SCANALOGIC
2
| Logic
Analyzer & Signal Generator |
Online
Help
Last update:
10/1/11
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Getting
started
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Principle of operation of the device:
SCANALOGIC-2 operates in 4 modes: Capture mode,
Generator mode, Mixed mode and
live mode.
In the "Capture mode", The SCANALOGIC-2 logic analyzer
operates by capturing the data, sending the captured data to the
PC and finally displaying and analyzing that data on the PC using
the dedicated PC software.
The SCANALOGIC-2 hardware device uses a 4 channel memory buffer
to store the samples that are captured before sending them to
the PC. The memory buffer is also used in the generator mode to
store the data sent from the PC before "playing it back",
that is, generating the data on the 4 probes of scanalogic.
In the live mode, the data is sent directly to the PC, without
being temporary stored in the memory buffer. This mode's accuracy
depends on the PC's resources, and thus is not to be used for
accurate time measurements, but rather as a 4 channels logic probe.
Connecting and installing SCANALOGIC-2:
SCANALOGIC-2 don't need any drivers to be loaded. As soon as you
connect it with the USB cable to the PC, it is automatically recognized
a mouse or a keyboard (provided you have Windows XP or later).
Once the probes are correctly connected (the black wire on the
GND symbol) you can connect them to the signals that need to be
tested/captured.
Installing and running the windows software:
Once you download and installed the SCANALOGIC-2, a shortcut will
be created in the start menu under the folder "ikalogic>scanalogic".
Each time you run the software, an automatic check is done to
see if a new version is available. We strongly recommend that
you always accept software updates. If however you didn't accept
the update, you can always re-download the software from our website,
which will always be the latest available release. If you don't
have an internet connection, no software updates or check will
be done.
The user interface
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When launched, the software has 3 distinct parts:
1- The chart area
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As the
name implies, this part of the software allows you to
visualize the digital signals that are sampled, or the
data that will be generated. You can move the chart right
and left by simply clicking and dragging the waveform.
You can also interact with this part of the screen using
the mouse's right button. Depending on the circumstances,
right buttons clicks will allow you to: Add marker, Add
time selections, delete markers and time selections or
move marker and time selections. The mouse wheel scrolling
will allow you to zoom in and out. Pressing the CTRL button
on your keyboard while zooming with the mouse wheel will
allow much faster zooming.
When you are placing a marker, you can move the chart
right and left by holding the mouse wheel button pressed
while moving the mouse right/left.
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2- The control panel
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This
left bar, groups all the basic commands, options, and
tools. On the "basic" tab, you have the "Selection
info" box. To view some data in that box you have
to:
- Load a chart, or sample some data
- right click somewhere and chose "add time selection"
- Place the two markers at two difference positions
When a time selection is added, the the "Selection
info" box will show data corresponding to the block
that you selected (between two markers). It will allow
you to see timings, number of samples, average frequency
and duty cycle.
Note that you can right-click on a time selection to move
it up & down, to target different channels (you will
notice that the time selection arrows and the time selection
info box, both have the same colors as the selected channel).
The control panel tab will also allow you to decode serial
data ("Decoding" tab), and perform device configuration
(allowing you to setup the most important parameters like
Sampling rate, sampling depth, trigger type and position,
etc.) The device configuration and decoding tabs will
be explained in detail later in this help file.
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3- The log area
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The Log
area, is a place where a lot of information is injected
to help you understand what is SCANALOGIC currently doing,
to give you useful hints to help you placing markers and
time selections and inform you of the time required to
perform a certain task.
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Device configuration
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The device configuration tab (capture/generate),
located at the left side of the screen is where you have to go
prior to starting any sampling or data generation.
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As
you can see on that picture, this panel is composed of
a series of list boxes, allowing you to setup your SCANALOGIC-2
device the way you want it to behave.
Mode of operation:
The first list box allows you to choose from 4 modes of
operation:
Capture Mode:
In this mode, the 4 channels of the device work as a standard
logic analyzer. They are all inputs.
Generator
Mode: In this mode, the 4 channels of
the device work as a generator. They are all outputs.
The data generated is exactly the data you see in the
chart area. If you don't see any data, then you need to
create some data using the generator wizard ( )
or capture some data first.
Mixed
Mode: In this mode, 2 channels work as
inputs, and the two other as outputs. This mode is useful
to generate some data on a channel while watching some
response on another channel.
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Trigger options:
The "trigger type" and "trigger channel" list
boxes let you setup the trigger conditions:
Falling
edge : Sampling start as soon as a HIGH to LOW
transition is detected on the trigger channel.
