Sigrok PulseView Questions

[sswcharlie1]

Hi

Would like top use Sigrok/Pulseview on Linux Mint 20.3 Cinammon 64 bit
Need some advice first on installation:
Do I need to download both softwares?
Which is the recommended version to use.
Once I have installed I will need assistance to setup for a slightly different project.  I want to feed into the software a data stream as per outlined in this link.
Just would like to replicate what is in the document.
Does the software have settings to allow a read of this type of data stream?
Thankyou
Charles Harris

[woofy]

Installation is as simple as:
sudo apt install pulseview

I have only ever used pulseview with a cheap 8 channel logic analyser, so no experience with streams. I'm not at all sure it will process streams in real time. It can capture a stream and then display the results or you can give it a file to display.

[Nominal Animal]

Linux Mint 20.3 Cinammon 64 bit

I happen to run the same right now.

Sigrok is the project name.  The main application the project maintains is Pulseview.  Other software the project provides includes sigrok-cli (a command-line interface, various libraries, and the FX2LAFW firmware used for the Cypress FX2 -based logic analyzers.

Do I need to download both softwares?

No, you don't need to "download" anything (using your browser).

Version 0.4.1 is included in the Mint software repositories for 20.3.  Just fire up your preferred software manager, and find and select "Pulseview".  The command-line command woofy mentioned,
    sudo apt install pulseview
does the exact same task, just using the command-line interface.  (They are compatible, too: there is no difference in the result doing it one way or another, and both ways are fully aware of installations and removals/purges done using the other.)

After installing, Pulseview will appear in your Mint menu, under Programming.

You'll want to read the Getting Started page at the Sigrok project, and the Getting started with a logic analyzer page.  There is a link to Sparkfun's tutorial, and a couple of videos on using Pulseview, too.

I use Pulseview with a very cheap "24 MHz logic analyzer" off eBay, currently sold for $8 or so (look for LHT00SU1; see Sigrok project documentation on these), with wire hook test clips.  These typically use the Cypress FX2 chip, and are a direct implementation of the logic analyzer appnote/example provided, so using them with Sigrok's own FX2LAWF firmware, you're not violating anyones copyright or licensing or anything like that; it's above the board.

In Mint (and all Debian derivatives), sigrok package is a metapackage that pulls in not only Pulseview, but (almost all) the other Sigrok-provided packages also.  A convenience.

Once I have installed I will need assistance to setup for a slightly different project.  I want to feed into the software a data stream as per outlined in this link.

You forgot the link.

In any case, you'll probably want to use sigrok-cli (the command-line interface for capturing data like Pulseview does), or the software will need the key libraries (libsigrok4, sigrok-firmware-fx2lawf, libsigrokdecode4, and possibly libsigrokcxx4; plus the libsigrok-dev, libsigrokdecode-dev, and possibly libsigrokcxx4-dev if you need to compile the software yourself).  These are all installed just like Pulseview, only the name differs.  (It also applies to other software, too.  Repositories are useful.)

[wasedadoc]

I use Pulseview with a very cheap "24 MHz logic analyzer" off eBay, currently sold for $8 or so (look for LHT00SU1; see Sigrok project documentation on these), with wire hook test clips.  These typically use the Cypress FX2 chip, and are a direct implementation of the logic analyzer appnote/example provided, so using them with Sigrok's own FX2LAWF firmware, you're not violating anyones copyright or licensing or anything like that; it's above the board.

The LHT00SU1 is from about £30 from China on ebay UK. Version without the analogue input is available from around £12.  Use "24MHz 8 Channel USB Logic Analyzer" for searching. https://sigrok.org/wiki/ARMFLY_Mini-Logic , https://sigrok.org/wiki/AZDelivery_Logic_Analyzer and others shown at https://sigrok.org/wiki/Supported_hardware#Logic_analyzers

[Nominal Animal]

The LHT00SU1 is from about £30 from China on ebay UK. Version without the analogue input is available from around £12.

The difference between the more expensive and the cheapest of these is that the more expensive ones have one (or two) analog channels at a very low sample rate, something like 16 MHz typical (so only for analog signals up to a megahertz or two in practice).  Both do use Cypress FX2 chips (and fx2lafw firmware in sigrok project code, including pulseview), the ones with analog channel/s also have an ADC chip.  (Depending on the exact chip, FX2 can support up to 16 digital channels, but usually only 8 are wired for logic probing.)

