Logic Analyzer decision: Siglent SPL1016 probe or a separate USB LA? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: Veteran68
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2019, 06:05:41 am
content: So I've got a cheap $10 24Mhz Saleae Logic 8ch clone. It works for very basic stuff but I'd like to upgrade to a 16ch LA and had been looking to spend $150-$200 on probably a DSLogic Pro or Digital Discovery USB LA.I have a Siglent SDS1104X-E with all software options enabled, but when I last looked at their SPL1016 16-channel logic analyzer probe I could have sworn the probe alone was in the $300+ range, and over $400 for the hardware/software bundle. But now I see the probe going for $199 (less with the eevblog discount at Saelig) so it's more in my price range. Not sure if they had a recent price drop, or I'm just remembering wrong.Anyway, would you recommend the investment in the Siglent probe for my DSO, or go with the standalone USB LA? Interested in opinions...

author: 0culus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2019, 06:28:36 am
content: It's worth thinking about how many digital channels you think you might need.If all you're doing is I2C/SPI type stuff you're golden, but my main reason for purchasing a "big iron" type LA was that I want to be able to troubleshoot older stuff with a lot of discrete logic components. I ended up getting a Tek TLA715 mainframe (fully upgraded to maximum possible hardware spec, WinXP pro, latest patch level of TLA software) with 2 x 7N4 logic analyzer modules. That's 272 channels! Plus I can connect an external monitor, mouse, and keyboard for maximum usability.Keep in mind if you think about going this route, the biggest expense is not the logic analyzer itself, but rather, probes. I still don't have enough probes and flying leads to fully utilize what I have, because that stuffs expensive!

author: maginnovision
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2019, 06:31:13 am
content: I'd recommend the Hantek 4032L and pulseview. It's not the highest bandwidth thing but decent samplerate, 32 channels, and good memory(64M/channel). Supports timing and state analysis.

author: Veteran68
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2019, 07:00:49 am
content: Quote from: 0culus on February 24, 2019, 06:28:36 amI haven't had a need to probe that many channels since I worked on custom PLCs built around an 80186 CPU back in the early 90's. These days it's mostly microcontrollers and serial protocols. 16ch is plenty, I think.Quote from: maginnovision on February 24, 2019, 06:31:13 amDo you have one? I actually looked at the Hanteks. Hard to find many reviews of the 4032L, good or bad. The one thread here on eevblog is the most in-depth I've seen on it, and that was before it was fully supported by sigrok. The 6022BL has some pretty sketchy reviews, but I think that's mainly around the oscilloscope function which I don't need. I'd consider the 4032L just for the channel headroom, should I ever need them, but in the 16ch realm both the DSLogic Plus and the Digital Discovery seem to be the darlings in the $150-$200 range. The Discovery is also a 32ch but requires the $50 high speed adapter to function at high bandwidth. Then you're in the $250 range, about $100 more than the 4032L.Now that it has sigrok/Pulseview support I'd consider the 4032L, but I'd really like to hear some first-hand feedback and see an in-depth YouTube video, which I've not been able to find.

author: maginnovision
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2019, 07:14:08 am
content: Quote from: Veteran68 on February 24, 2019, 07:00:49 amYea, I've had one for a while now. When I first got it pulseview worked, but not well. I think the last remaining BIG bug for me is dual trigger. The hantek hardware supports advanced triggers but pulseview doesn't. So the problem is if you set one trigger and accidentally set another before clearing the first it crashes. The hardware has been very good though. The stock hantek software was bad. Almost unusable but it did support advanced triggers. The only other issue I have is decoders are not very fast(python based) and on occasion when I have many decoders and lots of memory used it'll crash. It's been less often with newer versions but still not perfect. If you have any specific questions I can answer them.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2019, 08:17:32 am
content: Quote from: Veteran68 on February 24, 2019, 06:05:41 amSorry but I think you've been looking at the wrong LA/MSO probe, it's this one for SDS1104X-E:http://www.saelig.com/siglent-probes/sla1016.htmIt's a $400 HW and SW license package.

author: vtwin@cox.net
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2019, 02:23:50 pm
content: Quote from: Veteran68 on February 24, 2019, 06:05:41 amThe "software" is just the license key you already have, no need to purchase it.

author: Veteran68
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2019, 03:35:35 pm
content: Quote from: tautech on February 24, 2019, 08:17:32 amWhoa, thanks for the catch! Saved me the hassle of a return. Not sure how I missed that, as many times as I’ve looked at it before. I blame lack of sleep...Oh well, back to USB models I guess, although I am still interested in hearing peoples thoughts on the Siglent probe over these USB devices.

