[001] Sigrok and Logic Analyzers

[@kmetze]

I'm shocked to see this video only got 500 views! This is quality content! *Thumbs up*

[@jamisusijarvi646]

Better situation now :)

[@larschristoffersen1847]

I believe it is probably the length of the video that scares off Generation Z. Smaller clips would get bigger numbers - but who really cares? The quality is very very good as you say and the content is really interesting stuff. I am very thankful

[@hernancoronel]

87236 as of December 27 2019! Much better!

[@Ferreira019760]

When I grow up I want to be just like this guy.

[@mrbobjrsrv]

@@larschristoffersen1847 not a Gen Z, but yeah, the length of the video + me just wanting to get a logic analyzer working + finding a shorter video that does that. Even if this guy has the best content out there, I'd rather get the job done quicker. But you're right, who cares? As long as you guys are enjoying, that's all that matters! :)

[@cdrive5757]

I must say that this is the venerable mother load of USB logic analyzer videos. Moreover, it's a comprehensive and thorough treatise of available analyzers, limitations and compatible software. You certainly sold me on Sigrok open source software. Thank you for producing such a flawless video!

[@Moonbase59]

One of the best introductory videos about signal analysis I’ve come across. THANK YOU! It’s an eye-opener and shows what can be done with little effort. Standing on the shoulders of giants, of course, that already put lots of efforts into it. This video shows how to open ways, develop your knowledge and build the bridges between the big measuring instruments companies, the knowledge thieves and el-cheapo clone builders and a lively Open Source community making it all accessible and distribute knowledge by working together. Love it. Thanks to all!

[@boblewis5558]

Given the vast quantity of well-meaning but extremely amateur KZbin videos that leave one more confused than ever, THIS was a highly refreshing change. Clearly presented, well produced (post production etc) and extremely informative showing great insight and knowledge, especially for someone who claims to have only been involved in electronics for just six years (to the date of this video). I wish we had far more of such videos around, this is a great example of HOW to do it rather than the hundreds of, mostly failing, "how NOT to do it" ones. Awesome! (BTW I'm a graduate electronics engineer of over 43 years and a member of the IET for over 46! I learnt a LOT!!)

[@venim1103]

This is not just an awesome tutorial, but a really nice encouragement for getting into open-source development projects!

[@danielfischer1362]

I cannot thank you enough for this video on low cost logic analyzers and signal probing. I have a bunch of 8ch Saleae clone analyzers which I bought to help me debug a project that uses SPI digital to analog converters. They work with my Windows 7 laptop, but when I had to move to a new Windows 10 machine, I kept seeing only part of the recorded signals; now I understand why; there isn't enough bandwith in my new laptop's USB. Thank you for the tear down, showing the internal buffering in the 100MHz clone; I bought one on AliExpress once I saw your explanation; I hope it will work on the Win 10 machine. Thank you for making us see why a faster analyzer may be of no help at all, unless matched to better probing. Thank you for spending your time teaching us, complete strangers to you.

[@derosoft]

Wow! Superb video... Spend the whole hour without even having paused it! Thanks a million for taking the time to go through all the details. Much appreciated.

[@AnthonyClarke1965]

One of the most informative and useful videos I have found on KZbin, thanks, was a great introduction and learnt a lot

[@hellterminator]

The funny thing is that there really is no reason to use the original Saleae software with the clones because Sigrok is just so much more powerful with all of its protocol decoding. Thank you very much for your contribution to this amazing project!

[@chris0x00]

Just when I thought this couldn't get any better out comes the simulated circuit. This must have taken a great deal of effort to put together and present so well. Thank you Joel!

[@xRawlins]

Finally! A great video that walks you through logic analyzers for us beginners. This is exactly what I was hoping to find. Cheers!

