Referral for a Saleae Logic Pro 16 discount? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: mavey
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 29, 2014, 02:07:35 am
content: Hi all, newbie here.I'd like to get theLogic Pro 16analyzer by Saleae, and I noticed there is (was?) some kind of a referral program that might knock off a few bucks off of a first purchase. Is that still available?The $500 price tag is kinda over my budget, but I think I could justify it with my wifeafter the discount. Otherwise, I'll have to go for theScanalogic-2, which I'm not at all excited about...Thanks guys,Dave

author: Rory
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2014, 04:38:34 am
content: Quote from: mavey on December 29, 2014, 02:07:35 amHere you go. 20% off.http://saleae.refr.cc/L6H7DB7

author: jipihorn
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2014, 09:26:07 am
content: Rhaaaaaaaaaaa, I was on the verge of buying one but this discount code is no longer valid...Jerome.

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2014, 09:44:21 am
content: Quote from: mavey on December 29, 2014, 02:07:35 amIf you already consider to buy a product from Ikalogic, the ScanaPlus could be worth a thoughthttp://www.ikalogic.com/ikalogic-products/scanaplus-9-channels-100mhz-logic-analyzer/V2 was just released, so V1 is on sale here and there. The only difference is that V2 allows you to select the number of channels actually samples to increase bandwidth.

author: mavey
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 29, 2014, 10:53:43 am
content: Quote from: Rory on December 29, 2014, 04:38:34 amThank you, Rory, but as my shitty luck would have it, the coupon is "no longer valid". I guess Saleae put the kibosh on referral discounts...

author: mavey
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 29, 2014, 11:27:38 am
content: Quote from: 0xdeadbeef on December 29, 2014, 09:44:21 amI wish! No, I really mean the Scanalogic-2 toy version for just a few bucks.If I can't have the comfy 16 channel combined digital/analog analyzer/scope, I may as well go with the cheapest crap available. Thing is, my current project is reverse engineering an old Siemens S45 mono 101x80 LCD display unit with a built-in COG driver (and a neat 0.1mm pitch 28-pin ZIF connector).For that I don't need the bandwidth or resolution of serious analyzers, but the user friendliness of the Saleae would be useful. My choices are also limited by the fact that I wouldn't touch anything without 100% Linux support, because I've hated Windows from the moment I first installed v3.1 and I haven't used them since.

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2014, 12:06:13 pm
content: Quote from: mavey on December 29, 2014, 11:27:38 amThe cheapest Scanalogic version I know is the EDU kit which is still ~40€. Given the small memory and only 4 channels, I would only consider this if you needed the signal creation.Otherwise, I'd throw the Open Bench Logic Sniffer in the ring which is available for ~45€, supports run length encoding to save memory and can be updated to 32channels.There is a Java GUI available, which is quite OK from my point of view.If you absolutely want the Saleae GUI, some people here would recommend a clone of the older Saleae hardware from eBay, but that's something you have to square with your conscience.Quote from: mavey on December 29, 2014, 11:27:38 amObviously, if you need the more than four analog inputs (despite of the their limitations) or a mix of >4 analog/digital channels, there's probably not much of an alternative at the moment. Obviously you could consider the 8 channel version "Logic Pro 8" of the USB-2 8ch version "Logic 8" if money is the issue.Then again, just regarding user friendliness and Linux compatibility, IkalogicsScanaStudio V2is pretty decent, offers IMHO much better trigger possibilities than Saleaes GUI and you can write your own decoder scripts to visualize the captured data.

author: Rory
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2014, 12:44:21 pm
content: Quote from: mavey on December 29, 2014, 10:53:43 amGeez. Sorry to have a bum code. It worked not long ago. Did the referral page give you C0N19HR2 as the discount code?

