage — which makes WiFi a good choice on an iPhone or an iPad.
For shops — Standardize on one connection mode across your benches and your techs stop trading tips about "the one that works." Pick the connection that fits your benches and use it everywhere.
3.3 Connecting over WiFi
The goal here is simple: get the borescope's WiFi joined, then let the app find the camera and show you a live picture. Once you have done it once it takes well under a minute.
Before you start: power on the borescope and give it a few seconds to create its WiFi network.
- Join the borescope's WiFi. On the Home screen, tap the connection card (it reads No Borescope Connected when nothing is joined). From the Borescope Connection screen, tap Open WiFi Settings to jump straight to iOS Settings, then choose the borescope's network — its name usually starts with something like
WIFIimage_orWiFi_Monitor_. Enter the password if it asks (many scopes ship with a simple default printed on the device). - Return to Jug Scope. The app picks up where you left off and starts scanning automatically — you do not have to tap "connect."
- Wait for the live picture. The status line walks you through it: Scanning… → Connecting… → Connected, and the live borescope feed fills the screen. A small readout shows the frame rate so you can see the stream is live and smooth.
- Tap Done. You are connected and ready to start (or resume) an inspection — see §4, The Inspection Workflow.
Tip — A borescope's WiFi network usually has no internet. iOS may warn you about that or try to switch you back to a network that does — tell it to stay on the borescope's network. That warning is normal and does not mean anything is wrong.
3.4 The connection screen and the live preview
The connection screen is one place that tells you everything about the link to your borescope: whether it is searching, connecting, or live, what the picture looks like right now, and how to fix it if something is off. You will spend almost no time here once you are connected — but when a connection misbehaves, this is where you sort it out.
When the app is connected, the screen shows:
- A status line at the top — Connected, with a green indicator — so you know the link is good before you trust the picture.
- The live preview, filling most of the screen, with a frame-rate badge (frames per second). A steady fps reading is your at-a-glance proof that the stream is healthy.
- Stream details — resolution, frame rate, and which borescope protocol matched — for when you want to confirm exactly what you are connected to.
- Connect, Disconnect, and Done. Done keeps the camera live and returns you to your inspection; Disconnect deliberately drops the camera; Connect starts a fresh scan if you want to reconnect or switch scopes.
Back on the Home screen, the connection card mirrors this status the whole time — green when connected (and naming your borescope model when the app recognizes it), amber while reconnecting, gray when nothing is joined — so you always know the state of the link without opening the screen.
If the picture does not appear. Occasionally the camera connects but no video arrives — the screen shows Preview stream stalled. Tap Try Again to rescan; this clears the most common cause (a stream that did not start cleanly) without making you rejoin WiFi. If a scan cannot find the scope at all, the screen offers a short checklist — make sure the borescope is powered on, confirm you are on its WiFi, and move closer — plus Try Again and a one-tap Send Diagnostic Report so support can see exactly what happened.
3.5 Allowing the local-network scan
Jug Scope does not look for a borescope on your network until you ask it to. The first time you connect a borescope — from Connect, or when the capture screen opens — Jug Scope first explains that iOS is about to ask for local network access, and why: the app needs it to find your borescope. Jug Scope looks only for borescopes: it tries the private addresses borescopes use and checks the other devices on the network your iPhone or iPad is joined to. It does not search the wider internet for devices. Tap Continue, and iOS asks for permission to see devices on your local network; tap Allow. Granting it is what lets the app find and connect to a WiFi or USB-Ethernet borescope.
If you tap Not Now, Jug Scope does not look at all, and the screen says so: “Jug Scope won’t look for your borescope until you’re ready.” Tap Search for Borescope when you are ready, and the explanation appears again.
Tip — If you tapped "Don't Allow" on the iOS prompt, you can turn it back on later in iOS Settings → Jug Scope → Local Network. Until it is on, scans for the borescope will come up empty.
3.6 Capturing from the borescope's button
Most of the time you will trigger each shot from the on-screen shutter, which keeps your eyes on the picture (covered in §4, Capturing a view). As a convenience, some borescope pods also have a control button on the handle that can fire the shutter without reaching for the screen. If your scope has one, you can use it; if it does not, you lose nothing — the on-screen shutter is the primary path and does everything.
3.7 Using an unsupported or unknown borescope
Jug Scope is tuned for the borescopes listed above, but the borescope market is wide and new models appear constantly. If you have a WiFi scope the app does not recognize, you are not stuck — and you can help us add it.
If a scan cannot identify your borescope, the app offers to collect a few quick details — brand, model, and the WiFi network name — and send them to us with a diagnostic report. Every one of those reports helps us add support for more hardware, so the scope that did not work today may well work in a future update. All the fields are optional; send whatever you know, or skip them entirely.
For owners — If your scope is not on the list, tell us what you have. It is the fastest way to get your specific model supported, and it costs you one short form.
Capturing needs a plan: an Owner / Mechanic plan or a Shop plan. So do importing past photos and sending to your shop, and creating a shop needs the Shop plan. Viewing what you’ve already captured, on any of your devices, never needs a plan or a credit. Exporting, sending outside your shop, uploading to Savvy, or creating a customer link needs the inspection unlocked with one inspection credit, and once it’s unlocked those are free. Sending to your shop isn’t free; it’s paid once, at hand-off, with one of the shop’s credits, or your own if the shop has none.