[@MrPerrey]

Very very good resume of the available low cost logic analyzer options!! I rely appreciate how you explained the weak probing that these devices provide when its coming to higher pulse rates, with the necessary higher sample rates, specially under a low number of channels on serial communication. When you look on the professional analyzers, probing is one of the most important, most complicated and even most expensive part on every high performance measurement system. But also when You are coming from the professional side you must also recognize that almost much more then 90% of the upcoming analyzing cases could be easily handled by these cheap devices. In a short, I don`t remember one only case where I was coming to the end by some equipment limitations, the major task was everything to get a "better view" whats where going on in the circuit or communication line. I also remember logic analyzers (more from the 90th) who where much less powerful, much less self explaining and very difficult to set up. They where much less flexible and very time consuming specially when it comes to the point where You have been forced to count out your capture count by count, bit by bit. So, after your nice explainings I will give it a $30 try with a Logic16, to see how it works and how the probing performance could be easily improved by a cheap and easy DIY solution. Thanks for Your lesson ;-)

[@rjinnh3933]

OUTSTANDING.... Absolutely Outstanding Presentation and Content! After many decades of using Logic Analyzers to ply my craft and empirically learning most everything presented in this vid, I now have a ready reference for the Whys and Hows of it all. What a great job!

[@yousufsait]

What a beautiful presentation style, voice and content. Truly open source spirit. Thank you so much for sharing all this.

[@campbellmorrison8540]

Ive been involved in electronics all my life and Im now 67 but never in the software area and to see the work put into Sigrok is amazing, 99% of it goes clean over my head as much as I would love to understand the detail. Your work is truly impressive, I too would be incredibly proud if I had been able to do this level of development, stunning stuff thank you

[@NumosG]

Amazing video. It's great to have all those background information and your style of presentation is very clear. Thank you!

[@josemesquita603]

Great, excellent, amazing information from someone that is skilled with the required knowledge to present properly this materials. Thanks a lot!

[@danielsalloum3006]

Epic video. I'll probably need to re-watch in the future to recall everything contained in here.

[@user-hi8jf1hu4p]

I was googling around seeing if I would need a logic analyzer later on down the road in my hobby. A lot of people said to just use the oscilloscope. After seeing this video, and that part about the decoder stacking: yep, I NEED one...

[@avramitra]

Watched the whole video in one go without skipping for even a single second! This happens the content has an extreme quality! Subbed..

[@SixWildKids]

Thank you for your work on PulseView. I use SIGROK and love the results!

[@In3xorable]

A serious deep dive into logic analyzers. I am just getting started, but I realize I will watch this video several times. This is a really awesome video. I was already subscribed. Now the bell is lit. Thank you fkr all the information!

[@EdwinNoorlander]

Thanks for your afford for this channel and the open source community. I really trying to help as well, it's only hard to find time, with a full time job and a family. So thanks again. Keep up the good work 👍🏻

[@Grazfather]

This video is so excellent. It could easily be cut into 3 excellent videos: An example of using sigrok-cli/pulseview, a comparison of open-source logic analyzers, & an explanation of the leads, clips, and what they do to a signal. That said, it's well worth the whole watch through... I saw this about 8 months ago, and re-visited to save myself some time explaining logic analyzers to a friend, but go figure I end up watching the whole video again.

[@slincolne]

Damn - three years for this to get my attention - Fantastic work !!!!!

[@FixedUntilBroken]

After years of working Microcontrollers and circuit boards I am just now getting my first logic analyzer. What pushed me over the edge to get a new tool is the fact I have been having trouble writing to a old microcontroller and I need see what is being sent.. Wireshark wouldn't work on windows for the com port and I didn't want to hand decode them with o-scope. Great video!

[@hateeternalmaver]

Do appreciate the wiseness to tape everything down... I had a setup where I had to move everything to get readings, so I taped everything down to a paddle for table-tennis.^^

[@cr6925]

Goodness! What an eye opener having struggled with a DSO and never having heard of Sigrok or the cheap entry point logic analysers. Thank you so much for putting this together in such an interesting and detailed way! Subscribed! :-)

[@UpcycleElectronics]

Thanks for the upload, tutorial, and your efforts working on this OSSW project. If anyone really needs to decode an IR device there is a project option available on the OSHW AVR Transistor Tester project for doing this. I know that was not the purpose of this demonstration but I figured it was worth plugging another OSHW project. The origin of the AVRTT project is available at mikrocontroller[dot] net/Articles/AVR_Transistortester -Jake

[@PowerScissor]

About a year ago a friend recommended sticky tack for wall posters for holding stuff on the bench and it's a game changer. Holds anything in place for probing or soldering and then pulls right up with no residue over and over. Try it and you will never tape anything down ever again!

