I was planning on purchasing a Saleae logic analyzer when they come out with the cross-platform solution they are working on, but then came by this project where the goal is to make an open source logic analyzer with java based software (if I have understood it correctly). Since java is cross-platform and I am all for open source I would much rather be supporting this project, but from the brief reading I have done it seems that a lot of ideas are discarded because of price concerns. I know this is not meant to be in direct competition to other solutions, but comparison with solutions such as the mentioned Saleae logic analyzer is unavoidable, therefore I wonder what the opinions are on how the price is affecting the outcome of the project?
If I recall right there is more than one version planned. The first is very cheap and without external memory.
The next should have more features.
Klaus Leiss
The Java software, SUMP, already exists. You can check it out here (Jack has a better version at his site but I don't have a link handy):
http://www.sump.org/projects/analyzer/client/ (http://www.sump.org/projects/analyzer/client/)
Price is currently the limiting factor, yes. The goal of the design is to be 'disruptive' - 2x to 3x times faster than Saleae Logic-like USB devices at 1/3-1/4 of the price. We're discarding a just about anything from the first version that requires a lot of additional software or hardware development (external SRAM), or raises the price (multiple banks of buffered I/O pins). We're going for a very basic, but very usable logic analyzer at an introductory price level. Obviously the Saleae style is better if you want infinite samples, but many (myself included) don't see that as a requirement for a useful logic analyzer.
If you want something more serious, check out Jack's Butterfly boards and wings at the Gadget Factory. They're already available, work with SUMP, but also serve as a generic FPGA development board. You can add up to 32 buffered inputs/outputs.
Thanks for clearing the situation up and I must say that everything sounds very interesting. Since I do not currently need infinite samples the first version should be just fine for my use, although has it been decided with certainty that a version 2 will be made?
We'll have to focus on getting V1 out first, but there's always something that's excluded and it's usually nice to use the design for a while and then make any useful tweaks.
[quote author="ian"]
Obviously the Saleae style is better if you want infinite samples, but many (myself included) don't see that as a requirement for a useful logic analyzer.
[/quote]
Infinite samples are sometimes useful, and this design could dump the data trough to the PC to get the same functionality. Depending on the data transfer speed of the used micro we could do this up to some sample rate and above that use the internal buffer memory. Another possibility is run length encoding of the buffer memory if the signals don't change as fast as the sampling rate.
I just wanted to pipe in that there is already rle functionality built into the project.
Check out the RLE demo on my website. http://www.gadgetfactory.net/gf/tutorials/#Logic_Analyzer (http://http://www.gadgetfactory.net/gf/tutorials/#Logic_Analyzer)