(I personally would use a dedicated device for analog sampling, not an FX2 one with analog input support.)

On ebay.com, the sellers use the bait-and-switch tactic that lists multiple different items in the same ad, and you need to pick the correct item ("24MHz 8 Channel USB Logic Analyzer" for example) to see the actual price.  When sorting by price, the item is listed based on the lowest price for each ad, which is not the price for the logic analyzer but usually a cheap probe or some such.

For example, on 2023-04-23 at ebay.com, Modulefans' 24MHz logic analyzer is USD 7.53 + shipping; ai_smart's UKP 6.89 + shipping; modul_technic's and sense_core's 6.60 EUR + shipping.
It does take a bit of work to find the cheap ones without being bamboozled by crafty eBay sellers.

[RoGeorge]

I have a DSLogic Plus (it's the black thing in the banner):  https://www.dreamsourcelab.com/

Has a Spartan6 FPGA inside and some local RAM (256 MB).  The sample rate can go up to 400MHz (when acquiring only 4 channels, 100MHz max for all 16 channels in buffered mode), and came with 50 ohms shielded cable for probes.  Has hardware adjustable threshold voltage.  Has some hardware triggering, too.

The company has had a constant presence for many years now, so a trusted manufacturer.  The box is black anodized, machined billet Aluminium, very nicely built.

Their software looks better than PulseView.  It's called DSView, with installers for all major OSs.  DSview is a customized PulseView+Sigrok.  The hardware can make local compress, too, which is useful to capture very short pulses that are far away in time.  Has an adapter for an external ADC, to turn it into a mixed signal oscilloscope, but I don't have that adapter.

Mine has streaming, too, max 100MHz sampling on 4 channels (or 20MHz max for 16 channels), never tried it.  From what I recall, DSview or PulseView can not display continuous streams as a rolling display, so even if it captures the stream continuously, the display refresh is made in consecutive "pages".

[RoGeorge]

Forgot to add,  one of the Sigrok devs started to post videos at some point, might ease configuring a new device:
https://www.youtube.com/@OpenTechLab/videos

[wasedadoc]

If the logic levels are 3.3 Volts a $4 Raspberry Pico can be programmed as a 16 channel 100MHz grabber for Pulseview.  However a Pico has only 200 kbytes of RAM to buffer the data before passing to Pulseview. That may or may not be a limitation depending on the specific use case.

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=350300

[Perkele]

Sigrok is the project name.  The main application the project maintains is Pulseview.  Other software the project provides includes sigrok-cli (a command-line interface, various libraries, and the FX2LAFW firmware used for the Cypress FX2 -based logic analyzers.

Do I need to download both softwares?

There's also SmuView, it is really useful when one wants to avoid installing shitty applications from sketchy OEM manufacturers to connect and control various multimeters/thermometers/hygrometers/power supplies.

[Nominal Animal]

There's also SmuView, it is really useful when one wants to avoid installing shitty applications from sketchy OEM manufacturers to connect and control various multimeters/thermometers/hygrometers/power supplies.

True.  The other similar frontend I did not mention is sigrok-meter, for multimeters and dataloggers (only – SmuView supports much more devices).

Neither sigrok-meter nor SmuView is included in Linux Mint 20.3 repositories.

sigrok-meter developers say it is not suitable for everyday use, and recommend using SmuView instead.  (SmuView development repositories are at github.com/knarfS/smuview.)

I personally do not have any devices that SmuView supports, so I don't have SmuView installed, and do not know of a repository providing the latest version as a native .deb package compatible with Mint 20.3, but the 64-bit AppImage for Linux should work just fine.

(You download the AppImage, and make it executable, for example using command 'chmod ug+rx SmuView-0.0.5-x86_64.AppImage' in the directory you downloaded it into; then you simply run (by double-clicking) it.)

Since I also run Mint 20.3 on x86-64, I can, if there is real need (like running it on work machines, where IT admin would prefer a standard installation instead of an AppImage for maintenance reasons), build and show how to rebuild SmuView as a normal .deb package for Mint 20.3.