[@edgeeffect]

I had a little chuckle at that first PCB you look at... the LED pads are screenprinted "Green" and "Red"... but both contain red LEDs... must have saved about 0.0001p per unit with that. ;)

[@rajagopalnarayanasamy3955]

Cypress released a Knowledge base article that explains how to use the $10 FX2LP based board as logic analyser using Sigrok PulseView open source application.

[@rajagopalnarayanasamy3955]

Here is the link of the "Cypress EZ-USB FX2LP-based Logic Analyzer using Open Source sigrok PulseView - KBA229176 community.cypress.com/docs/DOC-18867

[@yeong126]

My mind is blown so many times in this single video..

[@Aemilindore]

This was my work for today. Watched the entire video, and tried things out on my own using my own Logic Analiser. Tried the CLI and learnt its advantages. Also forced my colleague to try this out. It is so inspiring to hear about your story with Sigrok. How you started and how it is now continued. This, I believe, is the most important take home message for me and it really is inspiring. I will switch speeds and re-watch this video from start to finish today itself! like I did another of yours yesterday. Fascinating amount of technical content mixed with your experience and philosophy in these videos. Thank you for your time spent creating this content. p.s. The length of videos are never long enough.

[@shariqkudcs]

cy7c68013a is a very powerful chip for usb interface. I have used it in many projects in past and is very easy to program. You can also use it to read ccd chips in bulk transfer or send bulk data from usb and write to eeprom/sram for example.

[@silviutudose7868]

This tutorial is Gold.Bravo, thx for sharing

[@kyme32]

amazing...i've found out about pulseview few days back and i'm amazed, it's simply awesome

[@TheBpgoa]

This is one of the best quality videos I have seen on YT .

[@mikeoliver3254]

Thank you for that wonderful introduction to sigrok. Signal decoding is something I have wanted to learn about and now I have a path towards doing that. Great work.

[@BrunoAraujoCoutinho]

OMG! This is definitely high quality material! Thanks a lot!

[@ByronicGamer]

This was so incredibly useful, thank you! I was trying to figure out what logic analyzers are and which to get, and your video showed me that this is exactly what I need. Furthermore, the software blew me away! You've also helped me understand that one of those €30 analyzers is the much better choice.

[@pd8559]

This is by far of the best Logic Analyzer videos out there in KZbin land bar none! I am not sure how Saelae charges $699 now for a logic analyze compared to what you can get get in a MSO Oscilloscope for half the price where you get a whole lot more test equipment capabilities.

[@keen2461]

Wow, very well put together video. Impressed to say the least. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[@ptrooms]

Hi Quality information feeling myzelf back to be in college. Easy listening & calmly spoken. Good outline of pros & cons of different (logic/sampling) approaches. Furthermore, I like the sigrok (oh/os) itself. Well done !!!

[@pat806]

Great video, and thanks for your coding contributions.

[@cooper6717]

Really great video, thank you for this. I will be re watching in a few weeks when my logic analyzer arrives.

[@larschristoffersen1847]

Great great stuff. Thanks for taking the time to do this!

[@yourTurb0]

One long video, well explained! Excellent!

[@vito6492]

Thank you for your great video and sigrok, I almost throw away my Sump logic analyzer because couldn't find software for it until saw this video

[@ValeryDjondo]

Thank you for this video: this will probably open the gate to knowledge to many, including me.

[@jansirkia3809]

Sir! I think you're some kind of a Dr. Dolittle for digital circuitry! Supremely entertaining video. Thanks!

[@georgeprout42]

I got as far as 5 mins into this and subscribed. I always go for open SW/HW wherever possible. Great video (judging on the first bit) and I'm looking forward to bringing on your other videos later.

