We now have support for two more sound level meters in libsigrok. Both can do live streaming, and do standalone logging for later retrieval.

First is the CEM DT-8852, a large handheld unit. It has all the usual features you'd expect in a sound level meter, and claims IEC 61672-1 Class 2 compliance. Particularly interesting is the fact that it can stream its dB measurements to the host at 20Hz; this sort of device generally streams at 1 or 2Hz.

The firmware is somewhat... temperamental. It was a particular challenge getting the driver to control settings on the device. The vendor software typically takes between 0.1 and 10 seconds before changing a setting actually takes effect on the hardware. The sigrok driver does considerably better: it's reliably under 1.5 seconds, and usually much faster. It all works very well now: the sigrok driver has workarounds for all known bugs.

The second new SLM driver is for the Kecheng KC-330B. It has a "USB stick" form factor, and so is intended mostly for standalone logging. It doesn't work very well: logging can only be started manually, by pressing the button, and even then it's not so sure to actually work. The sigrok driver only supports streaming from this device for that reason: the data logging functionality on the device is just too unreliable.

We're happy to announce that libsigrok now supports the Ikalogic SCANALOGIC-2 logic analyzer.

This is a low-cost 4-channel logic analyzer with a max. samplerate of 20MHz with 256Ksamples of memory per channel.

It is available both as a fully assembled, ready-to-use device, as well as a slightly cheaper DIY kit where you can solder most of the parts on your own.

Many thanks to Marc Schink for contributing the driver and documenting the USB protocol of the logic analyzer in the wiki!
 

It's been a while since we last released a new version of libsigrok. A lot of work has gone into the library since then, but we somehow never got around to doing releases — there was always some major API change coming, or a driver that was nearly finished.

So here's a release now, and it's a good one. We're simultaneously releasing the following:

• libsigrok 0.2.0
• libsigrokdecode 0.2.0
• sigrok-cli 0.4.0
• PulseView 0.1.0

As announced earlier, libsigrok now supports analog sources, such as oscilloscopes. But this has actually led to many other classes of hardware as well, and we wrote tons of drivers. We've added support for the following:

Logic Analyzers

• CWAV USBee DX
• ZEROPLUS LAP-16128U

Oscilloscopes

• Hantek DSO-2090
• Rigol DS1052D, DS1052E, DS1102D, DS1102E

Multimeters

• Agilent U1231A, U1232A, U1233A
• Brymen BM857
• Digitek DT4000ZC/TekPower TP4000ZC
• Fluke 187, 189, 287, 289 and the Scopemeter 199B
• Mastech MAS345
• Metex ME-31, M-3640D
• PCE PCE-DM32
• PeakTech 3410, 4370
• RadioShack 22-168, 22-805, 22-812
• Tecpel DMM-8060, DMM-8061
• UNI-T UT61D, UT61E
• V&A VA18B
• Victor 70C, 86C
• Voltcraft VC-820, VC-840

Sound level meters

• Colead SL-5868P
• Tondaj SL-814

Temperature, humidity and CO loggers

• Lascar EL-USB (various models)
• MIC 98581, 98583

All of these devices have their own page in our wiki, with full teardowns and protocol documentation. You can find an overview here.

Existing drivers have seen many bugfixes and improvements as well: check the NEWS file for details. There are also input modules for the VCD and WAV file formats, and an output module that pretty-prints analog output with appropriate units.

The commandline client, sigrok-cli, has been updated to deal with the analog devices, and has had an overhaul of the commandline options; this should make it a bit more intuitive to use. Check the man page for details and some examples.

The python decoder library, libsigrokdecode, now exposes decoder options to clients. There is also a new decoder for the Dallas DS1307 RTC chip's protocol.

Up until now, sigrok-cli has been the only officially supported sigrok client. That's changing: we're happy to announce that PulseView is getting its first release as well, and will be officially supported from now on. That means releases of libsigrok and pulseview will be kept in sync, with respect to API/ABI compatibility. We also enforce this in the git development repository. When PulseView gets support for protocol decoding, we'll keep it in sync with libsigrokdecode as well.

