Anyone tried these cheap Saleae on ebay?

[khtwo2002]

Anyone tried these cheap Saleae on ebay? I think it's not the original Saleae product. But the spec is quite attractive. 8 channels, 24M/s each. Really?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/331736423509?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

[gocemk]

Yes, and they work with the original Salae software too. I have the 8 channel 24MHz model for over a year now, and never had any problems with it. The only thing that bothers me is that the enclosure is very low quality and often it cracks open, so it has to be glued together with insulation tape or something similar. But for that price i really can't complain.

[Monkeh]

Yes, and they work with the original Salae software too. I have the 8 channel 24MHz model for over a year now, and never had any problems with it. The only thing that bothers me is that the enclosure is very low quality and often it cracks open, so it has to be glued together with insulation tape or something similar. But for that price i really can't complain.

Yes, so you can buy a cheap knockoff device from eBay and not pay Saleae a penny for their software development to make the hardware useful.

 

[Fungus]

Yes, and they work with the original Salae software too.

Saleae charge so much for their hardware becasue they have to develop expensive software to go with it. If you're not going to buy their hardware, have the decency to not use their software, use the software provided by the Chinese eBay sellers.

[jitter]

Yes, and they work with the original Salae software too.

Saleae charge so much for their hardware becasue they have to develop expensive software to go with it. If you're not going to buy their hardware, have the decency to not use their software, use the software provided by the Chinese eBay sellers.

They copied the hardware, somehow I doubt they wouldn't just copy the software as well...

[Gyro]

The 'nice' thing to do is use them with the open source Sigrok Pulseview which fully supports them without infringing Saleae's licence conditions.

[free_electron]

not condoning this  but : there is very little to 'copy': it's a vanilla cypress chip. set the vid and pid correctly in the eeprom and the  operating system will assign the salea driver...  the salae firmware will then autoload on the cypress.

the chicken-egg problem with the cypress chip is that its firmware is stored in RAM. every time usb connects they upload the runtime binary.

so technically the chinese are not doing copyright infringement. they don't copy the firmware or software.
the only infringement would be the vid/pid pair in the eeprom.

By the way, saleae CAN detect that you have a fake ... they just don't act on it. I was at their headquarters a couple of years ago during an open-house day. they had a whole table full of different clones. the real ones use a particular eeprom and the salea software retrieves the size and manufacturer code from the eeprom. the fakes use smaller , cheaper eeproms. all they would have to do is nuke the vid/pid. That could be blocked by strapping the wp pin , but even then they coudl write the software in such a way that, if writing is blocked , they refuse to run.

pretty decent of them.

in short : don't buy these crappy clones get the real deal. support a local SF / CA business.

[stmdude]

Yea, please support Saleae.

Don't mistake them for some big corporation that wouldn't miss your business much. As far as I know, Saleae is a two-man operation..

[free_electron]

up to 9 , and at least one is a woman,

CWAV , the makers of USBEE , already called it quits three months ago ... exactly for this cloning problem.
http://www.usbee.com/suite.html

http://www.usbee.com/company.htm

[AlxDroidDev]

I wonder if this device will work on Android, connected through an OTG USB adapter.

I know there is Sigrok PulseView for Android, but if this little thing works with Android, it opens a whole new window to a portable, simple and cheap o-scope.

[Fat]

I'm pretty cheap, but I wouldn't buy one of these. I think we need to start calling these what they are: counterfeit. We tend to label these things as clones when they are not. The cheap Hakko counterfeits are a case in point. Open one up, it isn't a clone, it's a counterfeit designed to look like a Hakko.

One thing I really don't get with the $39 solder stations is why they do that but seem to leave the big name multimeters alone? You'd think that they jump on Fluke's fame.  I understand someone imported some yellow meters about a year ago and customs seized them because of the color, so Fluke is doing something about it, but you'd think with the cost of a real Fluke you's see more counterfeits floating around. 

[marshallh]

Saleae stuff is less for the hobbyist worried about spending a few bucks here and there, and more for "we just need to find the problem already, buy it".
While the sw/digital is nice, the analog in the pro versions is a joke.

[PedroDaGr8]

The price of a legit Saleae is more than an Analog Discovery, and Saleae's analog is virtually a piece of shit. Why not spending money on a much more reputable brand (in this case, Digilent, backed by ADI and Xilinx)?

Actually, you can add National instruments to that backing, as NI now owns Digilent.

[pickle9000]

Try sigrok for the software, free and legal, good decoding.

[krish2487]

Quote from: Fat on Today at 09:51:09 AM

I'm pretty cheap, but I wouldn't buy one of these. I think we need to start calling these what they are: counterfeit. We tend to label these things as clones when they are not. The cheap Hakko counterfeits are a case in point. Open one up, it isn't a clone, it's a counterfeit designed to look like a Hakko.

