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Please suggest a good cheap USB 16CH logic analyser
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picitup:
Well the LA5016 arrived and I've had a play.  My first impressions are I wonder how I ever managed without one.  I found a timing discrepancy on a PIC32MX chip with little effort between the Data/Command line to my LCD and the SPI output.

Once the proper work was done. and my LCD worked, I spent some time trying to speed things up.  I found that depending on which instructions I used on my PIC32MX, I could obtain better SPI throughput.  This was easy with the LA.  Now the SPI is running at a blistering 30MHz clock lol.

The software seems very good.  I mentioned above, there is (1Gbit edit: 2Gbit) of ram on board and RLE compression but you can also configure it to run across USB directly, so the best of both worlds.  The only thing I've missed so far is the sample 'blobs' on PulseView which are pretty handy to find out if your sampling rate is right.  I emailed Kingst and once again, they replied within a day, but said they won't support the blobs in the near future.  Pity.

The FPGA is an Altera Cyclone IV and there's also a Cypress CY7C68013A which I guess manages the USB interface.  There's also a couple of Samsung (K4T1G164DG edit: K4T1G164Q): 1GB ram chips.

The USB and data cables are covered in silicone and are super flexible and the case is aluminium.

I chose this LA over the Saleae due to the big price difference - LA5016 was £131.00 (used) and the Logic Pro 16 at £819.00 + VAT =  £982.80.  The Salea device only seems to support direct mode, so you need a USB 3.0 port to get the bandwidth and I'm assuming there's no buffer in it.

The Saleae does have analogue ports and the Kingst has none.  The Kingst has 2 PWM outputs and the Saleae has none.The Saleae will only do 500MHz on up to 4 channels, but the Kingst will do 500Mhz on all 16 channels at once.

So all in all, I think the Kingst is  a cheaper price and better hardware/features.

That's all for now....
0xdeadbeef:
I'm not so sure if "Kingst" is actually a real manufacturer's name. Most of the time this thing is sold as Jiankun LA5016. Also it's usually advertised to have 512Mbit HW memory or 32M/channel. So 1GBit might be wrong.
Honestly I still think the open source DSLogic Plus is a better bet. E.g. does the "Kingst"/JianKun software allow to write your own protocol decoders or change/fix the existing ones? I used this quite a bit with my Ikalogic ScanaPlus and would not buy another LA without this possibility. Btw: it also doesn't seem to have a clock input or trigger output.
2N3055:
I really like Scanaquad device but IkaLogic Scanastudio looks and feels like "Teletubbies" ...
Everything is huge on screen, and only very basic things are there. Channels are too big, scroll bar is too small.
You cannot control basic parts of U/I. And it throws errors on exit.

It's horrible.  As I say, device is working fine, and I wanted custom scripting too. Also it has basic triggering, which was also interesting.
Custom scripting is also weird, because it's poorly documented. As in not documented.
In new version it wants you to install Atom editor. I guess it's better than if they made their own editor, because that one would probably only have open and not save button.... Just because...
And is buggy..

It feels like they are not making device you USE to work on something else, but as if you are going to buy their device to play with Scana device and program for it, spending more time playing with LA that to use LA to fix something else...

If you need something to look at simple I2C packets and such, it can be used, in same manner like you can use decoding on Rigol 1000Z. It's better than nothing.
But DSLogic Plus looks like Keysight compared what you get from Ikalogic.


picitup:
Hi @0xdeadbeef

Yes I've seen both the devices called Jiankun and Kingst, maybe they are a re-seller, but I've even found links from the Kingst site to pictures of a Jiankun device so who knows?

Yes, if you check their download link http://www.qdkingst.com/en/products, you can write your own protocol using their SDK.  I'm not sure about modifying existing protocols, but the SDK has a couple of examples for you to modify AKA Serial and SPI.

As far as the memory goes, in the above post, I did identify the 2 ram chips which are Samsung K4T1G164QG chips and are 1Gbit each (sorry about the typo before) so that ties up with 2Gbit hardware memory (not 1Gbit like I said before.

I suppose it would be nice to prove the storage memory out.  Maybe I can get a USB 1.1 hub and run at 500Ms/s for 4 seconds and see if it works.

I may be being dumb, but what's a specific clock or trigger input?  The analyser just reads specified data lines and the software has options to trigger on edges/high/low.

