EE101 firmware debugger replaces USBee Logic Analyzer review ?

[hunter]

I was wondering if anyone has experience with EE101 debugger which is supposed to be predecessor to the popular and well known USBee logic analyzer. They are from the people who made the original USBee.


First of all, the name is strange, EE101... why use such a generic name that carried no meaning to the device ? 

Skimming over their website, the ability to see debug messages in real time is nice, standard 8 pins logic analyzer with dedicated ports for I2C, UART, and SPI is strange, unlike the 99% of logic analyzers out there which do protocol processing on PC side.

Software interface is buggy at best, the UI doesn't scale properly on resolution higher than 1280x720p, crashes sometime for no reason. I just wish they didn't dump the USBee UI for this sub-standard version.

Code: [Select]

www.ee101.com

[davidefa]

Software interface is buggy at best, the UI doesn't scale properly on resolution higher than 1280x720p, crashes sometime for no reason. I just wish they didn't dump the USBee UI for this sub-standard version.

Code: [Select]

www.ee101.com

Interesting unit.
Even if the software is not stable, is it still usable for debugging?
I mean do you recommend it for developping a board or it is too much trouble to deal with the bugs of the board and the bugs of the debugger?

[hunter]

Unfortunately, i haven't been impressed enough to purchase this hardware, I was wondering if Dave could do a review 

[davidefa]

Unfortunately, i haven't been impressed enough to purchase this hardware, I was wondering if Dave could do a review 

Thats a good idea indeed!

Hope 'jukebox Dave' comes to rescue ;-)

[trevwhite]

I just found this thread and checked out the website. I know it's an old thread but I missed it the first time round. The device actually looks really useful. I hate always looking around for a serial adapter and then sorting out the baud rate, etc. This device appears to autodetect baud rate. The more I looked at it the more I found it to be something I think I will use a lot.

Has anyone else bought one lately?

[firmwareguy]

I have one and am glad I got it.  It's a pretty cool concept and is really helpful in debugging my designs, especially my wireless ones. 

Pros:
- Great for firmware debugging in real time.  I'm using it on PSoC and STM32 BLE and USB sensor designs.
- Channelized debug printfs and graphed FW data synced with logic and analog inputs.
- It's simple to see what is going on in real time on both sides of my wireless link at the same time.
- Automatic setup.  You send debug output anywhere in your firmware and the UI auto adjusts to compensate.
- Log forever almost.
- Real time view and log at the same time.
- Has changed my debugging methodology from decoding buses and logic analyzer traces to seeing the FW states and data

Cons:
- Won't replace your logic analyzer or oscilloscope.  Sample speeds are WAY slow for those inputs.  These were obviously an afterthought but could be useful for some slow speed stuff i guess
- Measurements are very basic
- Need to add firmware routines (space and time) to your firmware to get out the data.
- Takes up 1 or 2 pins on your micro
- Only I2C, SPI and UART are decoded

Still, I recommend it.  Pretty frequent software updates so I'll be watching for new features.

[trevwhite]

I pulled the trigger and invested in one. I think it is a great idea.

Does the analog output work on it? The demo software did not show an interface that I could see to set it up and did not see much in the manual.

[firmwareguy]

I asked and they said the Analog AWG output functionality is planned in a new version of software. 

[trevwhite]

One thing that worries me. I came across their Facebook page and one particular post showed what looked like some EE101 boards.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FEE101Official%2Fposts%2F1825769721041677

Looking closer at the image I spotted they are the following dev kit boards.,

http://www.cypress.com/documentation/development-kitsboards/cy8ckit-059-psoc-5lp-prototyping-kit-onboard-programmer-and

Now these dev boards do not appear to have any input protection on them. I am wondering if they did a board layout or just use these dev kits.

I have no problem with them buying these dev kits in and selling them on as a lot of what they have done is with the clever software running on them. I am just concerned that the input protection circuitry might be limited/non existent. Are they easy to open up and look inside?

Trev

[firmwareguy]

Hmmm.  Pretty clever.  Seems that they used the SIO inputs on the device which have overvoltage protection and hot plug capability. 

[trevwhite]

Anyone able to look inside their unit and put up some pics?

[trevwhite]

I got the following reply from ee101 regarding input protection...

The signals that are used on the device already have internal ESD and over voltage protection.  While you can't connect 40v to the inputs, those pins are specifically designed for these types of applications.  We have never had any failures on these devices and we have many users in the field now.  We also personally use them every day for years now on all sorts of hardware and they are very robust and have had no issues.

[Gabri74]

Have you tried sigrok ? It's a complete open source analysis suite compatible with a lot of logic analyzers, dso, multimeters,etc:
https://sigrok.org/wiki/Supported_hardware

I'm playing with it this days using a cheap Chinese logic analyzer like this:
https://sigrok.org/wiki/MCU123_Saleae_Logic_clone
and I really like it 

The graphical UI PulseView is really nice, there are a lot of decoders and you can stack decoders one on another (i.e. you can stack an EEPROM decoder upon an I2C decoder).  (it has also been shamefully cloned by a famous logic analyzer vendor... cough... DSLogic .... cough)

I guess that you can almost achieve the same functionality of the ee101 connecting your MCU usart to 2 analyzer pin and using an ASCII decoder side by side with your protocol decoders.

The initial developer of PulseView does a great job explaining what sigrok is capable of in this video:

(skip to 38:00 if you only want to see sigrok in action)

[trevwhite]

Thanks for the information. I quite like that the EE101 has it all sorted and can be driven from any 2 GPIO pins. That makes life easy and it can connect to basically any development.

I think the EE101 is a bit pricey at the moment but it will be one of those tools I use a lot. I think if they find the sweet spot on price they should sell well.

[trevwhite]

Well, seems they have just discounted the product to $99. I think this is a great price. Certainly, for professionals, it's a real time/hassle saver. I hope they do well.

[n3rdx]

I just placed an order for Insight-Pro from EE101. I also found a video tour on a recent version of the user interface/program. I haven't downloaded anything yet, but thought others might be interested to see the features.

http://keclips.com/ke-play/Keclips-ee101-insight-pro-user-interface-tour-KeGeqouTGsrUU.html

[Thetatronics]

I was able to make the Maker version by following some instructions I found on the EE101 website, so can't complain really considering it was so cheap.

I would have liked to upgrade to the Pro version to gain the extra channel, but it appears like this product is not supported any more.  I've tried emails and tweets, but no response from the developer.  It is a shame as there are a few bugs on the application that could do with sorting (the text scrolling loses a few lines), so it looks like I might have to reverse engineer the protocol between the PC and the dev board and write my own GUI tool.