[TriEmbed] oscilloscopes

[Michael Fulbright]

I've always liked the Saleae Logic line of logic analyzers and I see 
they have a new line of products which include analog inputs as well.  
The protocol decoding on the logic side was pretty solid and has saved 
me alot of time debugging protocols.  I have NOT used one of their 
devices which supports analog so that is something you'd want to 
research more but I would imagine it is also well designed.

Saleae: https://www.saleae.com/

For a really really cheap logic analyzer I use a Cypress PSOC eval board 
and 'sigrok' under Linux.  Lots of existing protocol decoding support 
and you can extend the protocol support it using python. There is also a 
crude Qt-based GUI called pulseview.

But if you just want to capture a protocol stream to a 
file/pipe/whatever you can do it all from the command line: 
http://www.sigrok.org/blog/sigrok-unix-awesome-part-iii-fun-and-games-gpsd
Protocols supported:  http://sigrok.org/wiki/Protocol_decoders

Here is the cheap board you can get for $10 and use sigrok:

http://sigrok.org/wiki/Lcsoft_Mini_Board

You get 16 channels at up to 24MHZ.  You are going directly into 3.3V 
pins on the PSOC so you probably want a buffer of some sorts to protect 
the board unless you're really careful.

If you just want to watch I2C or RS232 traffic it is great - I was able 
to debug a I2C OLED display using it for example.  But if you were 
trying to do real work I think you'd want to spend the money on a Saleae 
or USBEE setup.

Michael Fulbright