Hi Everyone,
I just received my Chinese protocol analyzer. In the meantime, I bought another one on Ebay. It's a ZeroPlus, LAP-C16032.
As promised, here are my impressions:
Chinese one: paid 14$ on Ebay. Easy to use; it requires you to download the software from Saleae (www.saleae.com).
The software couldn't be simpler. it has very few settings that you can change. You can specify a trigger, and is is very rudimentary. I tried it to capture activity between 2 uCPU over I2C.
You can capture A LOT. it saves it either on RAM or HD (don't know/don't care ). the I2C analyzer will tell you who the message is addressed to, if it's a read or write and the data. these info are shown along the continuous string of captured data.
Scrolling thru the packets is a bit painful, but it can be done ! The number of available protocol, is somehow limited, but it has the one I was looking for (I2C, SPI, DMX512 & 1-wire)
Consider buying some "clamp-on" cable. (a 'big' 8$ investment)
ZeroPlus (www.zeroplus.com.tw):
140$ on Ebay. Holy ...we are not talking about the same thing !!!
Tons of settings/tweeking. Again, you can specify a trigger to start acquisition.
The captured trace are shown on a continuous string of captured data, showing the same info as the Saleae did. But, you can decide to display the captured packet on visual list . This is simply great !!!! Clear & efficient.
The downside, is the memory size: mine has 32K, so I was able to capture only 8-9 packets. quite deceiving, until I discovered that you can use some kind of lossless compression. same system, I was then able to capture 630-ishh packet.
there are 50+ protocols supported. Most of the ones I wanted were provided for free. Then, you can select up to 30 more protocol. I then choose Modbus, ProfiBus, HART, and a couple more. Still got a 'bank' of over 20 protocols to pick !
The unit has a total of 512K. It would have been nice if I could have used that 512K over 'x' number of channel that I would have enabled....but, as per tech support, it's not the case.
There are a few hacksite that explain how to transform it from a 16 channel to a 32 channel, and how to increase the memory. Not there yet !
Conclusion: if you are on a budget, the chinese stuff might be OK. If you can spend a bit more, go for the ZeroPlus, no hesitation. If you can afford it, maybe go for the 64K or even 128K. You get what you paid for !
I'm also looking at another company called CWAV. They make the USBee SX, which seems to have a software as user friendly/powerful as the ZeroPlus, with the option to store captured data on HD. The specs themselves are similar to the ZeroPlus. Price is 170$. I might end-up having 1 or 2 logic analyzer for sale at the end !!!
Now for those hyper-technical guru here, yes, there are probably better logic analyzer, my review is probably incomplete, I could have done better testing, etc ... I know all that. This is just my personal opinion, of something that does what I was looking for !!!