ADC / DAC LC Filter Designer - Welcome to Try

[olegk]

Hello!

Welcome to try my new software tool for LC filter design.
It is targeted at the mixed-signal device developers.

http://lcfilter.ru/en/

[olegk]

[Neganur]

Care to mention how much the license fee will be?

[olegk]

Currently I estimate it as (350±50) USD with 80% probability.
I know that it is expensive for hobbyists, but I don't know, do hobbyists actually need the tool like this, or only engineering companies.

[nctnico]

There are already many (free) tools for this purpose.

[free_electron]

There are already many (free) tools for this purpose.

like ?  looks to me like he has models of cots parts in there which allows me to easily flick through them

[T3sl4co1l]

Curious, if you have models of components, does that include the manufacturers' suggested models, or do you make your own?

(Sadly, this is a trick question.  None of the manufacturers provide a useful, lumped equivalent, frequency independent model.  TDK SEAT and Kemet SPICE both make single-frequency equivalents (a useful approximation over perhaps a decade or two, but hardly complete), and Coilcraft has frequency-independent models (good to just over the SRF, usually), but they use frequency dependent elements, not constant lumped elements (thus making a transient simulation intractable to impossible).

The differential filter shown is interesting. Do you have any means to control for the common mode impedance and frequency response?

Can you do impedance matching or open/short type filters? Duplexers?

Tim

[olegk]

Thank you for replies!

Yes, there are many tools for LC filter design, but this one is better for ADC and DAC front end.

Currently it has only Touchstone models published by manufacturers.
Some of them are not very well, but only manufacturers can improve them the right way.
It is the reason, why TDK components are not supported at the moment: many of them
have negative resistances or wrong impedance sign at the lowest frequency.

Common mode impedance and response control and analysis are not supported currently,
as well as impedance matching and duplexers.
But I am collecting all the feedback to estimate importance of the next possible features,
so if you have something to say about it, I would be very grateful.

[nctnico]

There are already many (free) tools for this purpose.

like ?  looks to me like he has models of cots parts in there which allows me to easily flick through them

The latter doesn't seem very useful to me. There are new parts arriving all the time and availability of parts is also an issue. You might not want to design a filter which is very sensitive to component variation or which relies on the characteristics of very specific components. If you design a filter you already know how the capacitors and inductors should perform regarding operating frequency and tolerances. From there you select based on price and availability.

[olegk]

Typically there is tradeoff between analog and digital stages.
Relaxing the requirements to the one of them, like allowing any inductor with a given footprint,
increases the complexity and cost of another one, or decreases total performance.
But simply by changing components in filter you can improve the performance specs
of the device, or lower the cost without lowering specs.
It is simple but effective way to optimize the design.

About availability and prices - it is good point, thank you.

[olegk]

By the way, "welcome to try" does not mean "welcome to crack". It is definitely not welcome.
Just curious, how long did it take to bypass protection?

[PA0PBZ]

By the way, "welcome to try" does not mean "welcome to crack". It is definitely not welcome.
Just curious, how long did it take to bypass protection?

I've never programmed on .NET, nor understand IL and CLR. The last time I've ever tried .NET is somewhere around 2003.
Despite these facts, it took me totally less than 2.5 hours from downloading and familiarizing the tools to crack it.

Looks like ConfuserEx is not that safe after all...

[olegk]

Code confiscator won't prevent it from being cracked.
PS. I have no intention to release the cracked binary or key or the core algorithm of your program.
But the protection is really weak, just to let you know.

This statement  sounds approximately like: "Hey people, look, I broke someone's door and stolen his work."
Is it the reason for pride anyhow?
Absolutely not.
It is something shameful.

[PA0PBZ]

Code confiscator won't prevent it from being cracked.
PS. I have no intention to release the cracked binary or key or the core algorithm of your program.
But the protection is really weak, just to let you know.

This statement  sounds approximately like: "Hey people, look, I broke someone's door and stolen his work."
Is it the reason for pride anyhow?
Absolutely not.
It is something shameful.

You can look at it anyway you want, but the wise thing would be to think about your protection, why it failed and what you can do to improve it.
But hey, that's just my opinion. 

[nctnico]

Code confiscator won't prevent it from being cracked.
PS. I have no intention to release the cracked binary or key or the core algorithm of your program.
But the protection is really weak, just to let you know.

This statement  sounds approximately like: "Hey people, look, I broke someone's door and stolen his work."
Is it the reason for pride anyhow?
Absolutely not.
It is something shameful.

Sorry but this response is almost beyond lame. He showed you your front door isn't properly locked and you should be thanking him on your knees for pointing that out to you! He could have posted a crack tool on a warez site or something like that. Yes it must be frustrating you need to do a better job at securing your software but you should have investigated the protection more carefully to see how effective it is! Don't shoot the messenger!

[olegk]

Code confiscator won't prevent it from being cracked.
PS. I have no intention to release the cracked binary or key or the core algorithm of your program.
But the protection is really weak, just to let you know.

This statement  sounds approximately like: "Hey people, look, I broke someone's door and stolen his work."
Is it the reason for pride anyhow?
Absolutely not.
It is something shameful.

You can look at it anyway you want, but the wise thing would be to think about your protection, why it failed and what you can do to improve it.
But hey, that's just my opinion. 

"Hey people, look, I've just killed someone, because he was too weak, here are photos!"
"Yeah, it is the victim guilt, he must be better protected."