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2014, 01:15:04 pm
content: Quote from: Rory on December 29, 2014, 12:44:21 pmAnyway, the code was/is for "Logic or Logic16" - IMHO these are the old models without analog inputs.

author: mavey
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 29, 2014, 04:52:02 pm
content: Quote from: Rory on December 29, 2014, 12:44:21 pmDon't give it a second thought. I appreciate your help regardless of the result. I sort of expected this, because the discount did indeed seem limited to the non-pro versions, but I had to try to compensate for the dirty VAT trick, which Saleae springs up during checkout.You see, they advertise a price of$499, but then add 20% VAT during checkout, which drives the actual cost to a whopping$599(plus shipping!). That's bogus. For this price, they should at least have the decency to offer free shipping. They have no stock and waiting times of weeks to months, so I'm essentially pre-ordering and effectively paying up front for the manufacture of my unit and I have yet to deal with this?Since my first post, several members suggested that I could buy a cheap knock-off and simply use it with Saleae SW. I wouldn't even consider it, being an open source developer my whole life and an avid GNU/Linux user since '98 to boot. I know what an easy prey the open/free business model is for people without scruples, and how important is the support of honest men. In this particular instance, though, I can't help but feel I'm being taken for a ride.It doesn't change anything, obviously, I just needed to let off a bit of a steam.Sorry for the TL;DR!

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2014, 05:34:34 pm
content: Quote from: mavey on December 29, 2014, 04:52:02 pmThe cheap eBay knock-offs won't help you any if you need the capabilities of the Pro 16 (16 channels, sample rate). If you don't, they are a good value for money. The newer Logic Pro series isn't cloned (AFAIK), as that is way more complex.I don't really agree with what you are implying - that I am somehow dishonest or "without scruples" by buying a 3rd party made device and using it with their software. It isn't really my fault that they provide the software free to use as they do, I don't think I am even violating their license by using it with a 3rdparty device - the Linux version which I am using doesn't even come with any EULA(just re-checked).I would readily support them if they had means to do so for the software (e.g. by paying a reasonable price for it!), but I amnotgoing to buy a Cypress EZ-USB chip in a pretty box (which is pretty much all that was inside of the older, widely copied Logic 8 ) for $150 for that. That is not a good value, IMO.And, please, don't drag any GNU/open source ideology into this - it has nothing to do with it whatsoever. I am all for supporting and fairly compensating the developers, but if they don't want my money, what should I do?

author: andrija
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2014, 05:53:49 pm
content: The cheap EBay knock offs don't work anyway so this whole discussion is moot, unless you can find an older version of their software somewhere. I spent quite a bit of time reading blogs and forums and even replaced and reprogrammed EEPROMs without success so I'd say Salae locked that down tight.Why not get Logic Sniffer? That's what I did, it's only $50 and software being Java, it works on Linux without issues.

author: true
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2014, 03:12:21 am
content: Quote from: andrija on December 29, 2014, 05:53:49 pmUse a smaller EEPROM. They can't lock it down.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2014, 08:24:44 pm
content: Quote from: andrija on December 29, 2014, 05:53:49 pmInteresting, I have one of those knockoffs working on my bench just fine, using the last stable version (not the beta) of the software. The beta works too, but it was waaay too buggy when I have played with it last time. Perhaps you had a bad device? There isn't much to lock down there - basically any Cypress EZ-USB devboard worked with that software (the firmware is downloaded by the client software on power up).I have the Logic Sniffer too, but it is pretty much unusable for longer SPI/I2C sniffing or if there are long delays between packets because of the limited capture memory (block RAM on the FPGA). And the usability of the Java client really leaves a lot to be desired. But this was rehashed sufficiently in another thread recently.

author: mavey
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: January 04, 2015, 12:09:52 am
content: Quote from: janoc on December 29, 2014, 05:34:34 pmI wasn't implying anything aboutyou, mate!Those epithets were meant for the makers of the knock-offs who encourage the unethical/unlawful use of Saleae's SW with their HW clones, or other manufacturers who similarly misuse open or free SW by disregarding all intellectual property ethics/laws. That's all, nothing personal.Quote from: janoc on December 29, 2014, 05:34:34 pmThat may well be, but you can read for yourself how Saleae feel about this issue here:https://www.saleae.com/counterfeit

