saleae logic analyzer alternative software

SALEAE LOGIC ANALYZER ALTERNATIVE SOFTWARE SERIAL
SALEAE LOGIC ANALYZER ALTERNATIVE SOFTWARE SOFTWARE

SALEAE LOGIC ANALYZER ALTERNATIVE SOFTWARE SERIAL

Now consider another case: You connect two Arduino devices which should communicate over serial (UART). It’s working fine, but sometimes it isn’t. A Logic Analyzer will not be of great help, if it’s fast enough it will allow you to see the RGB values from every pixel sent over the last 3 minutes, but that might not be of good use. You can use your oscilloscope to see if you meat that 3 pico seconds raise time. These signals are very fast, you need to get sync right, etc. Consider a high speed connection between your MCU and a camera module. This workflow reveals why both devices are very different although they mostly do the same: measure voltage over time.Ī Logic Analyzer is meant to give you a better picture of what your digital circuit is doing over a longer period of time, while the oscilloscope helps you to get that fine little details right.

SALEAE LOGIC ANALYZER ALTERNATIVE SOFTWARE SOFTWARE

If you want to see if something is happening in your circuit right now you will need to start capture, wait some time, end capture, wait for data to be transferred to your PC/Mac and then check the software to see the signals.

But it’s sometimes hard to navigate around.Ī logic analyzer is a device that captures data for a longer time, transfers the data to a PC/Mac where you can analyze the data in a software. And the more you pay for it the more time can be frozen (typically). You can “freeze” time and analyze the signal in detail in modern scopes. It’s there to point the probe to a circuit and immediately see what the circuit is doing. Your oscilloscope won’t have that much RAM and horse power to do that.Īs you can see in the screenshow below you can have a very clear picture of what signals do over time, you can measure how long they take and various other things.Īn oscilloscope is a real time device. Often, it’s much faster to navigate these signals with keyboard and mouse than with the knobs of an oscilloscope.Īs your PC/Mac machine is so capable it can handle millions and millions of measurements and can display them in real time. If you don’t buy crap – and you never should – then you get really fast, usable software with a lot of options. Logic Analyzers are often connected to your PC/Mac and deliver the measurements via USB to a software that you can control with mouse and keyboard. But, if you want to know the exact voltage because you want to measure raise and fall times than it makes a lot of difference. A Logic Analyzer can be quite cheap as it does not need to care if the circuit measures 1.8 or 2.1V as all of these values are considered as HIGH. This is a big difference which explains the difference in costs. In comparison to that an oscilloscope measures the voltage of a signal over time. If you don’t know what I am talking about right now: You can stop reading and spare your money: Get a nice Arduino Startup Kit ( Fritzing Creator Kit is great). a 3.3V device like the Teensy 3.1 has different thresholds than an Arduino Uno R3 with 5V) but you get the point. The thresholds vary with the device the Logic Analyzer is connected to (i.e. Let me first explain what a Logic Analyzer does and why it’s so useful and often more useful than an oscilloscope.Ī Logic Analyzer is a device that measures over time if a signal it is connected to is HIGH (typically above 1.8-2 V) or is LOW (typically below 0.6-0.8V). Sometimes it’s even a better buy than an oscilloscope. Well, the good news is yes! Under some circumstances. If you are interested in buying an oscilloscope, but don’t want to spend so much money at it (yet), is a Logic Analyzer an alternative? The cheapest oscilloscope from Rigol, the 1054Z with 4 channels costs about $399 (but more if you add some options), the cheapest Logic Analyzer from Saleae costs $109. There are a lot of options, and a quick look at them reveals one thing: They are so much cheaper than oscilloscopes with the same amount of channels. The answer has been a short: Yes, under some circumstances.īut, there is another great measurement tool available: A Logic Analyzer. In one of my previous posts I tried to answer the question: “ Do I need an Oscilloscope?“.

Saleae logic analyzer alternative software