Beginner analyzing UART using a scope

[kiler129]

Howdy!

I spent years in the software world with only occasional dabbles in hardware. Recently I've got, recommended widely, Siglent SDS804X HD. It is my first scope after owning an analog HP years ago. With new found capabilities, I started playing with various measurements to get to know the equipment. I stumble upon bus analysis which is a great option. However, I'm yet to find two things on the scope:

• Automatic UART/CAN/etc baudrate calculation - while it's quite easy to do a single capture on raising edge, measure the width of the shortest positive pulse, use confuser to do 1/(width*10^-6), and then set the scope to the proper baud.... it is quite cumbersome. Is there some easier/automatic way of doing that, or is such option simply missing from my scope?
• Linking channels settings - while playing with the scope I noticed I often measure similar signals with multiple probes. The interface has an option to copy settings from one channel to the other. However, is a notion of "binding" channels together so that changing vertical scaling of one changes all ever a thing?

I checked the user manual for my oscilloscope, but I don't see neither of these options.
I would be glad to get some help

-- Greg

[Jeroen3]

Rohde and Schwarz has a copy feature for channel settings iirc. But linked channels I have not seen yet on scopes. only function gens.
Could be a nice feature.

Automatic baud rate is fairly typical for decoders, doesn't it have that?
Most of the time you know beforehand the baud rate, and if it's not 9600 or 115200 something is probably off  .

[tggzzz]

Consider using a scope to ensure analogue signal integrity. i.e. voltages, timings, transition time/monotonicity/overshoot, noise. Once you have determined all those are within limits, you will be sure the analogue waveform will be correctly interpreted by the receiver as a digital signal.

At that point flip out of the analogue domain (i.e. a scope) and into the digital domain, i.e. a logic analyser for bits/words or protocol analyser for messages.

Very capable LAs and PAs are very cheap, and remarkably effective. Examples: the many 8-bit 24MS/s "LAs", or a BusPirate 5. The latter will allow you to output UART/SPI/etc messages as well.