author: Veteran68
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2019, 03:37:54 pm
content: Quote from: vtwin@cox.net on February 24, 2019, 02:23:50 pmYes I know. My point was just to point out the price diffferences from what I remembered to what I was seeing yesterday — which turned out to be the wrong probe anyway.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2019, 04:48:10 pm
content: Is your Siglent SDS1104X-E th 4 channel version with built-in LA on it's analog channels?If so, then you can easily compare the usability of the GUI to an USB version.I worked with an USB oscilloscope a long time ago, and I found the User interface quite cumbersome. With an oscilloscope you really want all the buttons and knobs to find functions fast and easy.With a Logic Analyser it is quite the oposite.Scrolling and zooming can be done very comfortably and intuitively with the mouse, and you want a decent keyboard for entering labels.With an Logic analyser you also want a big screen to fit more information on the display.Common PC screens have 1920 pixels horizontal, which is usable, but I'd still like more for a Logic Analyser. Oscilloscope screens almost always have a much lower resolution, or the pixels become so small you can't see them.Having Analog and Digital combined in one instrument is a plus. Or you can turn it around. Logic Analysers which just have digital inputs are an cumbersome simplification to keep their price down. I would love to have 4 or 5 bit AD converters on all LA channels. Very usefull for Tri-state busses, different logic families, bus collisions on shared busses (RS485) & interfacing and for stuff that has other analog properties such as I2C.USB versus standalone does not only change the User Interface, but also decoder options.Looking at bare squiggly lines on a screen is not very usefull. How many decoders do you have with your LA?With the Free & Open Sourse Sigrok you have about 100 software decoders included. The software decoders in Sigrok are ofthen just a few pages of Python script. If you have some custom protocol, which resembles one of the already included protocols you can easily copy and modify one of the existing scripts. With a standalone LA you are probably stuck with the decoders that come with it.The number of protocol decoders for Sigrok is also growing. The rate seems to be around 1 protocol each month on average.You said you used the Salaea 8 clone. Did you use it with Sigrok or with the Salaea software?With Sigrok you can use a generic CY7C68013 board with 16 inputs. These boards do not have input protection, You can add that yourself,or you can buy a bunch of them (They cost around EUR 7) and see howlong they last. But Sigrok also supports many more and much better hardware.Most stuff I do with Sigrok is farily low speed uC stuff (UART, I2C, SPI and such) If I wanted more channels & bandwith I would first start looking into the other boxes supported by Sigrok. Stand alone devices would only get a whiff of thought before being dismissed.https://www.sigrok.org/wiki/Supported_hardware#Logic_analyzers

author: Coldblackice
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2019, 03:40:18 am
content: Any update on this? What'd you end up going with? I'm in the same boat, wondering which route to go. Would be great if there was a way to make/modify a custom logic analyzer that could be attached/used with the SDS1104, like using one of the cheap ebay LA's.

author: BillB
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 14, 2019, 12:35:15 pm
content: I've got the SLA1016 for the SDS1104X-E and it's OK. Given its cost vs. the scope itself and the price of some stand-alone LA's, I think its value really depends on your LA needs.It has some limitations, and I've had some issues in the scope's behavior when it is connected. For example, when saving and restoring settings with the LA active can cause the scope to hang occasionally. It cannot do mixed signal pattern trigger or decoding, either.There have been a few posts scattered about the forums talking about it.I think attempting to augment the scope with a custom logic analyzer would create the same problems that the SLA1016 itself does, as Performa01 describes here:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/siglent-sds1204x-e-released-for-domestic-markets-in-china/msg2007983/#msg2007983Bottom line, If you have occasional use for viewing some digital signals in a time-dependent way against analog signals then the SLA1016 is worth the cost (if you already have the SDS1104X-E). Otherwise, if you are working strictly in the digital domain, go with a stand-alone LA.

author: TK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2019, 01:42:54 pm
content: Take a look at the Zeroplus LAP-C 16032 / 16128 logic analyzers. The software only runs on Windows, but you get over 100 protocol decoders included.

author: pgib8
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: March 05, 2021, 09:17:17 pm
content: I have SDS1204X-E, the 200 MHz 4-channel version and I just paid $464 for the SLA1016 ($329) and software SDS1000X-E-16LA ($109) + tax. I also have one of those cheap 24MHz 8-ch knock-off Saleae logic analyzers that I bought in 2017 for $16.The reason why I bought the SLA1016 is because it combines with the oscilloscope to create a mixed signal scope with 16 digital channels and 4 analog channels. When I use my scope half if not most of the channels are used for digital signals anyway, so this not only frees up analog channels for me but also adds a ton of extra digital channels. For me it literally just doubled if not quadrupled the value of my scope (aka. how useful it is to me).In the past I would have to visually link the separate logic analyzer with a channel on the scope and/or use external trigger and it was kind of a pain so now having all of it on one screen and synchronized is pretty much a dreamThe only caveat is that I would not make this investment if you have the 2-ch or 100 MHz version because you will still pay the same price for the logic analyzer but get 50% or 25% of the value. If this is the scope you have and you think "darn it", maybe this is also a good opportunity to get the 4-ch 200 MHz version and keep the other scope as your burner scope lol (my burner scope is a 70 MHz 2-ch Owon).

author: richieHH
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 09:12:11 am
content: Can you explain why you don't think the sla1016 is a good match for the 4 channel 100mhz sds1104xe? It's what I have, and I was about to pull the trigger (pun intended) and buy the SLA1016 over the digital discovery purely for the convenience of one device.