Blogs

As in previous years various sigrok developers will be at the Chaos Communication Congress (32C3) in Hamburg, Germany. The conference takes place December 27th to 30th, 2015.

There will be a sigrok assembly (on all 4 days) with a few tables and chairs to allow for sigrok hacking and development planning, various demos and Q&A for visitors, and so on.

Apart from sigrok hacking the conference also features the usual set of awesome talks related to security, hardware hacking, and lots of other interesting topics that you shouldn't miss.

If you're interested in sigrok as user or developer, please drop by and say hello. Bring your gear (if possible) for reverse engineering and driver writing purposes. 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!

We're happy to announce the sigrok-firmware-fx2lafw 0.1.3 release. This is an open-source firmware that allows you to use 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-0.1.3.tar.gz
• sigrok-firmware-fx2lafw-bin-0.1.3.tar.gz

This release doesn't contain any functionality changes in the firmware per se. There have been some minor documentation updates, and some not-so-minor build system improvements (thanks to Daniel Elstner!), though. The NEWS file contains some more details.

The most important change is probably the addition of two new firmware files for FX2-based devices which have the new "official" sigrok/fx2lafw USB VID/PID pairs in their I²C EEPROM:

• 1D50:608C: fx2lafw-sigrok-fx2-8ch.fw
• 1D50:608D: fx2lafw-sigrok-fx2-16ch.fw

These two VID/PID pairs are available for devices that use a Cypress FX2(LP) chip directly as 8-channel or 16-channel logic analyzer, and use the respective USB-based protocol. They are not meant for other devices which just happen to also have an FX2 (e.g. in addition to an FPGA) and/or devices that use a different USB-based protocol.

The USB VID/PIDs are allocated for sigrok/fx2lafw via the awesome "Open registry for community / homebrew USB Product IDs" service of the Openmoko project.

The new firmware files require the soon-to-be-released libsigrok >= 0.4.0 (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.

libsigrok now supports the Velleman DVM4100 multimeter, a 6000 counts DMM with USB connectivity.

This DMM uses the Dream Tech International DTM0660 chip, which has a similar protocol as the Fortune Semiconductor FS9721_LP3 and can even be put into a mode that exactly matches the FS9721 protocol apparently (which also means it might be used in a lot more DMMs than we currently know of).

The DTM0660 protocol parser was contributed by Matthieu Gaillet, thanks a lot!

In addition to the Velleman DVM4100 this parser is also used in the PeakTech 3415 DMM, so it's very likely that this device is now also supported. Since that's untested though, we'd be happy to hear from users that actually own the PeakTech 3415!

Another somewhat recently added protocol decoder for libsigrokdecode is the qi PD.

This PD decodes demodulated data streams used by the Qi standard for communication from the receiver to the charging station. You can read more about the Wireless power consortium's Qi standard on Wikipedia.

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

The decoder was contributed by Josef Gajdusek, thanks a lot!

Yes, it's that time of the week again — libsigrokdecode supports yet another protocol decoder since somewhat recently: modbus.

In the current state the PD stacks on top of the UART decoder and decodes the Modbus RTU protocol. Support for e.g. Modbus ASCII may be added later (to the same PD), possibly also Modbus TCP or other variants (as an extra decoder).

Check the PD's wiki page or Wikipedia for some more info on Modbus in general.

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

The decoder was contributed by Bart de Waal, thanks a lot!

We're happy to announce that the GW Instek GDS-800 oscilloscope series is now supported in libsigrok.

These are devices ranging from 60MHz bandwidth up to 250MHz, with a samplerate of 100MSa/s (or 25GSa/s for equivalent-time sampling).

They have RS232 connectivity per default, but there are also options to extend them with GPIB or USB ports. A (publically documented) SCPI-based protocol is used for the communication.

The scopes are also sold under the Voltcraft brand name (and the code was actually tested on a Voltcraft DSO-6060C).

The driver was contributed by Martin Lederhilger, thanks a lot!

We're happy to announce that libsigrok now supports another PC oscilloscope, the Hung-Chang DSO-2100 (also sold under different brand names such as Voltcraft or Protek).

This is a 1999-era parallel-port based device with 30MHz analog bandwidth and 100MS/s samplerate.

The hardware (see also PCB shots) is somewhat non-trivial, it uses a QuickLogic FPGA, an Analog Devices DSP/microcontroller, some SRAM and Harris/Intersil ADCs. It also has some other properties or quirks you might be interested in.

The driver was contributed by Daniel Glöckner, thanks a lot!

Since this is the first parallel-port device in libsigrok, the build system also gained detection support for libieee1284, a cross-platform parallel port access library that the driver uses.

We're happy to announce that libsigrokdecode supports yet another new protocol decoder: mrf24j40.

This PD decodes the SPI-based protocol of the Microchip MRF24J40, an IEEE 802.15.4 2.4 GHz RF tranceiver chip.

As usual we also have a few sample dumps in the sigrok-dumps repository, and a few test-cases in sigrok-test.

The decoder was contributed by Karl Palsson, thanks a lot!

We're happy to announce that libsigrok now supports various weighing scales from KERN & SOHN GmbH.

The new kern-scale driver currently supports (and was tested on) the KERN EW 6200-2NM scale and all scales from the series which have the same protocol.

The scale can report the currently measured values (both unstable and stable ones) via the RS232 cable it ships with.

The protocol is a simple (14- or 15-byte) packet-based ASCII protocol containing the measured value, the unit (gram, ounce, etc.) and an indicator of whether the measured value is stable or not.

Support for other KERN scales with a different protocol can be added easily. Please let us know if you are able to test on other devices!

Usage example:

 $ sigrok-cli -d kern-ew-6200-2nm:conn=/dev/ttyUSB0 --samples 10
 Mass: 26.920000 g
 Mass: 26.920000 g
 Mass: 134.600006 ct UNSTABLE
 Mass: 134.600006 ct UNSTABLE
 Mass: 134.600006 ct UNSTABLE
 Mass: 134.600006 ct UNSTABLE
 Mass: 134.600006 ct
 Mass: 134.600006 ct
 Mass: 134.600006 ct
 Mass: 134.600006 ct

Another protocol decoder that hasn't had an official announce yet is stepper_motor, a PD which decodes speed and position of a stepper motor.

The PD takes a "step" and "direction" pin as input.

You can select either steps or millimeters as unit for the decoder output.

As usual we also have a few sample dumps in the sigrok-dumps repository, and a few test-cases in sigrok-test.

The decoder was contributed by Petteri Aimonen, thanks a lot!