Rising
edge : Sampling start as soon as a LOW to HIGH
transition is detected on the trigger channel.
Logic
change : Sampling start as soon as a logic change
is detected on the trigger channel
At
start: Sampling start as soon as you press the
"start" button( )
When choosing "ALL" as the trigger channel,
you can only choose "Logic change" as the
trigger type, and hence, any logic change on any channel
will cause a trigger.
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Trigger position:
The "trigger position" slider, allows you to set the
trigger position, in percentage of the sampling depth. That is,
if you want to capture some of the signals before the trigger
event, then you should move this slider to the middle or even
to the right. The amount of "pre-trigger" data depend
on you application and on the signals you're measuring.
The only thing you need to keep in mind, is that
the pre-trigger data is a ratio of the whole sampling buffer,
meaning that if you have about 25% pre-trigger data, then you
have only 75% of the sampling buffer remaining to store the post-trigger
samples.
Trigger options and trigger position only affect the
Capture mode and mixed
mode, but don't have any effect on the generator
mode.
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Sampling rate and depth:
The sampling rate determines
the number of samples that will be captured per seconds, and the
sampling depth determines the total length of the data that will
be captured. This is also true for the generator and mixed modes.
Live capture:
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Live
capture mode allows you to use SCANALOGIC as 4 separate
logic probes. In other words, it allows you to see the
logic state of the 4 channels in real time.
Prior to using Live capture, you need to define the rate
at which SCANALOGIC will capture new data (Live scroll
rate), and the amount of data to be kept in memory (Live
scroll buffer)
Once you click on "Live scroll", the chart area
will scroll from left to right.
You can always pause/resume the scrolling using the "Pause"
button.
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Using the decoder
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The "decoding" tab, located at the left
of the screen, allows you to decode various kinds of serial protocols.
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As
you can see on that picture, there are 4 sub tabs under
the "decoding" tab.
Decoding options:
This first tab allows you to set general options for the
decoding system:
Shade waveform:
Checking that box puts a shades on the waveform, making
the decoded data more visible.
Show
in HEX format: When checked, data will
be displayed in Hexadecimal format, otherwise, data is
shown in decimal format.
Show
ASCII equivalent: checking this box will
tell the decoder to add the ASCII character equivalent
for the data.
The example below shows some I2C data being decoded in
HEX format, and showing the ASCII character equivalent
between [brackets].
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Auto Highlight bytes:
This feature lets you select 3 bytes to highlight,
among the rest of the decoded bytes. This is useful when you are
searching for some specific bytes in a continuous stream of bytes.
For example, the following picture shows this feature being used
to search for the character "SCA" (which is the beginning
of SCANALOGIC).
As you can see, the last 3 bytes are highlighted, and you can
easily find them among a lot of other bytes. Once you have found
them, you can zoom in again to see those bytes, as the following
picture shows.
Prior to using the decoder, you must have already captured
some data!
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UART decoding:
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To decode UART data, first, you need to set all the options
according to your signal (BAUD rate, bits per transfer,
Parity, and bit order).
Then, you have to choose the lines that need to be decoded,
and press "Decode".
If you don't know the BAUD rate, press Auto, and SCANALOGIC
will use the standard baud rate that is closest to you're
captured data. |
SPI decoding:
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To
use SPI decoding, you have to select the channels that
correspond to MOSI, MISO, CLK and CS.
Then, set SPI parameters (Bit order, CS active state,
bits per transfer, and SPI mode)
A small picture showing the difference between different
modes will change according to the mode you have chosen.
If you forgot to select the channels corresponding to
the SPI signals, SCANALOGIC will try to automatically
detect them for you.
Checking "Overwrite user legend" will replace
the legend on the chart area, as in the following picture:
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I2C decoding:
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To
use I2C decoding, simply select the channels that correspond
to the SDA and SCL lines, then press on "Decode"
Checking "Replace user legend" will replace
the legend on the chart area, as in the following picture:
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If you have made some modifications and need to refresh
the decoded data, you have to press on "Decode"
button again.
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Data generator wizard
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Data generation is done in two steps:
First, you have to "create" some data,
using the data generator wizard
Then, you have to transfer this data to the device
and start generating the data as electrical signals on the probes.
You can always click on File> Start new data sequence
to clear all existing data and start new data generation.
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The data generator wizard can be shows or hidden by click on this
icon ().
Once you click on that icon, the wizard will appear on the right
side of the screen, as shown in the image below.
You can also access the data generator wizard by right clicking
on one channel and selecting "Run data generator for this
channel" as shown in the image below.
Once the data generator wizard is opened,
you can set general timing options like sampling rate and sampling
depth. Those two parameters will affect all the channels, exactly
as if you would do it from the "device configuration"
tab in the control panel.
