Show Posts - alexwhittemore

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Topics - alexwhittemore

General discussion / Just put my personal eagle library on github

November 29, 2011, 06:20:21 pm

Most people have had to make their own library parts over time, here are mine! Most notably, I just drew up a SOT223-5 footprint, which some googling would suggest nobody has ever used before in the history of man. I don't believe it, but does google lie?!

Here's the link:
https://github.com/alexwhittemore/alexwhittemore-eagle

Open Bench Logic Sniffer / FIFO wing to increase sample depth?

October 06, 2011, 09:44:05 pm

One of the biggest problems with the OLS right now is a shallow sample depth - if your signal changes a lot then RLE doesn't do much to help, and as it is the OLS can only store a few hundred bytes of UART, hardly all that much! What I'd love to see is either a bigger FPGA (the pin-compatible 500k gate part, for example) with more bram for sample storage, but that drives up cost for those who don't need the extra space. My thought for an alternative is a memory wing, either with a dedicated FIFO chip or an FPGA and a bunch of fast external SRAM or something along those lines. You'd only get the 16 buffered channels instead of all 32 on the device, but the tradeoff would be VASTLY increased sample depth.

Has anyone thought about this or implemented any ideas? I'd love to hear them!

Open Bench Logic Sniffer / OLS Bluetooth android/iphone variant

October 06, 2011, 08:19:23 pm

This is a continuation of a discussion in the client software beta testers thread here:
viewtopic.php?f=57&t=2913&p=28666#p28666

The idea was 'wouldn't it be cool to have a mobile iphone/android interface to make the OLS standalone from a computer, to some extent?.' This involves some hardware modification and/or addition, thus I think the pursuit of such a change belongs outside the software section, at least for now.

My main question for now is to pppd, who has played with a bluetooth mobile link on the OLS before. What was your hardware setup like? Can you post details so I can try to make it on my end to start developing some client software for my iPhone? I can take a stab at what you did, but I'd love to just copy you if you've actually got working hardware.

EDIT: Nevermind! The forum thread was already split off, continue discussion here:

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=2913&p=28674#p28674

LOCK!

Open Bench Logic Sniffer / OLS benchtop variant

October 06, 2011, 08:15:32 pm

This is a continuation of a discussion started here in the client software beta testers thread:

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=2913&p=28666#p28666

The idea was 'should there be a mobile client for iphone and android so the unit is more standalone.' That became 'well, it'd be easier to port the software if we just used a linux board with a graphic lcd'. My feeling is that the later basically constitutes making a bench top unit, which I have a couple feelings on and would like to discuss here.

My thought is that, personally, I would like a nicely-made kit-style open source bench logic analyzer - that'd be pretty darn cool. But the real point of the USB LA is that much of the cost and *complexity of development* is shifted off the LA device itself and into a device most everyone already has near their bench, a full computer. Because of this, the OLS is only a small, $50 assembled board. My thought is that it's already difficult for the community to coordinate development of one good interface and one good firmware/FPGA design, I'd be extremely surprised if we could successfully maintain a full bench instrument.

The other problem is that I think it could pretty easily be kept under $500, but even $500 is a TON for most hobbyists, especially when they can get a professional USB based LA with few to no bugs, or a used HP bench unit for a similar price. The concept of paying that much for a unit as buggy as OLA currently is probably won't be palatable to most.

What do you guys think on the matter?

Open Bench Logic Sniffer / Xilinx ISE on Ubuntu

March 18, 2011, 06:16:59 pm

This might be a bit of a longshot, it seems like everyone doing core work is on windows, but has anyone had any luck getting Xilinx ISE Webpack 13.1 to properly install on Linux? Specifically, I'm trying to get it running in a Ubuntu 10.10 VM. Everything went more or less smoothly up until trying to install cable drivers for iMPACT, which basically just fails all over.

I like Ubuntu, but I'm not attached to it per se. Part of the problem is that I can't find anywhere some officially supported linux setup.

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