[@allthegearnoidea6752]

This is a brilliant explanation and review very well done sir

[@MaxAirGo]

Amazing video. So such information I have to re-watch many times. Thank you sir!

[@AnotherByteData]

Nice video tutorial! I'm looking forward to tutorial about other devices supported by Sigrok!

[@bloguetronica]

I completely agree about what you've said about open source software. If the software that is used to operate a device is closed source or proprietary, there is an increased chance of ending up with a sophisticated paperweight once that software becomes extinct. Unfortunately, many manufacturers don't give a crap about giving support to old hardware. More perfectly good devices go to the landfill, when it shouldn't have to.

[@nickhuynh6321]

I'm amazed that so many folks doing this for free...

[@ashwinnair6521]

Take a look at pull-request#148 at sigrok's github mirror (sigrokproject/libsigrok/pull/148). This adds support for using FX3 devices as 100MHz 16 channel logic analyzers using sigrok .

[@ashwinnair6521]

Check this for FX3 firmware source code EZ-USB™ FX3 Explorer kit as 16-channel 100 MHz logic analyzer with sigrok PulseView - KBA233652

[@mdesm2005]

wow, impressive. You are a great communicator.

[@OpenTechLab]

Thanks for watching!

[@paulkatiem]

Excellent video!!!!!! Thanks so much for taking the time to create this super useful content!

[@DD4DA]

Many thanks for the very detailed information about the internals of the popular analysers who are available on the market. The USB logic analyzer like saleae logic it's a cheap little device which can be helpful. It can not of course measure with a grown TEK, HP or Rohde & Schwarz. It would also be unfair to do so. An oscilloscopes, however, are always a must, if one wants to use such simple devices, since the signal shape can not be judged. A mixed signal oscilloscopes can do this, however, cheaper devices do not have a decoder function and have to be paid extra, and their operation is unfortunately anything but comfortable. A PC program has significantly more comfort and more display area. Unfortunately, the USB devices lack the possibility of real-time display. The price for the USB devices justifies the deficiencies and correctly applied, it can simplify the life of a hobby-hobbyist. Profi's who earn with the development money will surely reach to TEK, HP or other very expensive devices. It was fun to watching your post. Not every moderator considered that interested viewers speak another mother tongue and the english spoken and listen words does not belong to the daily practice. My special thanks for the clear pronunciation which made it very easy for me to follow you.

[@thedevleon]

Really nice video! Couldn't stop watching!

[@michaelzlprime]

Thank you for the awesome job you've done on PulseView. it has really helped my project!

[@321ooo123]

Very useful and informative video!

[@erikisberg3886]

Thank You for your work on this, a most excellent presentation, a joy to watch! I did not realize how useful these cheapo devices have become. The Sigrok software seems great. I would recommend the old writings of Jim Williams and Robert Pease on probing. I have Bobs book on troubleshooting which I highly recommend. The older LT application books also have a lot of good stuff in them. I try to use open source as much as possible, but it is not always feasible. I believe open source is the way to go both for amateurs and industry. Also in later years in EU we had (unfortunately) to use itar free components and software for space and defence related projects in order to stay competitive.

[@XerotoLabs]

Great video. what a perfect timing. I got one of those clone things just for simple projects but never saw how cool pulse view is.

[@thesunexpress]

Man alive! I must thank you very very very very much for your efforts.... I just stumbled across this video purely by chance / KZbin algorithm, I'd been looking for ages for a piece of software that does just what sigrok & pulseview is capable of. I'd ignored the existence of pulseview for as long as I can remember due to being under the impression that it was related to pulseaudio; that type of pointless audio interference on FreeBSD is something I detest with impunity. Cloned hardware is a bitch, but it does allow for some penniless genius with very limited resources access to something that would otherwise be impossible.

[@jensemilhansen1602]

wow, just wow. Such nice high-quality content. On the long side, but really taught me a lot so I guess lenght is not important. Thanks man, thanks

[@jix177]

Brilliantly presented and helpful video! Thanks for sharing.