The "Target channel" box allow you to choose the target
channel, in which you want the generated data to appear. It also
allows you to define the behavior in case of collision with existing
data (Overwrite, OR, AND).
SCANALOGIC data generator allows 3 kinds of data to be generated:
PWM (pulse width modulation), FM (Frequency modulation) and Serial
Data.
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PWM and FM signals generation
To create some PWM signals, you have to
specify the parameters of the signals you want to generate.
In case you are confused between all those parameters,
you can always click on this help button ( )
and a helper pop up screen will appear.
Checking the "Auto-preview" box will allow you
to see the created signals in real time. This is useful
to test the effect different parameters (like frequency,
waveform and lag).
Please note that SCANALOGIC only generates digital signals,
and the terms SIN, Triangle or SawTooth refer to the slope
of variation of the duty cycle.
After you have obtained the desired result, you have to
click on "APPLY" for the data you created to
be taken in account.
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When the auto-preview is checked, and some of the parameters are
incorrect, the word "auto preview" will be struck through,
and an error button will appear ( ),
as in the following example:
Clicking on
will give you a message saying the source of the error, which
is in this case, an error in the Envelope frequency (because it
is higher than the max value of 25).
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Serial
data generation
The serial data generation is a
tool that can let you create UART packets, or simply precise
sequences of 1's and 0's (bit stream).
This tool uses a very simple syntax, that can be reviewed
any time by clicking on the "Syntax" button.
When generating serial data, the first thing you need
to do is to set the BAUD rate (in case of UART data) or
the BIT PERIOD (in case of bit stream). |
The following series of example, shows the exhaustive list of
possible commands to be used with the data generator:
// After the '//' you can insert comments
till the end of the line (C style)
// You can mix UART mode commands with BIT STREAM commands
// If you don't set a parameter - default setting will
be used
// BAUD= or PERIOD= must always be specified !!!!
//
//------------------------------------------------------------------
// UART mode
//------------------------------------------------------------------
//
BAUD=9600 // Max. allowed depends on
sampling parameters!
USTOP=2 // Define the number of STOP
bits (default 1 is used)
MSB_FIRST // Define the bit order (default
LSB_FIRST is used)
PARITY=N // E-EVEN, 0-ODD, N-NONE (default
N is used)
POLARITY=0// 0-Standard, 1-Inversed
logic (default 0 is used)
//
U0xAA // generate a UART packet (start
bit, 8 bits (for 0xAA), stop bits)
U170 // Same as U0xAA but using a decimal
number
UCHR=Hello World
//Send a string of character as UART packets, each one
having start bit and stop bit.
//
//------------------------------------------------------------------
// BIT STREAM mode
//------------------------------------------------------------------
//
PERIOD=1 // PERIOD=x.xx[ms] Min. allowed
depends on sampling parameters!
//
b0 // generate a single bit with logic
level 0
b1 // generate a single bit with logic
level 1
b0=15 // generate a single bit with
logic level 0 and the length of 15 periods
b1=22 // generate a single bit with
logic level 1 and the length of 22 periods
B0xFF // generate 8 bits with the binary
value of 0xFF (Hexadecimal)
B126 // generate 8 bits with the binary
value of 126 (decimal)
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As an example, the following picture shows a part
of a UART packet containing the character string "Hello World".
After using the Data generator wizard, SCANALOGIC software
automatically sets the device in OUTPUT mode, but you
can always change it to mixed mode in the device
configuration tab.
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FFT
analysis
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The FFT (Fast Fourier Transformation) analysis
allows you to establish in depth frequency analysis on some or
all of the channels.
In case you are not familiar with, FFT, it will simply allow you
to define the frequencies enclosed in a signal. For example, if
you have some PWM signals generated from some device, it's very
difficult to measure the frequency of the carrier and the envelope,
but with FFT, this becomes easily doable with a mouse click.
Once you click on "start", the FFT analysis
will be performed, and after a few seconds, you can see the result
as in the picture below:
Dual View
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The dual view, is another innovative tool, that
lets you display two different captures at the same time and examine
the differences between them.
To use this tool, first you need to have some data loaded or captured,
then, you can load dual data using open icon as shown in the picture
below:
Note that the dual data must have the exact same
sampling rate and depth as the original data. Once you have loaded
the dual data, you can use this icon 
to show or hide the dual data, or the hand icon  to
skew the dual data right and left.
The following picture shows an example of the usage of the dual
view tool. The white lines represent the dual data, and as you
can see on the circled region, the blue (original) data has a
missing pulse.
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