Hi and welcome to the ever popular mailbag segment where I open my email that people have sent me. I've only got two items today so we won't overdo it. Let's check them out. The first one comes from L Growth and I recognize the name.

that would be Logan Growth. so thanks Logan he's a fellow Aussie up in Queensland I recognize the uh, that's what the Q stands for Queensland One those funny queenslanders ah, shouldn't say too much. that's where my mom's from. Anyway, let's open this sucker up and uh, see what we have? Oh, by the way, he sent it to that crazy Aussie bloke PR Box 7949 Borham Hills New South Wales 2153.

That's where you should send your stuff. So thanks Logan Let's uh, open it up I Have no idea he hasn't uh, clued me up that he'd be sending this. So let's go. What do we got? No, nothing else.

We've just got bubble wrap ta I See something in a box? Here's my trusty Victorinox mini Champ Here there we go. That's better. What do we got? What do we got Tada Hi Dave Thought you might be interested in a Renaissance promo board. They sent me one.

However, a second unit turned up week after. so hey, Enjoy! thank you very much Logan What have we got? We got a Renaissance Rl78 G13 promo board Advanced features such as ADC operation without CPU Wake up Oh, similar to the Uh Gecko that um, we had a look at uh several weeks back. high performance core running at 1.27 dmips per megahertz and Uh system cost reduction with onchip data Flash and configurable Highspeed Oscillator system safety functions to support IEC 6730 What's I 6730 I Don't uh uh, recognize that one off the top of my head? Have to check it out. And thankfully it's not one of those hideous, uh, heat sealed packages.

You just open it like that and it opens just like it damn well should those heat sealed ones. They suck big time. Let me tell you what are we getting here? We get, uh, it's promo board. yeah, whatever bit of C cardboard.

We get a CD oh, get a screwdriver Flathead eh. um, and we get a USB cable. Geez, how many bloody USB cables have I got? And check out this ridiculous part number yrp BR 78g 13 You got to be kidding me who thought up that rubbish? Anyway, it turns out that this is a um, a development SL demo board really for uh, the RL 78 series micros and it's pretty obvious why they gave you the screwdriver and the kit cuz they've got a 10 turn pot on there. There's a couple of leads and jumpers and uh, that's about it in some sort of uh, dip um Arrangement here presumably so you can put some headers on and plug it into a breadboard, but they don't give you the header strips in the kit.

Um, bummer And apparently it is. um, oh oh, look made in Europe Beauty not made in China Awesome! I Love it Ros compliant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and um, apparently it comes uh, pre-programmed with um, uh, firmware to be used with the demo software on the disk to test out the low power capabilities of these micros.

Well, let's check it out. and the first thing I did is Google I 6730 and I came up with this uh Renaissance uh web page about it and uh, it looks like it's a standard for um Appliance uh for reliability. um in uh Appliance product design It's got three different classes: Class A uh control functions not intended to be relied upon for the safety class B is control functions which are intended to prevent unsafe um. operation of controlled devices in class C is control functions which are intended to prevent, uh, special hazards.

So appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers, dryers, uh, you know, microwave ovens, and things like that, they would be classified as Class B And it seems that, uh, all of the microcontroller manufacturers have something on this here. free scale and they talk about the safety standard for household appliances. The three different classes: they've got a neat little uh popup thing here and they talk about invariable memory, they talk about addressing and external coms, and H all sorts of things. It's interrupt handling.

Um, it's it's rather neat. Confirm that the CPU clock frequency is correct. Not too slow, not too fast, no clock. So all of this stuff goes into um, selecting a microcontroller to be used in one of these white goods or products to meet the I 6730 standard.

And here's a white paper from Texas Instruments which showed up at at near the top of the Uh Google listing for this and it goes into the various classes as well. and it goes into the requirements of the compliance and how their Um system level uh, software actually supports that. like CPU registers stuck at fault and things like that and uh, uh, it goes into talking about Um because the firmware plays a critical role in the self test. Uh, the I standard does not specify how the tests are made, only that they be executed successfully.

There you go. and I'm sure anyone who has, uh, been involved with designing, uh, commercial white goods or commercial products like that goes yeah, I know all about I 60730 but there you go. I Kind of sort of knew there were standards for these things, but I didn't know the Uh number and I haven't really been involved in that. So there you go, you learned something new every day.

All right. I Just installed the software and I chose the quick start uh option instead of uh doing all of the tools. So here you go and it popped up with the quick start guide. Here here's our little board.

