Which PC based logic analyser?

F

ferrymanr

Member
I have a need to analyse and debug my PICAXE project anbd have looked at PC based logic analysers. Two that I have found are the Saleae and USBee AX Pro. Can anyone comment on these or suggest any alternatives that I might have missed. Are there any real disadvantages to the PC based (hence cheap) options? It is over two decades since I used a very expensive analyzer at work to debug industrial controllers but these seem a simple alternative.
Thanks
Richard
 
D

Dippy

Moderator
There have been many comments on Analysers and Saleae too.

Spend 20 minutes having a SEARCH and read people's comments.
 
Technical

Technical

Technical Support
Staff member
We use the Saleae here at Revolution and find it very good for its intended purpose - it covers most of what you would want to check digitally in a microcontroller cicruit.
 
M

MFB

Senior Member
I can second that! The Saleae LSA is great for debugging I2C, SPI, UART and 1-wire serial bus problems.
 
W

womai

Senior Member
I own the Saleae myself and find it very easy to use (not to mention it's as small as it can get, but very solidly built). The software is BLAZINGLY fast even when zooming or moving in huge data sets, and very intuitive to use. Has built-in protocol analyzers for RS-232, I2C, SPI and one-wire which all work very well (haven't tried the one-wire to be honest, but used all others). Can highly recommend it.

The only two downsides to it are limited sample rate (24 MSamples/sec max, which is good for data streams up to ~8 MHz), which can become a problem e.g. with faster FPGAs, but not with anything related to Picaxe, and the 8 channel limit (no enough for wide buses - but more than sufficient for RS-232, I2C, SPI, CAN, etc.).

Finally, you get quick feedback to questions (at least that's my experience).

Wolfgang
 
P

pilko

Senior Member
For Picaxe stuff only, I was Iooking at buying a scope and was following Dippy's thread "Christmas time , oscillioscopes and wine".
Now after following this thread, I wonder if I would be better served by buying a logic analyser?
Comments appreciated.

pilko
 
E

eclectic

Moderator
pilko said:
For Picaxe stuff only, I was Iooking at buying a scope and was following Dippy's thread "Christmas time , oscillioscopes and wine".
Now after following this thread, I wonder if I would be better served by buying a logic analyser?
Comments appreciated.

pilko
Click to expand...
Both. :)

e
 
D

Dippy

Moderator
The 'Both' option is ideal and with Christmas coming up....

Of course, with a 'scope you can view 1 to 4 logic channels depending on 'scope you can afford. Sometimes simply looking is good enough. And any digital 'scope will allow you to capture and see the shapes and manually check the times.

An LA will obviously give more information and have more channels, so is obviously the better option.


Of course, if you can afford this non-Beijing Beauty then you're laughing.
http://uk.farnell.com/tektronix/mso2014/oscilloscope-mso-4ch-100mhz/dp/1650371
or
http://uk.farnell.com/tektronix/mso2012/oscilloscope-mso-2ch-100mhz/dp/1650370


For something not quite so flash and if on a tighter budget maybe consider (check and investigate first).
http://cpc.farnell.com/owon/mso5022s/oscilloscope-dso-mixed-signal/dp/IN05706


Digiview make an interesting PC device.
http://uk.farnell.com/digiview/dv1-100/analyser/dp/1263884
I think it'll take longer how to learn to drive it than posting a question here and getting an answer :)


EDIT.
A bit of useful info in here. Esp about sampling rates - read it. It could save you getting caught out when reading Ebay specifications.....
http://www.picotech.com/education/oscilloscopes/

Good hunting!
 
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F

ferrymanr

Member
Thanks for all the replies. I'll go with Saleae as that seems the concensus. Now I wonder if I can persuade my wife to buy it as a Christmas present (probably on my card)....
I expect I will still use my 'scope for looking at noise, risetimes etc.
Richard
 
M

MartinM57

Moderator
Quite like the look of the first one; shame it's out of stock.

I reckon it could get me out of a hole with a tricky SPI interface problem where I needed to see the analogue versions of the digital stream - oh, it just has ;)
 
D

Dippy

Moderator
Oh I forgot .... come on Martin let's have a photo of it.

That nice one where you took it out to a club in Brighton ;)


To be honest it would be a nice project with a dsPIC and a healthy sized GLCD.
 
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