One thing I really don't get with the $39 solder stations is why they do that but seem to leave the big name multimeters alone? You'd think that they jump on Fluke's fame.  I understand someone imported some yellow meters about a year ago and customs seized them because of the color, so Fluke is doing something about it, but you'd think with the cost of a real Fluke you's see more counterfeits floating around.

I think you are referring to sparkfun. The only reason why I think that no-one messes with T&M instruments is, it would be pretty damn hard to even counterfeit the functionality/features without substantial work being put it in R&D.

Second, Look at the price disparity between a Fluke multimeter and a hakko soldering station. ~100$ vs ~5-700 for a decent new fluke. As someone paying 700 bucks, I would be a lot more picky and finicky about being sure of the real deal compared to a 100$ kit.

[Fungus]

One thing I really don't get with the $39 solder stations is why they do that but seem to leave the big name multimeters alone? You'd think that they jump on Fluke's fame.

People who know what Fluke is aren't going to buy a $50 meter with "Floke" written on the front, even if it is yellow.

There might actually be more value in making yellow multimeters and playing the "Fluke are overpriced ripoffs, ours have more features including most excellent transistor tester!" card.

[Mechatrommer]

modded 2 become 3

[pickle9000]

I wonder if this device will work on Android, connected through an OTG USB adapter.

I know there is Sigrok PulseView for Android, but if this little thing works with Android, it opens a whole new window to a portable, simple and cheap o-scope.

Sigrok supports it. So it should work, I think the Rigol ds1000z and ds2000 is supported as well so that could be of interest.

[lgbeno]

I have both a legit Saleae and a Clone.  The clone works just fine but then I upgraded to the Saleae Pro 8.  It really is a phenomenal tool, I use it very often, almost daily.  Not only that but I use the python scripting interface to run all kinds of automated testing.  Mostly digital stuff, the analog BW is kinda limiting for what I work on.


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[Codemonkey]

I've been using one of these:

http://hobbycomponents.com/test/243-hobby-components-usb-8ch-24mhz-8-channel-logic-analyser

Already comes with the VID & PID set to work with the Sigrok software which worked just fine for me on a Windows 10 machine and no guilty feeling about using someone else's software with cheap knockoff hardware 

[pickle9000]

I've been using one of these:

http://hobbycomponents.com/test/243-hobby-components-usb-8ch-24mhz-8-channel-logic-analyser

Already comes with the VID & PID set to work with the Sigrok software which worked just fine for me on a Windows 10 machine and no guilty feeling about using someone else's software with cheap knockoff hardware 

That's very interesting, looks like the product was designed for Sigrok. That's the first time I have ever seen that. It basically means no software development to speak of. I'm not sure how that will work in the long run but that's a cool idea for a small product. If Sigrok can pull off a few more of these partnerships the software should improve and it could help it survive long term.

[tszaboo]

in short : don't buy these crappy clones get the real deal. support a local SF / CA business.

They had a flawed business model. They had a 10 dollar hardware which they sold for 150 and a 140 dollar software, which they give out for free.
Even they realized that this is not going to work, but the damage is already done. And what did they do? Include an FPGA in the hardware, bumping the cost to some 20 dollars.
Charge money for what you are selling. The market is not forgiving, and not charity.

[AlxDroidDev]

I've been using one of these:

http://hobbycomponents.com/test/243-hobby-components-usb-8ch-24mhz-8-channel-logic-analyser

That's very interesting, looks like the product was designed for Sigrok. That's the first time I have ever seen that. It basically means no software development to speak of. I'm not sure how that will work in the long run but that's a cool idea for a small product. If Sigrok can pull off a few more of these partnerships the software should improve and it could help it survive long term.

Given that it has the exact same specs and looks a lot like the one on eBay (except for the sticker on top and VID/PID, both of which are easy to change), I suspect both might come from the same source. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

[Codemonkey]

Given that it has the exact same specs and looks a lot like the one on eBay (except for the sticker on top and VID/PID, both of which are easy to change), I suspect both might come from the same source. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

Quite possible, but the fact that that seller put the effort in to make sure it works out of the box with the open source software rather than just expecting you to use it with the Saleae software appealed to me hence why I got one from them.

[amyk]

It's not like the software offers any amazing functionality either - just "wank" as Dave calls it in his review.

The origins of the Cypress FX2-based logic analyser can be traced back to the Chinese, who wrote a whole book in 2004 about all the things the FX2 could be used for:

Code: [Select]

Chapter 14 USB interface temperature controller
Chapter 15 RS232-USB converter
Chapter 16 USB interface waveform generator
Chapter 17 USB Interface Digital Oscilloscope
Chapter 18 Spectrum Analyzer USB2.0 Interface
Chapter 19 USB2.0 interface logic analyzer <---
Chapter 20 USB2.0 interface data acquisition card