Um, it looks like that's done in Alum designer because that 3D model there is uh, very out him designer like? So I think that's what they've used to do this. Here we go and uh, there's some demo software with uh graphs that it looks like measures, uh, voltage and temperature perhaps? Anyway, Let's uh, run the software and see what we get and it looks like um, oh, here we go. Low Power tab: Low power modes can be entered by directly cleaning, hot, stop or snooze. uh blah blah blah and and looks low current consumption can be measured when the low power modes are selected.

Jumper J3 is used for current measurement. There you go. you can remove the uh jumper and you can measure the consumption directly of the micro just like we did on that Gecko board. Excellent.

and I won't actually bother measuring the current of course. Uh, but anyway, here's the table. just uh. in run mode 5.1 milliamps and that's looks like it's running at 32 uh, megahertz and halt mode 1 milliamp I'm not sure the 32 MHz oscillator is on the 32 khz oscillator is on doing various stuff.

So what's the difference here? I don't Ah right. Oh, the CPU itself is actually uh, switched off. So um, the main CPU is not actually executing in stop mode 620. Oh sorry, 620 nanoamps? Yes! um and what are we doing in 620 nanoamps? We're running our 32 khz uh oscillator and we're running our realtime clock and that's and we're doing some Ram stuff.

So that's about it. Um, and snooze no mode 1 microamp and what are we doing there? 32k and ADC is on periodically so you're doing some sort of data loging or something like that uh, presumably directly via Dma into the ram. Once again, very similar to the Um Gecko Devices device driver software not successfully installed I pluged the device in and uh I get nothing it says unidentified device it can't even read the device code out of the thing. what the hell's going on I got my blue lead uh happening on the board I've tried a different USB port and uh I did the quick start um software installation which went fine.

What a fail. Well that sucks ass really. I'm not going to bother around a look, it's just the program just shut down. You got to be kidding me.

I don't think I'm going to bother going to open the next package Bu at this. it's from uh Craig uh Rodine from Uh Chron you thank you very much Craig um he's from uh Monument There you go Monument in uh Co which is Colorado I believe Monument Colorado Sounds like a nice place. hello to all my Uh viewers in Colorado Now let's uh, open this sucker up and uh, see what's inside? Well I know what's inside it? uh, it's written down here USB Logic Analyzer Woohoo claims it's 190 bucks worth so let's have a look. USB Logic Analyzer Brilliant! Absolut a This is just hate these stupid where does it open? How does this thing open Here We go.

let's try this. Oh there we go. Tape along this. Yeah, All right.

Fail there we go. Now we got to open Bloody tape. All right here we go. Tada Oh Chrono View: let's have a look.

hello Mr Jones Please find enclosed our 8bit USB Logic Analyzer Kit: Is it a kit, build yourself kit or is it fully built interface software uh for Mac win and Linux so it is crossplatform. um is included and also available for direct downloading from Chrono View.com I Will res resist the temptation to pitch the product to you and instead hope you have time to evaluate and review this tool. Well, we'll certainly do that here on the mailbag, so thank you very much. Craig And by the way, I had a couple of people, uh, last time, um about the mailbag segment that it was just one big uh, you know, adver one just long advertisement.

It's just an advertisement for products well like dur you know of course it is. People send me and I open it up and I look at it and if it's good I you know I'm going to say it's good if it's bad, I'm going to say it's bad and we're going to have a look at it and uh, you know it's unbelievable. Of course this is effectively um, an an advertisement you send me stuff and well, you can you know, live or die right here live opening on the mailbag and you want to know what the funny thing is I Only get people saying that sort of thing if it's a product they didn't like. For whatever reason, they just didn't like it.

So they, oh, it's just an advertisement for the company. Bloody hell. I don't get any uh, complaints about that when it's a good product. Give me a break.

Anyway, sorry about that rant. let's have a look at the Uh Chrono view Chrono View la8 8bit so it's a pretty, um, looks like it's a low end, uh price low-end logic analyzer. Oh, and it's in the sub $200 category. Oh, that's nice and uh, let's look at that.

What else have we got? We've got some a colorcoded um um, easy hooks. Excellent. We've got our software uh, software cable. There we go and we've got our USB cable again.

o It's a um A type. It's not a mini be it's a rather nice looking pouch I like it's got a little thing in there where you can put your easy Hooks and uh, your test cable and velcro opens. It's quite nice for the uh price actually I wouldn't have expected uh oh oh alloy case I like it extruded aluminium case. oh that feels good.