I took a look at the DSLogic Plus and thought it looked good.  At USD 149.00 I think it's good value (much better that Salea) although the specs of the LA5016 are better.  The DSLogic has a slightly lower max sample rate, at 400Sa/s and this is only with 4 Channels which, rather cheekily, they don't mention on their data sheet.  It's only got 256Mbit memory, so 1/8th of the Kingst.

After saying the above, I think the DsLogic Plus would probably meet my needs as mostly my issues are with serial protocols such as RS232 and SPI so 2/3 lines are enough although I'd still go for the Kingst as the specs are better and hopefully more future proof. As mentioned above, I'm not sure about modifying Kingst existing protocols but that would be a good feature.

You may be surprised about what I say about Kingst.  I am too.  I've bought lots of Chinese hardware in the past and found a reasonable bit of kit, with crap software and no support, but Kingst seems different.
0xdeadbeef:

--- Quote from: 2N3055 on October 21, 2019, 07:18:07 am ---I really like Scanaquad device but IkaLogic Scanastudio looks and feels like "Teletubbies" ...
Everything is huge on screen, and only very basic things are there. Channels are too big, scroll bar is too small.
You cannot control basic parts of U/I. And it throws errors on exit.
It's horrible. 

--- End quote ---
Hm, I used differerent versions of Scanastudio over many, many years and despite of minor issues with some versions, I liked it very much.
IMHO, it's a far better GUI than that of DSLogic in nearly every aspect, specifically with custom measurements and triggers. Plus storing setups and measurement works perfectly well (in contrast to DsView).
I'm not happy with every decision they made, but they listened to suggestions as long as the forum was still there.
It was a big disappointment for me as they first crippled and then closed the forum but this seems to become an industry standard as the same thing happened on the DreamSourceLab site a few years later.
In both cases combined with a very (!!!!) slow development that makes you wonder if more than one or two persons are working on the Software. In case of DSView, I'm tempted to believe there is only one guy who looks at the SW every few months for a couple of hours.


--- Quote from: 2N3055 on October 21, 2019, 07:18:07 am ---As I say, device is working fine, and I wanted custom scripting too. Also it has basic triggering, which was also interesting.

--- End quote ---
The ScanaPlus actually has (had) the most complex triggering of all affordable LAs. There was a time when I (thought I) nearly convinced Ibrahim Kamal (the founder of Ikalogic) to implement a proper multi-stage (event/time) triggering approach but most of that was removed again in later versions.


--- Quote from: 2N3055 on October 21, 2019, 07:18:07 am ---Custom scripting is also weird, because it's poorly documented. As in not documented.

--- End quote ---
I wrote the SENT decoder that is now part of the default decoders I think, so I know what you mean. It was a bit of trial and error at some point, but I've seen worse. Actually, at this point, I also had the impression that most (other :) ) decoders were implemented in a somewhat ugly and unprofessional way. And I have to note that this was my first JavaScript implementation ever.
As a side note: most decoders hat an awful lot of updates because of bugs. At some point, not even the SPI decoder was working properly and I had to fix the script locally. But all of that happened many years ago.


--- Quote from: 2N3055 on October 21, 2019, 07:18:07 am ---In new version it wants you to install Atom editor. I guess it's better than if they made their own editor, because that one would probably only have open and not save button.... Just because...
And is buggy..
--- End quote ---
I have seen that but didn't update yet. For my own scripts, I always used an external editor. I hope this is still possible.


--- Quote from: 2N3055 on October 21, 2019, 07:18:07 am ---It feels like they are not making device you USE to work on something else, but as if you are going to buy their device to play with Scana device and program for it, spending more time playing with LA that to use LA to fix something else...
If you need something to look at simple I2C packets and such, it can be used, in same manner like you can use decoding on Rigol 1000Z. It's better than nothing.
But DSLogic Plus looks like Keysight compared what you get from Ikalogic.

--- End quote ---
I'm actually still using the ScanaPlus at home and at work, where I analyze SPI and SENT communications, measure SPI load and things like that. I borrowed it to several colleagues and all of them liked it a lot. One of them even ordered the SP209i. Personally, I'm slightly disappointed that the SP209 series is so much more expensive than the ScanaPlus and still only features 9 channels. That was an odd choice and still is. Still, if I could get one for <= 200€, I would buy it.
For the time being, I use my ScanaPlus for this and my DSLogics (I actually own two) for that which is OK for me. Still, in my dream, I'd like a LA that combines the strengths of both.
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