All four releases are considered pretty stable; we don't know of anything that crashes at the moment. If you find a bug, please take the time to post a bug report.

After a year of effort, PulseView - sigrok's new logic analyzer, oscilloscope and MSO GUI - is nearly ready for its debut release: v0.1.0.

At this stage we're making a concerted effort to drive up the quality of our release candidate by giving it a thorough round of bug hunting and bug fixing. The range of features offered by PulseView at this stage is quite modest, but those features that it does offer should work well, without crashing or malfunctioning.

In order to experience the joy, or indeed pain, that our users may experience, I've started trying to use PulseView to solve a real problem. This is not the first time I've attempted this task; I've tried to do it several times before, but it hasn't been possible until now to get through this without some kind of crash or error.

The Problem

Cypress FX2 based logic analysers have been supported by our fx2lafw open firmware for some time now. Most of these devices are very simple having only a single FX2 on the board. There is a slightly more interesting device: the USBee AX, which has an ADC attached to the upper 8-bits of the FX2's data input. It is therefore a very simple mixed signal device.

I acquired a chinese clone of this device about a year ago: the EE Electronics ESLA201A.

For a while now, I've been working on a branch to add support for these MSO devices both to the fx2lafw firmware and the libsigrok driver. The results so far have been mixed (no pun intended). While the device seems to do a reasonable job of capturing signals from an NE555 board that I have, when I connect the analog input to ground, it goes crazy:

This trace was taken with the analog input grounded, and capturing at 1MHz. Pretty broken.

Yo dawg! I heard you like Logic Analysers...

So why is the capture getting corrupted? Fortunately (courtesy of Bert Vermeulen), I have just the tool to find out: The OpenBench Logic Sniffer. This device is a logic analyser capable of sampling at up to 200MHz - fast enough to trace the ESLA201A while it samples.

Here I have attached 8 probes to the 8 data output lines of the ESLA201A's TLC5510I ADC, and a probe to the ADC clock input.

I then set the ESLA201A to sample continuously with sigrok-cli. I like to use cpipe to measure that the pipe throughput is what I would expect it to be, and then dump the data in /dev/null.

$ sigrok-cli --driver=fx2lafw --device samplerate=1M --continuous -O binary | cpipe -vt > /dev/null
thru: 1854.344ms at   69.0kB/s (  69.0kB/s avg)  128.0kB
thru: 132.646ms at  965.0kB/s ( 128.8kB/s avg)  256.0kB
thru: 127.458ms at 1004.3kB/s ( 181.6kB/s avg)  384.0kB
thru: 132.681ms at  964.7kB/s ( 227.8kB/s avg)  512.0kB
thru: 127.580ms at 1003.3kB/s ( 269.5kB/s avg)  640.0kB
thru: 132.563ms at  965.6kB/s ( 306.3kB/s avg)  768.0kB
thru: 132.689ms at  964.7kB/s ( 339.4kB/s avg)  896.0kB

...then I set PulseView to capture a trace:

So far this is what I would expect to see. Channel 0 is the clock input, and channels 1-8 are the data output, where channel 8 is the MSB. Therefore the ADC is reading a value of 127, which for a 0V input is correct.

So could this be an issue of timing? The TLC5510I has a minimum high and low clock pulse duration of 25ns. To find out, we will use PulseView's cursors feature.

Putting the cursors around the trough, we can measure a low-duration of 40ns. So no problem there. There are no other constraints on the timing signal - they don't have to be symmetrical pulses.

So I kept repeatedly clicking Run to see if things would always run so smoothly. Suddenly this happened...

Lulwat?

The ADC seems to be having some kind of spaz-attack. So far I haven't been able to figure out exactly what has caused this. However, there do occasionally seem to be problems with the clock signal:

If this logic analyser is seeing what the ADC is seeing, this would explain a lot about why the ADC has gone crazy. The question to determine whether this is a problem with the fx2lafw firmware, or whether there is some signal integrity problem - and what would cause that.