What else we got in there? oh we got a we' got a shoulder strap you want to carry your logic analyzer around on your shoulder strap. bit of uh, strip, uh, you know nerd cred on the street there? Oh yeah, what's in your bag? Oh my 8bit logic analyzer mate. Well now I'm certainly quite impressed with this. It's built like a brick.

Dunny, it really is. It's uh, quite nice. solid construction. The Chrono view.

um, don't know about the font on the end there. That's a bit. Haven't really seen a font like that in a product in a long time. I Have no idea what these um LEDs mean I A TD There's enough room on there to print the full um word so well.

it's pretty non-eventful but that's you know, a logic analyzer. I Think we're going to have to crack this thing open and what's inside? Well, it's probably just a uh Fpga with a USB interface and an input buffer. and that's uh, probably about it. Anyway, in this sort of, uh, price range, that's typically what you get.

But anyway, let's crack it open. h Here it is: it should just slide out. And it does. Who zyink Fpga time and there's no real surprises on the board.

except I was uh, wrong in that this is not an Fpga it's a Zyink Cod and specifically a cool runner to an XC 2C 256 a 256 macro cell. CP Because well, this, you know it doesn't need to do. um, something incredibly, uh, complex so you can get away with a cheaper um Cpld for something like this. We've got an Ft uh 245, um Usb2 parallel uh interface that's got a built-in Fifo buffer so it buffers the data so you don't actually lose anything when you're continuously transm transmitting.

We've got a 64 megabit uh Dam down here, which means 8 Meg samples per channel. It's also got pre-t triggering I think it's up to a couple hundred K pre-t triggering uh data memory as well and uh, I'm not sure what that device there is. it's a PT 701 1512. It looks like, uh, just a voltage regulator or something like that.

So um, pretty much uh, well. there's the main oscillator of course, and that's pretty much all there is to it. There's the internal JTAG interface, so if you wanted to, uh, hack this thing I'm sure you could. We got our LEDs and our input side here.

We've got an octal uh buffer of course cuz this is a channel. It's just a Uh 74 TTL um series uh, octal uh, 244 octal buffer. It's a 74 LV uh th series, which uh is compatible with different logic families, so you can use it on 5 Vols and 3.3 Vol or possibly even lower input compatible. But one thing to note, there's no Um input, pull down resistors, uh at at all.

It's just uh or input protection or anything like that. It's just connected directly to the input of the 244. That's not the best. And of course, there's nothing fancy in this thing like adjustable uh, level, uh, trigger threshold or anything like that.

and it's just, you know. direct cosos TTL uh input buffed, that's it. Doesn't even have an external clock input, so it's timing analysis only. It can't do state analysis.

But with 100 Meg samples per second and um, 8 Meg samples of memory, um, it's you know. It's a handy little logic analyzer, a little 8 channel logic analyzer, and it's priced accordingly. Of course, it's in the uh, lowend price bracket for these sort of things, but really, um, in logic analyzer, what it's all about really is the software is the main thing. and this board is Rev A2 and copyright 2010.

So it's uh, been around for a couple of years and indeed, the silk screen date code of 1510 backs that up. Um, as does the QC sticker down here of 1910. So presumably uh, this thing was manufactured in Uh and tested in 2010 so it could have been an old stock they sent me I'm not sure what's going on there and if we have a quick look at the Uh Chrono view website, uh, here's the specs as I set up to 100 Mega 100 Meg samples per second 8.4 uh Meg samples per channel uh 256k uh pre-trigger Channel capability um signal loading They claims roughly five picofarads um plus 100 microamps State holding current um and the input voltage ranges from 0.5 volts to Um 6 volts and a logic one threshold does go to Uh two from 2 volts to 5.5 so you could uh, use any Uh logic standard within that range. so certainly easily able to do Uh 2.5 3.3 Uh, or five or 5 Vols uh TTL interface and it's a USB 2 full speed interface and they claim it has Um I Squ C SPI and Art Uh bus support as well.

Whether or not that's actually in the hardware or whether or not that's um, just software analysis later I assume it's Uh B It's software based. so there you go. Uh, let's have a look at Um. they've got a what's in the box and probably it just tells us is what's on the board and we just looked at that.

So there you go. We already know everything we need to know about that. All right? So I've got the Uh software running here. It was painless installation the drivers no problem, and the Uh program pops up here.