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 04, 2015, 08:23:53 pm
content: Quote from: mavey on January 04, 2015, 12:09:52 amHow exactly is the use "unethical/unlawful"? The software is made available free to use, with no restrictions whatsoever that I can find by Saleae. If they had an EULA saying that it is only legal to use with the official hardware or there was at least some token check of the authenticity of the device connected to it, I would (grudgingly) oblige. For example, Oculus has such clause in their license for their Oculus Rift SDK. But there is no such thing there. Please, don't make up an issue where there isn't one.Quote from: mavey on January 04, 2015, 12:09:52 amYour reasoning has one big problem - the Saleae software is neither "free" (as in freedom), nor open source. It is only free as in beer. The intellectual property issue I have addressed above already. This has nothing to do with companies abusing open source software. Let the strawman go, please.Quote from: mavey on January 04, 2015, 12:09:52 amThat's perhaps the only relevant part there, really. On the other hand, I have outlined what they should do (and which they didn't for whatever reasons):- Let us buy the software, I don't care about their overpriced Cypress devboard that they are/were selling as a logic analyzer. I can't do that, unfortunately.- Fix the software license - if they don't want people use it for free, don't make it free then. One can't have the cake and eat it too here. Pirates will still steal it, but at least their intentions should be clear to people who actually are honest. Or make the software only available to own customers - is that so hard to implement?- The eye-watering stuff about the poor little guys getting ripped off and forcing them to consider "countermeasures" that will make people's devices not work - right, cool, see how far FTDI got with a similar approach ...They should do some basic homework first, IMO, crying like that won't really help then any.

author: andrija
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 04, 2015, 08:38:39 pm
content: I spent hours reading many posts on internet, some money ordering EEPROM as per those post' suggestions, some more hours trying to install various software from both Cypress and Salaee... all without success. Really, I don't recommend going this route unless you have a lot of time and very little money. If there are any problems, you will need a lot of advanced skills and time..As for Logic Sniffer, I agree the client looked rather disappointing. As a professional Java developer, I can say it was the right choice for multiplatform and any lack of features is certainly not the fault of language - probably a simple lack of time and interest from the developer.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 04, 2015, 10:09:48 pm
content: Quote from: andrija on January 04, 2015, 08:38:39 pmI guess you had a bad device, but I agree, it is not really a solution if you need something guaranteed to work every time. But hey, then you are probably not shopping in the $8-$10 department neither, are you?BTW, motivated by @mavey's comment, I have just built Sigrok for my Logic clone and wow, that thing probably blows the original Saleae software (the stable version) out of water - both in terms of hw support (it supports even my Brymen meter, my Rigol scope and my OLS Sniffer, nice!) and protocol decoders available. Very very nice!I still need to do some real testing on how well it performs, but so far it looks really promising.If someone wants to give it a shot, I have followed these instructions:http://marcusjenkins.com/linux/saleae-logic-analyser-clone-with-ubuntu/It is not the easiest thing to build, because there are many dependencies and you need to be proficient with building software in Linux (automake/autoconf use and CMake use), but it compiled without issues.Quote from: andrija on January 04, 2015, 08:38:39 pmI don't think that the main problem was Java neither, but the language choice caused some self-inflicted wounds, like the chore with getting serial ports working in Java using the RXTX library, which is absolutely horrendous in terms of reliability and bugs ... If you need to talk to hardware, Java likely isn't going to be the best language choice, because you will have to rely on JNI libraries to do so anyway. Then the only benefit of using Java is the "built-in" cross-platform GUI.If you want to build multiplatform software, you certainly don't need Java for it, especially when the sw in question is open source and there is thus no problem with recompiling it. Even proprietary software can be easily multiplatform without relying on Java if well written - e.g. the original Saleae sw.

author: andrija
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 04, 2015, 10:59:22 pm
content: Java is a very good choice for network connected hardware though. I wrote a code to talk to my Rigol oscilloscope and draw the wafeworm on screen in just a few hours, completely bypassing need to have any proprietary drivers for NI installed. The only other hardware talking I did in the past was to MIDI which is supported by a built-in library and worked well.I'll take a look at Sigrok myself, thanks for the tip. I did a lot of automake builds in the past but not in many years.

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 04, 2015, 11:11:06 pm
content: I wonder why you are all pick at the OLS GUI. Did you try the last one fromhttp://ols.lxtreme.nl/?It's sure not perfect, but not bad at all either. Never crashed or had communication issues and I used it for years.Besides, for Windows, there is also a native client for the Open Bench Logic Sniffer called OLSFronthttp://eenoob.com/lafront/Development has kinda stopped unfortunately, but it's already pretty nice and allows writing your own decoders in JavaScript.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 04, 2015, 11:27:02 pm
content: Quote from: 0xdeadbeef on January 04, 2015, 11:11:06 pmCompare the usability of the thing with e.g. the Sigrok PulseView or the Saleae software and you will see why people are whining about the OLS thing. It technically works, but calling its usability "clunky" is probably a huge understatement ...