By way of comparison, I decided to see how the USBee software suite would fair on the same problem. So I fired up my trusty Windows XP VM. Interestingly, it too exhibited a very similar behaviour.

I hadn't done any logic analysis with the official firmware before, so I wasn't sure if it would show some mistake I had made in the shape of my clock pulse. In the end it showed a clock signal that was almost identical - except the low-pulses were 30ns rather than 40ns.

Conclusion

I suspect even if I figure out the cause of the corruption, the device will never be a very good oscilloscope, if it has these kinds of ground bounce effects. This is the decay you can see in the analog trace above, and if there are issues with the design either on the digital or analog side, there may not be much I can do about them.

Having said that, even if the board does have digital signalling issues, attaching lots of logic analyser wires to it will make them much worse, so some of the issues we are observing here may have been self induced.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

But anyway, this is all beside the point. PulseView managed to come through this experiment without crashing and delivered some interesting insights.

We're happy to announce the 0.1.1 release of sigrok-firmware-fx2lafw, the open-source firmware which allows you to use almost any device with a Cypress FX2/FX2LP chip as a simple logic analyzer (together with libsigrok and a frontend, of course).

You can download the source tarball from SourceForge as usual. Additionally, you can also grab pre-built firmware files instead, if you don't want to compile them yourself.

This is mostly a bugfix release. It features a simpler and more common "./configure && make && make install" build system, updated documentation, and some fixes for differently named sdcc tools on different OSes or distros (e.g. Mac OS X, Fedora, others).

It also adds support for the USBee DX device (only logic analyzer functionality, as with the other devices), and support for the older FX2 (not FX2LP) variant of the Cypress USB chip. This is important since we've seen both these cases in practice: older logic analyzers which have the FX2 chip, as well as devices which pretend to have an FX2LP chip but in reality it is a "rebadged" FX2.

See the NEWS file for the full list of user-visible changes.

We're happy to announce the new libsigrokdecode 0.1.1 release!

You can download the source tarball from SourceForge, as usual.

This is mostly a bugfix-release, the C library API was not changed. This means existing frontends that work with / are linked against libsigrokdecode 0.1.0 (e.g. sigrok-cli 0.3.1) will continue to work just fine, without requiring relinking or recompiling.

However, some of the protocol decoders' output changed in ways which are not compatible with the state of the decoders in the last libsigrokdecode release. This means, if you're using any scripts to parse sigrok-cli decoder output, or if you have any "private" protocol decoders that stack on top of one of those shipped with libsigrokdecode, you will have to do some adaptations. You're also encouraged to submit such decoders to be included in libsigrokdecode proper, of course!

In addition to all kinds of improvements and bugfixes in existing protocol decoders (PDs), you're probably most interested in what new protocol decoders are now supported. So here's the list:

• avr_isp: AVR In-System Programming
• can: Controller Area Network
• jtag: Joint Test Action Group (IEEE 1149.1)
• jtag_stm32: Joint Test Action Group / ST STM32
• lm75: National LM75
• lpc: Low-Pin-Count
• maxim_ds28ea00: Maxim DS28EA00 1-Wire digital thermometer
• onewire_link: 1-Wire serial communication bus (link layer)
• onewire_network: 1-Wire serial communication bus (network layer)
• sdcard_spi: Secure Digital card (SPI mode)
• tlc5620: Texas Instruments TLC5620 DAC
• uart_dump: UART dump

This adds up to currently 29 supported PDs. The decoders are in various stages of "feature completeness", of course. Additional improvements and more verbose/complete decoding functionality will be added over time.

You can use some example files we've collected in the sigrok-dumps repository to test the protocol decoders. For example, the CAN decoder:

 $ sigrok-cli -i mcp2515dm-bm-1mbits_msg_222_5bytes.sr -a can:can_rx=2
 can: "Start of frame" "SOF" 
 can: "ID: 0 (0x0)" 
 can: "IDE: standard frame" 
 can: "RB0: 0" 
 can: "RTR: data frame" 
 can: "Stuff bit: 1" 
 can: "DLC: 7" 
 can: "Stuff bit: 0" 
 can: "Stuff bit: 1" 
 can: "Stuff bit: 0" 
 can: "Data byte 0: 0xf0" 
 can: "Data byte 1: 0x00"
 [...]

