Rigol DS1102D WFM Logic Analyzer files

[keitheevblog]

HI there,

I'm trying to view a saved WFM logic analyzer file on a Windows (or Linux, worst case) machine.

While I know I can load it into the Ultrascope software, it's quite possibly the worst logic analyzer interface I've ever seen.

I mainly just want to relabel the channels, zoom in/out, do some quick time measurements, and that's it.

Many of the WFM viewers only accept the oscilloscope two channel inputs, but not the logic analyzer channels.

Thanks
Keith

[keitheevblog]

I figured out a way to convert the output CSV files into an OLS Data file format for using with an open source tool.

My blog post and details are at:

http://www.techtravels.org/amiga/amigablog/?p=923

[RichardFr]

Hello Keith, very interesting solution.

Unless you found another solution or tool, your proposal seems to be interesting and OLS seems to be decent tool.

I would like to try your solution, but unfortunately I'm a Windows only user, so I can't run your shell commands sequence, and I'm not used to Linux commands so I don't know exactly what it does.

Could you please share more details about the applied transformations, or at least post a raw input file (CSV) and its transformed (OLS) equivalent to help me to figure what does your command line ? I'll do it in equivalent commands or I'll write a little program to do these (and I'll share it here when it will be done, of course).

Thanks

[keitheevblog]

Yes. Let me do some research on it and I'll get back to you today.

[nuno]

There are windows versions of those unix cmd line tools (http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/coreutils.htm), but nawk is not included. Never used nawk, what transformation is it applying?

[RichardFr]

Thanks Keith !!

Nuno, I'm aware most of Linux commands have been ported to Windows but since this is a reasonably complex set of ones with various arguments I thought it could be hard to get exactly the expected result, especially without to know what the commands are supposed to do exactly

[keitheevblog]

I promise a reply explaining all will come after this swanky dinner and show! 

It's not that hard.

[keitheevblog]

Ok Gentlemen (and ladies?)

I've got an update blog post below that explains everything

http://www.techtravels.org/amiga/amigablog/?p=1638

@richardfr: I haven't really found a better solution, but that's mainly because I rarely use the logic analyzer portion of the scope. I had some reliability issues with it, and I came to simply not trust it.

I have an HP 16700A logic analysis system with over (300) channels available, including the capability to run upwards of 667mhz. It's somewhat of a beast, but I never really doubt the results, which I think is very very important.

I welcome questions here or at my blog.

[nuno]

Thanks for the explanation.
Attached is a TCL script version of it. In linux just set the executable flag and is ready to run, for windows/mac you need the TCL interpreter. For windows I also have an executable made with the freewrap tool but it's over the 1MB upload size limit of the forum and I don't have time right now to host it somewhere else. Example usage is

linux (after setting exec bit, with chmod +x rigolcsv2ols.tcl):
rigolcsv2ols.tcl input.csv > output.ols

windows using an installed interpreter:
tclsh rigolcsv2ols.tcl input.csv > output.ols

mac:
I don't know how to invoke it, probably similar to linux if tcl interpreter installed

I only tested it over the sample supplied by keitheevblog so it may have bugs, but let me know and I'll tweak it.

[gmb42]

A PowerShell script should be attached, PowerShell is installed on Windows from Vista onwards and is available as an installer for those XP holdouts.  A bit wordy with all the built in help etc.  Hopefully the comments will help folks modify it if necessary.

The script should also convert the sample rate correctly, assuming the rigol csv output is always in seconds.

I've only tested on Win 8.1 (i.e. Powershell 4) with the sample rigol.csv file as supplied by keitheevblog, with a few extra values, e.g. single digit 0, so it may fail on different input or with earlier versions of PowerShell.  If it does, then let me know and I'll have a look at it.

[RichardFr]

Wow ! Thank you so much to all for these great feedbacks and proposals.

I'll add a look on them and probably use "as is" the TCL or Powershell ones rather than doing my own implementation.

I'm not sure of when I'll have time for it (some fields of electronics are just a hobby for me and I'm very busy by work), but I'm really impressed by the quality and speed of your answers, since not only Keith responded but others also did their own implementation. I'll give a feedback when possible.

Keith, thanks to have also answered about "other solutions", unfortunately as you have probably guessed I'm not as lucky as you, my single LA is the Rigol, which is effectively a piece of crap. I hope that to load signals in a dedicated software (at least to be able do some protocol decoding) will make it better.

Thanks again

[RichardFr]

Hello,
Sorry I didn't tried so far your solution. But I've tested something else which I think deserves to be shared here :
It's Sigrok + Sigrok Pulseview piece of software ( http://sigrok.org/ ).
It allows numerous protocols decoding in real time (no need to record csv). I was impressed by the number of supported protocols.
But it has one big drawback : it's "realtime" on a single capture of logic analyzer displayed output, so it only works for very little data sets. And don't try to increase too much the timebase, because the decoded data will be corrupted.