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2015, 12:33:35 am
content: Well, I played a bit with the Saleae software and it's sure nice (apart from the apparent lack of trigger possibilities) but I don't really see that giant gap between that and the OLS Java client.I used several other LA including HW LAs from HP and Agilent and the logic probe features of LeCroy and Agilent scopes and I always preferred my good old OLS with either the Java Client or OLSFront.There are much worse LA GUIs out there. Also what I saw of Sigrok up to now was pretty basic. I might need to give it another try, but I will not use my OLS that much any more since I moved on to a ScanaPlus.

author: tridentsx
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2015, 01:56:16 am
content: ScanaPlus is supported by sigrok, you should be able to try it out.

author: mavey
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: January 06, 2015, 08:00:08 pm
content: @janoc: I gotta say I still don't understand why are you being so defensive. I'm not opposing or arguing any of your previous statements and I literally haven't said a word against you personally. What gives? I'm not one to enjoy flaming or wasting time on pointless arguments, so tell me what kind of beef you have with me, or let's bury the hatchet now, mate.Quote from: janoc on January 04, 2015, 10:09:48 pmI'm glad you brought this up. I've also been digging around Sigrok's "ecosystem" with increasing enthusiasm. Now I'm just waiting for one of my logic analyzers to arrive to test drive it, so if you learn anything new in the meantime, I'll be interested to hear it.

author: firehopper
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2015, 08:15:22 pm
content: Quote from: 0xdeadbeef on December 29, 2014, 12:06:13 pmI have the ols, its expandable to 32 chans.. but the software is clunky, and only has 24K sample memory. easy to fill it fast even with rll.. watch those clones with the saleae software, supposedly they are working on making the software not work with the clones anymore..

author: Rigby
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2015, 08:48:13 pm
content: I have a Logic Pro 16 and it is, by far, the best money I've spent on test equipment in the past two years, in terms of bang per buck.You shouldn't feel too bad if you have to pay full price. It is well worth that money.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2015, 01:17:24 pm
content: Quote from: firehopper on January 06, 2015, 08:15:22 pmDoes the RLL actually work for you? Because it doesn't seem to with mine. BTW, Sigrok seems like a better client for it, give it a shot.Quote from: firehopper on January 06, 2015, 08:15:22 pmI wouldn't be too worried about the classic Logic clones (the 24MHz ones). There isn't much they can do about those because the hardware is so primitive - Cypress EZ-USB chip, with firmware downloaded on the fly. They have tried to break these by relying on some clones having a slow EEPROM and refusing to work if that was detected by reading 3x quickly in sequence. That is trivially worked around and probably most cloners have replaced the chip for a faster one already.I don't know about the new Logic 8, Logic Pro series.

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2015, 01:40:03 pm
content: Quote from: janoc on January 10, 2015, 01:17:24 pmWell, the run length encoding works perfectly well with either the Java Client or OLSFront. Dunno about Sigrok. Supporting everything under the sun comes with a price. E.g. for the ScanaPlus, Sigrok doesn't seem to support any kind of triggering - since the triggering for streaming LAs is usually done by the software. I'd be also suprised to learn that Sigrok is able to use all of the OLS capabilities (e.g. trigger setup), so maybe they screwed the RLE function as well.Anyway, regarding the of OLS RLE, you need to know how it works to make proper use of it. In a nutshell, in RLE mode one channel is used as RLE marker and is lost for capturing.So if you set it up to capture 8 channels (one byte per capture) only 7bits will contain channel data and 1 bit says if the next byte contains the number of repetitions.This obviously also means that with an 8ch setup, the RLE is not very effective since the maximum repetition is 256. I.e. if you have no signal change on the channels for more than 256 capture events, it will still need to store another two bytes (one for the data + RLE bit and one for the repetition number).So in most cases, it makes sense to capture 16ch because then the number of repetitions that can be stored is increased to 65536. For very rare signal bursts, it can also make sense to use 32ch.Yet obviously, increasing the bit width to store less RLE info during static phases means you need more bytes to store if there is a signal change. So experimenting with the number of channels captures (at least 8/16/32) makes sense to find out which setup is able to capture the longest duration.