Or, the basic JTAG decoder:

 $ sigrok-cli -i olimex_stm32-h103_irscan_drscan.sr -a jtag:trst=0:tdi=1:tms=2:tck=3:tdo=4
 jtag: "New state: SELECT-DR-SCAN" 
 jtag: "New state: SELECT-IR-SCAN" 
 jtag: "New state: CAPTURE-IR" 
 jtag: "New state: SHIFT-IR" 
 [...]
 jtag: "New state: SHIFT-IR" 
 jtag: "New state: EXIT1-IR" 
 jtag: "IR TDI: 11111110 (0xfe), 8 bits" 
 jtag: "IR TDO: 11110001 (0xf1), 8 bits" 
 jtag: "New state: UPDATE-IR" 

Or, stacking the STM32-specific JTAG protocol decoder on top of the JTAG decoder:

 $ sigrok-cli -i olimex_stm32-h103_irscan_drscan.sr \
   -a jtag:trst=0:tdi=1:tms=2:tck=3:tdo=4,jtag_stm32 -s jtag,jtag_stm32
 jtag_stm32: "IR: IDCODE"
 jtag_stm32: "IDCODE: 0x3ba00477 (ver=0x3, part=0xba00, manuf=0x23b, res=0x1)" 

If you want to contribute any additional sample files for various protocols (*.sr format as produced by sigrok-cli) for our sigrok-dumps repository that would be great!

We're also currently in the process of adding a wiki page for every protocol decoder, with detailed information about the protocol it decodes, the decoder implementation and its status, how to use it, which decoders it stacks on (or which ones can stack on top of it), and so on. Check the pages for mx25lxx05d, dcf77, or nunchuk, for some (work in progress) examples.

Please check the libsigrokdecode NEWS file for the full list of user-visible changes in this release. As always, we're happy about bug reports, feature suggestions, comments about which protocol decoders you'd want supported next, or even better — patches :)

Same as last year, we will be at the Chaos Communication Congress (29c3), this time in Hamburg, Germany. The conference takes place from December 27th to 30th, 2012.

We'll have a sigrok "assembly", likely in area 3b of the conference building, where we'll be hanging around, working on new sigrok features, new hardware drivers, new protocol decoders and various other things. We'll have lots of gear with us for demo and development purposes, including logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, MSOs, multimeters, and lots more.

Bring your own device if you own models we don't yet support or know about. We'll be happy to have a look!

Chat with us, give us your suggestions which features you'd like to see, which devices you want to be supported, which protocol decoders you'd like to have, or even help us write some drivers/decoders!

Hope to see you there!

In order to better keep track of reported bugs and submitted patches, we've set up a bug tracking system:

http://sigrok.org/bugzilla/

Please use this to report bugs found in any sigrok project. Attached bugfix patches are most welcome, of course, as are patches that add a new feature. However, feature requests should be directed to the mailing list or IRC channel. We want to keep the list of open bugs as small as possible.

Supporting a new piece of hardware in sigrok entails writing a driver for libsigrok. As a bare minimum, the driver consists of a C source file with a struct sr_dev_driver in it. That struct contains the name of the driver and a set of callbacks libsigrok will do when that driver is used — things like initializing the device, starting acquisition and so on. libsigrok provides an internal API which drivers can use to send data across the "session bus" — something which the frontend application listens on.

However, writing code is the last thing you do. When you get started, first make a page on the wiki for that device. Check out the page for a similar device, and copy its source over. This will get the page structure and categories down. Take some pictures of the device, particularly of the insides. It may well help you with the driver later on. Some guidelines for taking good PCB pictures are here.

