Uwe Hermann's blog

libsigrok now supports yet another multimeter: this time it's the PeakTech 3330.

This is a 4000 counts, CAT III (1000V) — at least in theory — multimeter with RS232 and USB connectivity and some neat features not seen in most other DMMs of this price-range.

It uses the common Fortune FS9721 chip which is already supported by the serial-dmm driver in libsigrok, so adding support for the DMM was pretty straight-forward.

As usual we also have a bunch of teardown photos and some more hardware info in the wiki if you're interested.

This DMM was added and tested by Gerhard Sittig, thanks a lot!

libsigrokdecode now supports another new protocol decoder: ps2.

This PD decodes the PS/2 (low-level) protocol for keyboards, mice, and some other PS/2-attached devices.

As usual, we have a bunch of example files in the sigrok-dumps repository, and a few test-cases in the sigrok-test repo.

The decoder was contributed by Daniel Schulte, thanks a lot!

We're happy to announce the sigrok-firmware-fx2lafw 0.1.4 release. This is an open-source firmware that allows you to use almost any of the popular Cypress FX2 based devices as logic analyzers.

The source code and pre-built firmware files are available from the usual place:

• sigrok-firmware-fx2lafw-0.1.4.tar.gz
• sigrok-firmware-fx2lafw-bin-0.1.4.tar.gz

This release adds support for the CWAV USBee ZX logic analyzer as well as a new set of devices:

• the Hantek 6022BE USB oscilloscope
• the SainSmart DDS120 USB oscilloscope
• the Rocktech BM102 USB oscilloscope (which is a rebadged Sainsmart DDS120, or vice versa)

These devices all use one of the "official" sigrok/fx2lafw USB VID/PID pairs:

• 1D50:608E: fx2lafw-hantek-6022be.fw, fx2lafw-sainsmart-dds120.fw

This new VID/PID pair is used by the Hantek 6022BE (plus devices very similar to that, such as the SainSmart DDS120 and Rocktech BM102). It was allocated for sigrok/fx2lafw via the awesome "Open registry for community / homebrew USB Product IDs" service of the Openmoko project.

The firmware implementation for these devices is different from the "usual" firmware for FX2-based logic analyzers. It was originally written by Jochen Hoenicke (thanks a lot!) for another project and was included into sigrok-firmware-fx2lafw mostly for convenience reasons; see the sigrok-firmware-fx2lafw README for details.

Finally, this release also adds initial support for analog channels on FX2-based logic analyzers, such as the CWAV USBee AX (and various clones).

The NEWS file contains some more details.

The new firmware files require the soon-to-be-released libsigrok >= 0.4.1 (or current git HEAD). The Windows sigrok-cli installer and PulseView installer (nightly builds) we provide already include these firmware files and a libsigrok version that is new enough.

libsigrokdecode now supports another new protocol decoder: ssi32.

This PD decodes the SSI32 protocol, which is based on SPI (hence the decoder stacks on top of the SPI PD).

As usual, we have a bunch of example files in the sigrok-dumps repository, and a few test-cases in the sigrok-test repo.

The decoder and the example files were contributed by Oleksij Rempel, thanks a lot!

libsigrokdecode recently gained support for yet another protocol decoder: wiegand.

This PD supports the Wiegand interface protocol, often used in electronic entry systems, card swipe systems, some RFID systems and such.

As usual, we have a bunch of example files in the sigrok-dumps repository, and a few test-cases in the sigrok-test repo.

The decoder was contributed by Sean Burford, thanks a lot!

libsigrok now supports the PCE PCE-322A sound level meter.

This is a USB-based sound level meter with various settings such frequency weighting (A or C), a frequency range of 31.5 Hz to 8 kHz, an internal memory store, an built-in RTC, and others.

The device protocol is documented in the sigrok wiki, as usual.

The driver was contributed by George Hopkins, thanks a lot!

libsigrokdecode now supports another protocol decoder, em4100.

The EM4100 protocol for certain 100-150kHz RFID tags is layered on top of one of three possible modulation schemes: Manchester, Biphase, or PSK.

Currently the PD only supports Manchester, the other ones can be added later though.

The decoder also works for some compatible RFID tag types such as EM4102 and FK4100.

As usual we have a few example files in our sigrok-dumps repo, and some test-cases is the sigrok-test repo.

The protocol decoder was contributed by Benjamin Larsson, thanks a lot!

libsigrokdecode now supports another protocol decoder: timing. This has been supported for a while already actually (and is part of libsigrokdecode 0.4.0), but hasn't seen an official announce yet, so here goes.

