 Hey guys, it's Parker Domen, the Longhorn Engineer, and today we're going to look at the OpenBench Logic Sniffer. This is basically an open source logic analyzer. A logic analyzer is basically just a digital version of a oscilloscope so you can only view 1s and 0s on the signal. It's very useful in debugging microcontrollers, which is actually what this is really good for. It has a sampling, it can sample signals up to 50 megahertz, so if you're using a juino or a propeller, this is perfect because both of those will basically fall into a readable range that this can sample at. It runs, it has 32 channels, 16 of which come presoldered on, right here, it has 16 more right here. And note those that the 16 channels over here are 5 volt tolerant and buffered, whereas these are not, so they're only 3.3 volt tolerant and not buffered. So if you apply more than 3.3 volts to these pins over here, you will probably fry the logic sniffer. I think dangerous prototypes, who are the designers of this board, I think they do make a kit, add-on kit that makes these buffered. I don't recall how much that is, but it's probably a worthwhile investment if you need more than 16 channels. For most microcontroller work, though, you only need the 16 channels over here. I actually only use 8 channels most of the time. So it's USB compatible, and you basically take these leads right here and you wire them up to your project. So I'm going to go ahead and do that. So I have it all wired up, I have the USB plugged into my laptop, and I have it hooked up to my RGB PWM switch, it's a WS2108, which basically the propeller is going to send 24 bits of data via serial connection, and then that's it, and that will control this LED that's right back there. So I'm going to tell, it's hooked up, the logic analyzer is hooked up. These two pins, one is clock, which is channel 0, and channel 1 is the data. And then this guy is ground. So to make sure that the logic sniffer knows what ground is, you connect the grounds between the two devices. And so to run it, it's as simple as booting up the software that comes with it. It uses Sump, which is an open source program for logic analyzers, and so what you're going to do is click this guy that says, I think it says start sniffing or start capture. So you got to select your port, and I only have one device connected to COM4. You don't need to change the port speed. So now you've got to change your sampling right here. It samples up to 100 megahertz, which means you can capture a 50 megahertz system. Now the propeller has a clock speed of 80 megahertz, but since it takes four cycles per instruction on average, it's actually running at 20 megahertz. So we can probably get away setting it to, I feel actually, there you go, to 20 megahertz. Because if I'm flipping a pin, I can flip a pin at about 10 megahertz rates on average. So you can see that. And then I'm only using the first eight channels. So I'm going to turn off those and hit this automatic recording size. So that way it uses the most amount of RAM to store the data. The more channels you use, the less time you get to record basically the same thing with sampling. The faster you sample at, the less time you get to sample for. And I'm going to leave noise filter off and the run length encoding. I don't know what that does. So I'm going to enable what's called triggering. So triggering means that it's going to wait until something happens, then start recording, which is very useful when you're just sending a couple bits, like 24 bits at a time. So we're going to use type simple, and then there's this mask down here. Now the mask means these are the channels that the logic analyzer is going to look at for the trigger. And so since channel zero is our clock, so right when it starts clocking in the data, it'll start recording it. And so this bottom is the value blank is zero, and checked is one. So we're going to have it checked because it clocks in on the high clock value. My program does. So we're going to hit capture. And so it's going to start waiting. So when I come over here, I'm going to turn on the propeller and start reading in the data. And there we go. So you can tell this is our clock. And then here is our waveform. And you can tell we didn't quite capture all the clocks. So we're going to go back to this button and start capturing data. Go back to the acquisition, change it to 10 Nigahertz, and then hit capture. And it's going to wait. And then we're just going to hit the reset button on the propeller. There we go. So that's got all our clocks in, all 24 clocks. And then it's got, this is the red data. So I'm shifting it all ones for red. I'm shifting in partially zeros and partially ones for the green. And partially zeros and partially ones for the blue. And you can tell it makes a, I don't know if you can tell, but it makes kind of a magenta color of the RGB LED down there. For $50, this is a very good piece of kit. It doesn't have a lot of features, like more professional logic analyzers that I've used before, but for the beginner or hobbyist, this is a perfect thing for low level microcontroller work, like the MSP430s or propellers and Arduinos. It's actually pretty easy to use. Most logic analyzers I've used are a little bit difficult in the software. This is actually one of the easiest ones I've used. I actually do have two complaints. The clips over here are a little crappy. I mean, you just flick them and they'll pop off. And it doesn't have a lot of RAM in that FPGA for recording. As you saw earlier, I had to change the sampling rate down just to capture 24 bits of data. So if you have really, really high speed connections, you'll probably have to buy a more expensive logic analyzer. I'm going to assume the reason why this thing doesn't have a lot of RAM is because they're a $50 budget for this board. But yeah, I mean, the next step up is spending $150 to $200 on the logic analyzer. But so for $50, this does exactly what it needs to do. I would recommend anyone that does extensive Arduino or microcontroller work to definitely pick this up from dangerous prototypes. I picked mine up for $50 at Seed Studio. And I don't know if anyone else sells them, but definitely pick it up. See you later, guys.