[olegk]

Sorry but this response is almost beyond lame. He showed you your front door isn't properly locked and you should be thanking him on your knees for pointing that out to you! He could have posted a crack tool on a warez site or something like that. Yes it must be frustrating you need to do a better job at securing your software but you should have investigated the protection more carefully to see how effective it is! Don't shoot the messenger!

Showed what? That there are ways to violate license restrictions? Their existence is obvious.

There is nothing here to thank for. Can this software be cracked? Sure. Like any other software.

It is like rain. You can not avoid it, but that does not mean that everyone can pour somebody by water.

[olegk]

"Hey people, look, I've just killed someone, because he was too weak, here are photos!"
"Yeah, it is the victim guilt, he must be better protected."

The difference between the 2 cases is, one did some harm, and one did not.

Anything you write can harm someone, even if you didn't see it.

[T3sl4co1l]

Uh... right.

Saying and doing are two different things.

1. Say you visit a friend.  He walks you up to the front door and he opens it.  No lock, just a turn of the knob.  You reflect on this, and suggest he take steps to better secure his property.  (Whether he acts on that, it's generally accepted that that isn't your problem.)

2. You decide to rob your friend.  You discover it's quite easy, because he doesn't lock the doors while he's away.  You remove property, and perhaps damage others.

#1 is neither a crime nor an ethical problem.  #2 is both.



Present law concerning IP and software blurs these cases.
- If the license says not to do certain things (within the limits of contract law), then violating those is a problem.  For example, most commercial software contains statements limiting the debugging or disassembly of the product.  (Whether this is semantically meaningful at all (which I would argue, it isn't) doesn't matter.)
- If the user does things, but doesn't tell anyone else about it, then at worst, they've only violated their own obligations to the IP owner.
- If the user distributes that information (a procedure to crack the specific software in question, or the cracked binaries, or a patch, etc.), it is criminal activity.

The root conundrum is that: distributing, using and inspecting software is indistinguishable from #1 (which is neither unethical nor a crime), yet we define IP into existence so that criminal acts such as #2 become possible.

This is only a horribly rough introduction to the problems of IP law and is not intended for discussion, argument or political motivation.  To learn more, I suggest looking it up online, or at www.eff.org and others.

Tim

[olegk]

Anything you write can harm someone, even if you didn't see it.

Then let it be, if your ego surpasses your chance to prevent losing money by having a silly bug that any software protection expert will spot on a first glance.

Didn't you think, that this software not uses hardware keys, license servers or online activation, because there are reasons for that?

[BradC]

Didn't you think, that this software not uses hardware keys...

I've just spent 3 days reverse engineering one of those. It used 3 different types of encryption and a combination of static, random, and public key encryption but it's also susceptible to a basic replay attack because they made a fundamental implementation error in the way they use IV's. I had some time, and I was interested in how they did what did so I pulled it apart. I turned it on, but I pulled it apart too. Software is no different to hardware in that regard.

Look, anything man can create, man can undo and given enough time and motivation someone will break your protection.
You have two ways of dealing with it :
A) Take any suggestions on-board and improve your protection
B) Ignore it

Both have the same result, because any improvement you make to the protection will just issue another challenge to a sufficiently motivated person.

You wrote an awesome piece of software that serves two purposes. One it lets you design filters in a comprehensive fashion, and two it provides a puzzle to be solved. Some people will be interested in the first bit, and some will be interested in the second.

Protection is to keep the honest people honest. It just happens to also provide a challenge to be solved. Let it go and work on the software. Someone breaking your protection is not going to dent anything but your pride, but if you acknowledge that there is actually nothing you can do to prevent your software being broken, then just ignore it and keep on keeping on.

Haven't you looked at something (software or hardware) and asked "How does that work?". "Protection" is just software.

Btw, nice software. I could really have used this 2 years ago

[olegk]

Didn't you think, that this software not uses hardware keys, license servers or online activation, because there are reasons for that?

For what? You really expect you wrote a tool that might be widely spread, and no one ever attempts to crack it?

Well, let me explain it more straightforward.

Activation algorithm - is one of the smallest and simplest parts of this program.
It is created the way it is intentionally, because my goal is very useful product, not very protected, while activation has absolutely no value for customers, and I prefer to trust my customers.

Those, who want to crack it, will do it anyway. But I consider statements like "look, I cracked it" as demonstration of disrespect to the work of other people. This disrespect demoralizes and destroys motivation of developers. Especially when they don't say this aloud. This can lead to big failures and harms a project in a whole.

[olegk]

You wrote an awesome piece of software that serves two purposes. One it lets you design filters in a comprehensive fashion, and two it provides a puzzle to be solved. Some people will be interested in the first bit, and some will be interested in the second.
...
then just ignore it and keep on keeping on.
...
Btw, nice software. I could really have used this 2 years ago

Thank you very much!
It is interesting point about puzzle. I've never thought about it this way.

[olegk]

Happy Holidays and New Year everyone!
Thank you for your interest, for replies, for attention and feedback!
And, I don't know, happy electronics in the next year!

[nctnico]

Those, who want to crack it, will do it anyway. But I consider statements like "look, I cracked it" as demonstration of disrespect to the work of other people. This disrespect demoralizes and destroys motivation of developers.

More BS  People who hack stuff improve the safety of IT systems so -for example- your bank takes proper measures to safeguard your money or software gets better protection against piracy. If you make something you'll always get remarks on ways to improve it!