[@MakerMark]

This is a great video on these devices for us non engineers. I have the open bench one and never really got much use out of it and thought it was crap and put it in the junk bin. But I really have a need to spy on some spi comms etc and was going to get a salae. Maybe I'll try sigrok and the old open bench again. Thanks for the video!!!

[@Nets-nutsBr]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge to us. Really appreciate!

[@matthieumichon8400]

Thanks for producing this comprehensive video, very nice work ;)

[@dd884e5d8a]

This is absolutely marvelous work! Thank you!!

[@klewisjohnson]

This is a great video. Well done explains what is going on really well. Very consisce and well spoken. Kudos to you, I wish I had professors who taught/explain the way you do. Very well done..cheers mate!

[@80lab38]

Dude! Thank you so much for your work on Sigrok/Pulseview! I totally prefer using Pulseview over the original Saleae software. And I even got an original Saleae Logic-8 (from way back then, when it was "only" 150 bucks). That's right. I've got the real thing and still use the open source software with it. Not only because I think Sigrok/Pulseview is great, or because I prefer to use open source tools where ever possible, but in this special case it's also because that's how much I think the original software sucks. I wouldn't even call that a tool, because it looks, feels and behaves like a toy. So thanks again for providing an alternative that's not only open source but so much more usable!

[@TechNed]

Great presentation. Thanks so much. I owe a lot to the open source movement and do intend some payback (eventually!). Stacking decoders seems such a natural progression, I'm surprised it's so rare. It also seems a really great way of preserving some older, lesser known protocols for posterity, if nothing else (eg. for reviving or investigating some vintage hardware in the future). Maybe (as an oldie) that's where I might contribute..

[@stevebez2767]

Ned u hav any comm links for crypt tech arduino UNO,Leonardo,etc,da Vinci,Hanoi,Babel links des SHA line des crypt SHo-an Singaporeans Thai stickers etc?!

[@TechNed]

@@stevebez2767 Sorry mate, you lost me. I do know that when I had no LA hardware but was trying to revive my ancient 6809 SBC running FLEX, I made very good use of Gillham's LA firmware ( github.com/gillham/logic_analyzer ) that I was able to use in a stray Arduino MEGA I had lying around. It gave 4Msps which although not blinding, was very useful in my 1MHz 6809 system. (Found the prob to be a flaky clock buffer that was causing the main clock to drift but the RS232 rate stayed solid because the 6551 ACIA had its own baudrate generator and crystal which initially threw me). Incidentally, I had really high hopes of using the unit with Pulseview as Gillham's code implements a SUMP protocol but for some annoying reason, it proved really unstable on my Win7 system (just using the analyser through USB-COM ports - NOT Pulseview in general). I ended up using the alternative Open Logic Sniffer client (also written in Java - lxtreme.nl/projects/ols/ ) which, although way more deficient on the decoder front, worked very reliably.

[@TechNed]

Btw, it's very important to point out that I just realised I appear to be using a development version of Pulseview and Sigrok (Pulseview 0.5.0-git-2a09e77). I probably went to the wrong place to download and then later forgot when it came to using it (because I'm dumb). The stable release in all probability would have worked.

[@matthewbucknall8350]

Fantastic video - Thank-you.

[@Starlite4321]

Very useful, thank you ! Do you have a link to the Altera Max II board you used starting at 33:00 ? Everything I turn up with Google is pretty different looking. Thanks !

[@jago3798]

The BlockRam of the Spartan3E is far less than quarter a megabyte (as you said at 30:07). The XC3S250E has 216 KBits. This is only 27 kByte. For this small amount of memory it should be no problem that the transmission over the CDC driver is not that fast 😉

[@sureshlingabathina]

Excellent, excellent voice and good info

[@michaelhawthorne8696]

What a good video. Really professional production and very clear narration, you clearly know what you're doing. Just bought the Hobby Components analyzer and clips. Looking forward to playing with it and the GUI Sigrok software. I Liked and subscribed... thank you

[@Justsquareenough]

this was really well done! thank you.

[@bigwave_dave8468]

Cool video! -- a bit late for the train here but I learnt a lot from watching.

