saleae logic or pulseview

[Adrian_Arg.]

Hello, I just ordered an 8-channel 24Mhz logic analyzer for 5 dollars, my doubt which is better software to use saleae logic or pulseview, which is more compatible and complete. 

[cdev]

Its a great deal these really cheap tiny logic analyzers. Which work great.

For the record, the FX2 chips were markeed from the start to do what they do in all the logic analyzers they are used in .Neither  Salae or USBee has any monopoly on logic analyzers built with FX2chips. They all implemented the same reference board design. I don't use Logic.

Logic's dark UI made my eyes hurt.

Hello, I just ordered an 8-channel 24Mhz logic analyzer for 5 dollars, my doubt which is better software to use saleae logic or pulseview, which is more compatible and complete. 

[Gyro]

In terms of fair usage, using Logic with a clone violates Saleae's licencing conditions, whereas Pulseview is open source.

Pulseview. Logic makes my eyes hurt. Maybe its my karma running over others dogma.

Iirc, earlier versions of Logic were much more readable and probably a better match for the clone capabilities (no analogue channels etc). Version 1.1.18beta rings a bell as the last of the pre 'dimmed down' versions.

[Ian.M]

Leaving aside the legalities, *BECAUSE* Sigrok Pulseview is FOSS, its preferable for sharing your capture sessions here and on other electronics fora, as we can all use it to view your session files.  Sharing the raw capture or an extracted section of it is vastly preferable to just sharing screenshots as those helping you can run protocol analysers and decoders on your data and make their own timing measurements.

If you use Saleae Logic's CSV file export format, its a PITA to view with FOSS/freeware tools^*, and many of us *WONT* install Logic to run in Demo mode, because you can't lock it into demo mode - it returns to full mode as soon as a supported logic analyser is detected, so is 'verboten' if you own a Logic 8 clone and care about the legalities.

* See the hoops I had to jump through: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/determine-baud-rate/msg3313726/#msg3313726.  I *should* have written a Python protocol decoder for it, and probably a Python Saleae CSV to *whatever* Pulseview supported format converter, but I'm not that strong a Python programmer, so it was far quicker/easier to knock out a converter + decoder in LTspice.

[YurkshireLad]

Don't you need to install Logic so it can install the USB driver you need for the analyzer?

[Ian.M]

Don't you need to install Logic so it can install the USB driver you need for the analyzer?

Nope.  The Logic 8 clones run quite happily using the FOSS FX2LAFW firmware and Pulseview uses, under Windows, the FOSS Zadig WinUSB drivers (bundled with Sigrok).  On Linux & macOS it uses libusb.

However a significant number of the other logic analyzers that Sigrok supports including some premium models from Saleae, *DO* require you to extract firmware from an install of their OEM software as Sigrok can't legally bundle it.

[Adrian_Arg.]

Thanks for your comments, it seems that pulseview is the most advisable.