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2015, 08:17:10 pm
content: @0xdeadbeefHey, you're right about OLSFront, I stopped working on it and I don't think it will see any further development - there's really no incentive for me to spend additional time on this project.I've considered making a commercial spin-off (complete redesign), that would be feature packed and would support various hardware, but I'm not sure there's a market for something like this and I've been turned off by the rampant feature-copying going around: see how ScanaLogic basically copied the JS based protocol decoding idea from me + some other things that look/feel strikingly the same - morality aside, it's in poor taste and I'm not sure I want to deal with this kind of garbage.About the RLE mode, it is working, but I think there is a bug in the core of the FPGA, because sometimes it starts spewing out random data regardless of which client is being used. I considered designing my own hardware as well, but given how bad the cloning situation is, I don't think that's a very lucrative business, either.Anyway, I think currently the choices are very limited for the hobby market and if you factor in the price too, extremely poor. I don't think this will change anytime soon, but for anyone looking for a LA, I can tell you this:1) The software matters a lot.2) Infinite memory is good.3) 8 channels is not enough.4) Anything under 100 Msps is not fast enough.That being said, I'm not a fan of the Saleae software but I think it's better than most, so if you can deal with the price, it's probably the best option you have at the moment.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2015, 08:49:19 pm
content: Quote from: janoc on December 29, 2014, 05:34:34 pmActually...http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/LA5016-Logic-Analyzer-p-2219.html...they've already cloned the hardwareandthe software, including the SDK for the protocol decoders.

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2015, 09:00:31 pm
content: Quote from: jadew on January 16, 2015, 08:17:10 pmIt's a bit sad as I preferred OLSFront over the Java GUI and kinda hoped it would support the advanced trigger features some day, but having several idling projects myself, I fully understand thisAnd yeah, as I said I moved on to the ScanaPlus in spring of 2014 as I came to the conclusion that development for OLS has generally slowed down to a full stop.Quote from: jadew on January 16, 2015, 08:17:10 pmI must admit I suggested the auto measuring for periods with screenshots of OLSFront in the ScanaLogic forums, but it existed in the Java OLS GUI before OLSFront and I don't think that taking over good ideas is generally unethical. About the protocol decoding through JavaScript: indeed it existed in OLSFront before ScanStudio V2 AFAIK, but even if this is not a coincidence: if they didn't copy the API or decoder scripts (which I dunno), I would count this as taking over good ideas as well.Quote from: jadew on January 16, 2015, 08:17:10 pmYou probably have a deeper insight into the actual communication as I can only judge the user side of things and never observed this. What I can say though is that the trigger position is more or less random in RLE mode. Then again it's probably tricky to implement this correctly if you don't actually know how much memory you will need for the coming data to be sampled.

author: Mr Simpleton
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 16, 2015, 09:06:04 pm
content: Depending on needs, the Intronix may be a not so expensive alternative...http://www.pctestinstruments.com/index.htm

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2015, 09:09:09 pm
content: Quote from: 0xdeadbeef on January 16, 2015, 09:00:31 pmYes, this is something that has been bothering me as well. Shouldn't be that hard to implement it in the FPGA, but I don't think anyone is working on that eitherAbout the advanced triggers, I intended to implement them, however at the time I didn't have a good understanding of FPGAs (this has changed now) and the only code provided to work with them was under some opensource license that was conflicting with the closed source nature of my software, so I gave up on the idea.Edit: corrected a typo.

author: ikalogic
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 12, 2015, 01:30:53 pm
content: Quote from: jadew on January 16, 2015, 08:17:10 pm@jadew,I don't know who who you are, really, and i certainly didn't know about your ideas about JavaScript decoding. You should have patented them and should have paid an attorny to sue me now!Joking aside, we're a small company working very hard day and night, growing up year after year, making good things, and sometimes not very good things, but we learn from our mistakes as much as we can.The JavaScript system i am using is simply "the" best alternative I had in my developement framework which is Qt. You didn't invent it, did you?I do respect a lot my competitors like Saleae, i think they have a great team, and their presence in the market is part of the game. Some of the features i see in their software seems inspired from our software, but that's life! we do the same. I wish Saleae success as much as i wish our own success, i am sure there's room for both of us in that market.I wish you also success in your spin-off!