[@ChupoCro]

Excellent! I wonder what's wrong with those who disliked this video!?

[@StuartCGadgetRev]

That’s a really bloody good video! I learned loads! Thanks so much!

[@lmaoroflcopter]

Blown away by the detail in this video. It's fantastic. Just getting to grips with logic analysers and have found the info included in this video really helpful. Thank you. Do you have any recommendations for an open software/open hardware oscilloscope?

[@adev8565]

I suggest you check out the ScopeFun project - the hardware isn't cheap but it is completely open, just like the software that runs it.

[@burtharris6343]

Thank you so much. Well done in so many ways.

[@brunosimmert6160]

Sehr gute Übersicht und sehr gut Erklärt...

[@jontiolds]

A great video and very interesting. Thanks.

[@irawarnaca8133]

Wow, great video! Thank you.

[@ElectroreparaBlogspotES]

Thanks for the video, it is really good! I have one of the cheap FX2LP boards, quite interesting piece of hardware for the price!

[@DumitruUrsu]

I thought it was going to be a long, boring video. Boy, was I wrong! Thanks for the quality content :) By the way, could we get away with using a logic analyser at higher frequencies if the probes would be of better quality? Like, shield wires or something? I was thinking of building a logic analyser based on OBLS, but with a ExpressCard/54 interface (like those found on older Thinkpads), but after watching your video, I'm not sure it's worth it.

[@OpenTechLab]

LAs can work at GHz frequencies e.g. the KeySight model. But it becomes hard or impossible to just probe some random signals on a board. At these high frequencies impedance matching becomes a major factor. Unless the board has special support for a logic output, you need a high-impedance probe like in an oscilloscope. Having dozens of probes like these gets expensive, and ugly. But at really high speed, serial buses are increasingly common, so you're better of with a fast oscilloscope than a fast LA.

[@joedumoulin]

This is amazing! I am so glad I stumbled on this video. Thanks so much for the quality work here.

[@bennguyen1313]

Any thoughts on the 500Mhz LogicPort, or CNLohr's GreatFet One? The latter doesn't use an FX2 but instead all the high speed usb stuff is done on the (LPC4330) microcontroller! The former might benefit from LiteX/litescope/ValentyUSB/Renode/Fomu. I'd love to use Sigrok to display data coming from DMM quasi-real-time. I have a DMM connected to a PC via serial port, and I've written a driver that gets the samples.. so I'd like use the PulseView GUI to transfer the last 100 samples, plot it, then repeat. If it's easy enough, it would be nice if the GUI could also set a trigger, such that it waits until my driver detects the data has crossed a threshold before it delivers the data. In any case, how do-able is this? Looking at John Holdworth's airwebreathe_org_uk, it's hard to tell what exactly I would need to modify in the API. Any suggestions?

[@proxxima038]

Very informative! Thank you for making this video!

[@ehsankazemi3316]

Hi; I have a problem. My cheap version of clone Logic Analyzer does not have any protection circuit whatsoever. So after a couple of months, 3 pins stopped working. I guess some sort of surge or high voltage/current has damaged the I/O pins of the FX2 chip. The 16-channels logic analyzer based on FX2 use the PortB & PortD so I was wondering if I can modify the Firmware & use the PortD instead of PortB that has 3 damaged unresponsive pins. Is it possible or I'm only daydreaming? Thank you very much

[@adev8565]

Yeah, you could. The fx2lafw firmware is open source and there's a 16-bit variant of it that uses both ports. Should be straightforward to take the 8-bit variant and have it use the port D.

[@AlanMedina314]

Very interesting and helpful video, I have thinking of purchasing a logic analyzer and now I know which one to get and the fact that their is significant Open Source support is even more appealing. OpenTechLab great video, extremely helpful and enlightening. I think the Saleae 16 100MHZ is the correct one for me. Ps: I commend you on the scope of the project you took upon yourself to implement.

[@perezmeyer]

Ha! I remember pulseview's first steps... thanks for it and this video!

[@metallitech]

Extremely interesting, but please use more lighting.

[@q12x]

Fantastic explanations !