[Matthew D’Asaro] was recently entrusted with an entire classroom fleet of fourteen broken Tektronix TLA5202 logic analyzers — a pile of equipment that once was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. His task: Fixing them. He fixed them all, and on the way documented a number of common failure points in these old but still great devices.
Continue reading “Repairing 14 Tektronix TLA5202 Logic Analyzers”
Sometimes there’s just no substitute for the right diagnostic tool. [Ankit] was trying to port some I2C code from an Arduino platform to an ARM chip. When the latter code wasn’t working, he got clever and wrote a small sketch for the Arduino which would echo each byte that came across I2C out to the serial line. The bytes all looked right, yet the OLED still wasn’t working.
Time to bring out the right tool for the job: a logic analyzer or oscilloscope. Once he did that, the problem was obvious (see banner image — Arduino on top, ARM on bottom): he misunderstood what the ARM code was doing and was accidentally sending an I2C stop/start signal between two bytes. With that figured, he was on the right track in no time.
We just ran an epic post on troubleshooting I2C, and we’ll absolutely attest to the utility of having a scope or logic analyzer on hand when debugging communications. If you suspect that the bits aren’t going where they’re supposed to, there’s one way to find out. It’s conceivable that [Ankit] could have dug his way through the AVR’s hardware I2C peripheral documentation and managed to find the status codes that would have also given him the same insight, but it’s often the case that putting a scope on it is the quick and easy way out.
There are piles of old 128MB and 256MB sticks of RAM sitting around in supply closets and in parts bins. For his Hackaday Prize project, [esot.eric] is turning these obsolete sticks of RAM into something useful – a big, fast logic analyzer. It’s cheap, and simple enough that it can be built on a breadboard.
If using old SDRAM in strange configurations seems familiar, you’re correct. This project is based on [esot.eric]’s earlier AVR logic analyzer project that used a slow AVR to measure 32 channels of logic at 30 megasamples per second. The only way this build was possible was by hacking an old stick of RAM to ‘free run’, automatically logging data to the RAM and reading it out with an AVR later.
This project expands on the earlier projects by using bigger sticks of RAM faster, with the ultimate goal being a 32-bit, 133MS/s logic analyzer that is more of a peripheral than a single, monolithic project. With a Raspberry Pi Zero, a stick of RAM, and a few miscellaneous logic chips, this project can become anything from a logic analyzer to a data logger to an oscilloscope. It’s weird, yes, but the parts to make this very handy tool can be found in any hackerspace or workshop, making it a great trick for the enterprising hardware hacker.
We often see “logic analyzer” projects which are little more than microcontrollers reading data as fast as they can, sending it to a PC, and then plotting the results. Depending on how fast the microcontroller is, these projects range from adequate to not very useful.
At first glance, [esot.eric’s] logic analyzer project has an AVR in it, so it ought to be on the low end of the scale. Then you look at the specs: 32 channels at 30 megasamples per second. How does that work with an AVR in it?
The answer lies in the selection of components. The analyzer uses a 128MB SDRAM DIMM (like an older PC might use for main memory). That makes sense; the Arduino can’t store much data internally. However, it isn’t the storage capacity that makes this choice critical. It seems [esot.eric] has a way to make the RAM “free run”.
The idea is to use the Arduino (or other host microcontroller) to set up the memory. Some of the memory’s output bits feedback to the address and data lines. Then the microcontroller steps aside and the SDRAM clocks samples into its memory by itself at the prevailing clock rate for the memory.
Continue reading “SDRAM Logic Analyzer Uses An AVR And A Dirty Trick”
When working on digital circuits that operate at high frequencies it helps to have some special tools on hand. Things like oscilloscopes and logic analyzers are priceless when something isn’t working right. Another great tool would be this hardware-based profiler that [Mike] came up with while he was working on another project.
The profiler connects to USB and shows up as a serial port. Normally [Mike] used a set of LEDs to get information about how his microcontrollers work, but for this project that wasn’t enough. The uController Code Profiler can provide the main loop running time, time functions and sections of code, keep track of variables, and a few other tasks as well, all with nanosecond resolution.
The source code isn’t provided but a hex file is available, along with a schematic and an include file, if you want to try this one out on your next project. Like this homemade logic analyzer, this could be a powerful tool in your microcontroller arsenal. Simply include the file with various pieces of your code to get it up and running!
Logic analyzers historically have been the heavy artillery in an engineer’s arsenal. For many of us, the name invokes mental images of large HP and Tektronix iron with real CRT screens. Logic connections were made through pods, with hundreds of leads weaving their way back to the test equipment. The logic analyzer came out when all else failed, when even a four channel scope wasn’t enough to figure out your problems. Setting them up was a pain – if you were lucky, the analyzer had a PC keyboard interface. If not, you were stuck typing your signal names into the front panel keyboard. Once setup though, logic analyzers were great at finding bugs. You can see things you’d never see with another tool – like a data bus slowly settling out after the read or write strobe.
There have been a number of USB based logic analyzers introduced in recent years, but they didn’t really catch on until Saleae released their “Logic” line of devices. Low cost, high-speed, and easy to use – these devices were perfect. They also inspired an army of clone devices based upon the same Cypress Semiconductor parts. DSLogic designed by DreamSource Labs, can be thought of as an open source evolution of the original Saleae device.
DSLogic appeared in 2013 as a Kickstarter campaign for an open source logic analyzer with an optional oscilloscope extension. I think it’s safe to say that they did well, raising $111,497 USD, more than 10 times their initial goal of $10,000 USD. These days both the DSLogic and the oscilloscope extension are available at The Hackaday Store. In this review we’re focusing on the logic analyzer portion of the tool.
Click past the break for the full story!
If you have a BeagleBone, you already have a lot of tools. We’ve seen them used in driving hundreds of LEDs at a very high frame rate, used as a video card for ancient computers, and as a software defined radio. For his entry to The Hackaday Prize, [Kumar] turned his BeagleBone into a 14-channel, 100Msps logic analyzer that’s good enough to debug just about all those hobby electronics projects you’re working on.
The BeagleBone is only able to have this sort of performance as a logic analyzer because of its PRUs, those fancy peripherals that make the Beagle great at blinking pins really, really fast. [Kumar] is using both PRUs in the BeagleBone for this project. PRU1 reads from the input probes, and PRU0 writes all the samples into DDR memory directly. From there, the samples are off to kernel modules and apps, either sigrok, dd, or something you coded up in Python.
Compared to the cheap logic analyzers we have today like the Salae Logic and the DSLogic, [Kumar]’s project is just as good as any commercial offering (provided you can live with 14 channels instead of 16), and because it’s based on a BeagleBone, the software is infinitely expandable.
UPDATE: After this post was written but before it was published, [Kumar] finished up a blog post on how he’s building a logic analyzer with the BeagleBone’s PRUs. It’s a true tutorial, with enough code demos to allow anyone to build their own 8-bit analyzer on a BeagleBone, and there are more updates coming.