The PD works on a single logic channel and shows (for all transitions) the time between a transition and the next one.

As usual we have a few test-cases in our sigrok-test repo to ensure there are no regressions later on as the backend code and/or PD change.

The decoder was contributed by Baruch Even, thanks a lot!

We're happy to announce a set of major new releases of the following sigrok projects: libsigrok 0.4.0, libsigrokdecode 0.4.0, sigrok-cli 0.6.0, and PulseView 0.3.0.

The tarballs are available for download from sigrok.org/download, as usual.

A lot of work has gone into each of those releases, with many new supported devices, many more protocol decoders, various new GUI features, and lots more. See below for details.

libsigrok

Let's start with the most interesting part for most people, newly supported devices in this release:

• Logic analyzers: AKIP-9101, BeagleLogic, LeCroy LogicStudio, mcupro Logic16 clone, Pipistrello OLS, SysClk LWLA1016
• Oscilloscopes: Rigol/Agilent DS1000Z series, Yokogawa DLM2000 series, Yokogawa DL9000 series, Hung-Chang DSO-2100, GW Instek GDS-800
• Multimeters: Agilent U1241A/B, Agilent U1242A/B, Brymen BM25x series, MASTECH MS8250B, Metrahit 16T/16U/KMM2002, PeakTech 3415, Tenma 72-7730/72-7732/72-9380A, Testo 435-4, UNI-T UT372, UNI-T UT71A/B/C/D/E, Velleman DVM4100, Voltcraft VC-870/VC-920/VC-940/VC-960
• Programmable power supplies: Fluke/Philips PM2800 series, HP 663xx series, Manson HCS-3xxx series, Motech LPS-30x series, Rigol DP800 series, Korad KAxxxxP series (a.k.a Velleman LABPS3005D and others)
• AC/DC sources: Agilent N5700A series (DC sources), Chroma 61600 series (AC sources), Chroma 62000 series (DC sources)
• Electronic loads: Maynuo M97 (and compatibles)
• LCR meters: DER EE DE-5000
• Scales: KERN EW 6200-2NM
• BeagleBone Black capes: BayLibre ACME (revA and revB)

Pretty much every existing hardware driver has also received numerous fixes and improvements.

The fx2lafw driver specifically now supports (together with the already-released sigrok-firmware-fx2lafw >= 0.1.3) the new "official" sigrok USB VID/PID pairs you can use in purely FX2-based logic analyzers. For details see this blog post.

There are also a few new input modules (raw_analog, trace32_ad) and output modules (wav, srzip).

One of the bigger new features are the language bindings for libsigrok (based on Doxygen + SWIG): You can now use libsigrok functionality in C++, Python, Ruby, and Java. The C++ bindings are already used by PulseView (see below), and the Python bindings are used by the (still in development) sigrok-meter frontend. Let us know if you're using some of the bindings for your own projects!

There have also been an unusually huge set of random new features and facilities, bugfixes, documentation fixes, portability fixes, build system improvements, and so on.

The API has changed quite a bit since the last major release, you can read up all the details in the API docs.

See the NEWS file for a much more detailed list of changes, or browse the git history for even more details.

libsigrokdecode

Let's start with the newly supported protocol decoders as well:

• adns5020: Bidirectional command and data over an SPI-like protocol
• am230x: Aosong AM230x/DHTxx/RHTxx humidity/temperature sensor
• arm_etmv3: Decode ETM instruction trace packets
• arm_itm: Trace data from Cortex-M / ARMv7m ITM module
• arm_tpiu: Filter TPIU formatted trace data into separate streams
• eeprom24xx: 24xx series I²C EEPROM protocol
• em4100: EM4100 100-150kHz RFID protocol
• jitter: Retrieves the timing jitter between two digital signals
• max7219: 8-digit LED display driver
• mdio: Half-duplex sync serial bus for MII management (MAC/PHY)
• modbus: Modbus RTU protocol for industrial applications
• mrf24j40: IEEE 802.15.4 2.4 GHz RF tranceiver chip
• nrf24l01: 2.4GHz transceiver chip
• pwm: Analog level encoded in duty cycle percentage
• qi: Async serial protocol for Qi charger receivers
• rfm12: HopeRF RFM12 wireless transceiver control protocol
• sdcard_sd: Secure Digital card (SD mode) low-level protocol
• spdif: Serial bus for connecting digital audio devices
• stepper_motor: Absolute position and movement speed from step/dir
• swd: Two-wire protocol for debug access to ARM CPUs
• tca6408a: Texas Instruments TCA6408A 8-bit I²C I/O expander
• timing: Calculate time between edges
• usb_power_delivery: USB Power Delivery protocol
• usb_request: USB (low-speed and full-speed) transaction/request protocol

And with that, we now support a total of 60 different protocol decoders. There are some more in the pipeline for the next releases, and we get contributed decoders on a pretty regular basis these days, which is awesome! If you're working on additional PDs, please send patches our way!