Next, take a look at the protocol. Generally this involves running a copy of Windows in a VM (Virtualbox or VMware will do nicely) on a Linux host. When you use the device through the vendor-provided Windows software, you can sniff the USB (or whatever) traffic on the Linux host. There are many techniques to reverse engineering protocols, but essentially it involves staring at hexdumps until you understand the connection between what the vendor software sends to the device, and what the device does in response.

Whatever you find out about the protocol, document it! You want to be able to pick up where you left off, even if there's a couple of weeks between working on this. By all means, use the wiki page you created as a working document — it's not just a place to put finished protocol docs. If you get stuck, somebody else might see something in your notes that you missed.

For some devices you might even skip the VM + Windows step. Some low-end multimeters and other measurement devices don't really communicate with the vendor software: they just send data out periodically — usually a few times per second — and don't even have an input channel on which to take commands. These are generally devices with a keypad or similar controls, and a display. By simply listening to what it puts out, verifying this against what you see on the display, and putting the device through its various modes and options with the controls, you have everything you need to grok the protocol.

Once you're satisfied you've got the whole protocol documented, it's time for the driver. Creating the driver's various source files and integrating it into the build is quite a bit of work, and requires a lot of fiddling around with autotools. So to make things easier, we have a tool to do all this for you. It's called, unsurprisingly, "new-driver", and can be found in the sigrok-util repository.

Clone the repository, and run it from the source directory:

$ git clone git://sigrok.org/sigrok-util
$ cd sigrok-util/source

Let's say your device is called the "Magic Widget S15". Invoke new-driver like this:

$ ./new-driver Magic Widget S15

This will show some output as it works, and leave behind a single file when it's done: 0001-magic-widget-s15-Initial-driver-skeleton.patch

Apply this to your libsigrok tree:

$ cd /path/to/libsigrok
$ git am /path/to/0001-magic-widget-s15-Initial-driver-skeleton.patch

That's it! The configure script will now know about your new driver, and doing the usual configure/make steps will build it. You'll find it in your source tree in the hardware directory:

$ ls -l hardware/magic-widget-s15
total 16
-rw-rw-r-- 1 bert bert 3692 Nov 13 02:49 api.c
-rw-rw-r-- 1 bert bert 1035 Nov 13 02:49 Makefile.am
-rw-rw-r-- 1 bert bert 1157 Nov 13 02:49 protocol.c
-rw-rw-r-- 1 bert bert 1919 Nov 13 02:49 protocol.h

The file api.c contains the struct sr_dev_driver which registers it with libsigrok. An overview of the struct and the callbacks it contains is on the hardware driver API page. All the callbacks have a stub function in api.c, with a TODO comment marking the spot where you come in. Take a look at another driver for a similar device to see how various callbacks might be implemented. The protocol.h file is included from both C files, and contains mostly the device context struct. This is specific to your driver, not shared across libsigrok. The protocol.c file is where you implement the protocol parser for your device. It has a single stub function defined:

SR_PRIV int magic_widget_s15_receive_data(int fd, int revents, void *cb_data)

This function gets called whenever your device sent some data. The stub grabs your device context, which will have a device handle you can use to read the data and send libsigrok the results.

Everything else is just a matter of parsing.

Just a quick public service announcement: we've moved the sigrok related git repositories from SourceForge to sigrok.org (for various reasons).

While we were at it we also did the long-overdue "repo split". Every sigrok-related subproject (libsigrok, libsigrokdecode, sigrok-cli, sigrok-gtk, sigrok-qt, and so on) now has its own git repository, as opposed to all of these unrelated subprojects being mangled into one big repository.

There were also a few smaller renames and git rebase actions on some repos, so please make sure you clone the new repositories from their new locations for any further usage or development. Thanks!

The new clone URLs for the repositories look like this:

 $ git clone git://sigrok.org/libsigrok

(replace "libsigrok" with your desired subproject)

All the repositories also have their own source code browser (and git changelog) at sigrok.org/gitweb now.

Please let us know in case you experience any issues with the new repository setup.