Apart from new decoders, there have also been a number of improvements and bugfixes for existing PDs as well.

The usb_request PD is especially noteworthy, since it not only allows you to decode higher-level USB requests, but it can also export the decoded data in the PCAP format, which you can further process/analyze in other tools such as Wireshark. See this blog post for details.

There have also been the usual set of random new features, bugfixes, documentation fixes, portability fixes, build system improvements, and so on. Only minor API changes have gone into this release, though.

See the NEWS file for a much more detailed list of changes, or browse the git history for even more details.

sigrok-cli

The sigrok-cli command-line utility hasn't seen too many new features in this release. There have been various bugfixes and fixes for memory leaks and compiler warnings and such, as well as some command-line option parsing robustness improvements.

The new --get and -T|--transform-module options have been added.

See the NEWS file for a more detailed list of changes, or browse the git history for even more details.

PulseView

The PulseView GUI has seen a pretty large set of improvements compared to the last release.

It is now based on the new libsigrokcxx C++ library (the libsigrok C++ bindings), supports Qt4 or Qt5, and is written in C++11 now (obsoleting some of the Boost functionality used previously in favor of std:: equivalents).

Various new or improved features have been added:

• Support for vertical scaling of analog or logic traces
• A "Save selection range as..." feature
• Some settings now survive a restart (last open/save directory location, window size/position, last used device)
• Pinch-zoom support, always-zoom-to-fit support, "sticky scrolling" support, etc.
• Trace group support (for dragging multiple traces around as a group)
• ...and many, many more GUI and usability improvements...

There are Import and Export menus now, which allow you to import/export data from/to various file formats (all formats supported in libsigrokcxx).

The decoder annotation display code has received some substancial performance improvements.

Various portability improvements have been added as well, greatly increasing the usability of PulseView e.g. on Windows, Android, or Mac OS X.

There have also been a large number of random new features, bugfixes, documentation fixes, portability fixes, build system improvements, and so on.

See the NEWS file for a much more detailed list of changes, or browse the git history for even more details.

The future

As you can imagine there's basically no end to our TODO list for sigrok; as always we want to support more hardware, more input/output modules, more protocol decoders, and so on. Your contributions are highly welcome!

There are also a bunch of regressions and/or known bugs and missing features we'll be working on for the next minor bugfix release. If you notice any issues that haven't been reported yet, please file a bug.

We also have a number of larger tasks on our list, such as a new protocol decoder backend which will improve the performance of most PDs by quite a bit (10x or 20x speedup is easily possible for some PDs). We're also investigating a more generic flow-graph based framework which will tie all "blocks" we currently have (and others we'll add) more tightly together in a flexible manner, e.g. hardware drivers, input modules, output modules, transform modules, protocol decoders, etc.

Thanks a lot to everyone who has contributed to any of the sigrok projects to make these releases happen! This wouldn't have been possible without the help of the numerous contributors!

We're happy to announce that libserialport 0.1.1 has been released!

libserialport is a portable, LGPLv3+ shared library written in C which allows users to talk to serial port devices on various OSes (including Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and Android).

The 0.1.1 release is compatible with 0.1.0 in that no existing APIs have been changed or removed; new ones have been added, however:

• sp_get_port_description(): Obtain a user friendly port description.
• sp_get_port_transport(): Obtain the underlying transport type.
• sp_get_port_usb_bus_address(): Obtain the USB bus number & device address.
• sp_get_port_usb_vid_pid(): Obtain the USB VID and PID.
• sp_get_port_usb_manufacturer(): Obtain the USB manufacturer string.
• sp_get_port_usb_product(): Obtain the USB product string.
• sp_get_port_usb_serial(): Obtain the USB serial number string.
• sp_get_port_bluetooth_address(): Obtain the Bluetooth MAC address.
• sp_blocking_read_next(): Read bytes from the specified serial port, returning as soon as any data is available.

On Linux, the libudev requirement has been dropped, the library now has no additional requirements on all platforms.

FreeBSD has gained serial port enumeration support.

Additionally, there have been quite a number of bugfixes for various issues. Please read the NEWS file (and/or the git log) for details.
 
The tarball (libserialport-0.1.1.tar.gz) can be downloaded from sigrok.org, as usual.

If you notice any bugs, please report them at sigrok.org/bugzilla, thanks!