Not a problem now. I've actually got it uh, physically connected to an SPI Uh bus here and I haven't labeled my Uh channels but obviously this is the clock up the top. here. this is the data and this is the Um, this is the select pin and uh, here it is you.

We've got various zoom up here. it's pretty basic and uh, let's see if the tool tips pop up. No, they did before I swear they popped up there. We go acquire data, an acquisition setup.

uh, you can refresh it. wonder how quickly it refreshes cuz the acquired data takes quite some time cuz it's got presumably it's reading the whole 8 megabytes or 64 megabits over the USB there. and uh, presumably we could uh re, can we refresh that quickly? I'm not sure. uh what the deal with the Uh refresh is, whether or not it resamples the data or not? guess I'd have to read the actual manual but uh, the bus.

um setup. um, we can enable various uh things here we can change. Can we change the channel? Yes, we can change the channel color. We can change, uh.

label the signal name so if you know that's uh s clock of course you can change that and it instantly becomes um s- clock. Okay, I was just about to, uh, complain that the bus setup here is actually quite. uh, you know, quite convoluted, quite manual to actually uh, set this thing up and then I figured out that they've got What's called the canned bus setup which is basically a template and you choose your bus type and it makes it easy for you. So there you go.

SPI number of bits it's you know. So it all sets up up relatively easily and there we go. I Just uh, captured my Uh SPI bus there using the automated Um setup capability and it setup xclock and uh Mozzy and myo and you know it's all set up there and it gives you the decoded data which is F6 in this this particular case uh based on that clock and you know it's it's okay. it does the job.

um this. but this, uh, logic analyzer software isn't exactly blowing my socks off, but it's it's basic and it does the job. And for the price? I guess you can't complain at all. So what happens if we go in here and we set say our state to uh uh, our myo input here which is always high because I haven't actually got it hooked up? it's always high there and uh, let's try and Trigger off that and see what happens.

and really the triggering is not Advanced um at all. it's just. you know there's no sequence triggering by the looks of it. I if it is in there I can't find any Uh sequence-based triggering.

It's just a basic uh, single state across all eight Uh channels. either you know, high, low, or zero that or any Um state so you know it. It really is basic uh triggering stuff. so let's trigger on that and it should not actually uh trigger there.

So if we acquire data, aha, there you go. That's what I wanted to test. It's not actually in initializing and downloading the data although I think there is a um, it's waiting cuz it's waiting for that trigger and that trigger is, uh, clearly not happening. So how do I stop that I thought I saw a set in for a timeout or something like that in there.

How do I press Escape maybe? Oops, no, how do you stop? Uh, dat acquisition initiated Hardware activity. No Well, it's nonresponsive. How do do I stop this? Uh, how do I stop the thing If I didn't want a trigger, don't tell me it's going to lock up. That's really quite terrible.

It's just sitting there waiting for the trigger. it's not finding it's but it's not. surely you'd be able to press Escape better stop the recording and uh, try and figure this out. Hang on.

Well, there you go I Just uh shorted that PIN to low and made it true and well for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to, uh, without, you know, getting Windows to shut down the actual program. Um, that's really annoying. If it can't do that, maybe there is. um, I'm not going to investigate it.

um, but that could potentially be uh, quite annoying and it looks like um, I don't think you can actually, uh, set the data uh, depth because um, like sometimes you don't need that much memory. If you just want to sample quickly and uh, you know you just, uh, want to, um, update this thing, then um, you know you don't want to wait to download the full 64 Meg samples like that. So or Meg bits um eight Meg samples like that CU It does quite take an annoy, rather annoying little um amount of time there. You s saw that message that said evaluating bus there it was obviously uh, decoding that and it hasn't um centered my stuff on the screen because it's all the way over here.

Um, because my trigger condition? that's the pre I assume that's all the pre-trigger data in there so it's automatically captured. that and there's my uh SPI bus. So you can see the advantage of the deep memory though. but um I You know we can zoom across here like this.

Hang on what's going on here. The decoding has to catch up there so not sure what happened. uh I think there's a glitch in my SPI bus I'm using a demo uh board to generate uh SPI so like oh there we go, we can put uh a marker there. Can we zoom in? Yeah, we can use our um scroll our Mouse uh scrolly Center wheel to no looks like it just moves it from side to side.

We have to use the plus minus buttons. it's not. The user interface is not massive see I would have expected it Center around that line there where I had it but it didn't like expand around that line but it it it doesn't Um yeah I think the the goey needs some work. You can actually analyze your data.

Um, but it's not. It's not the greatest look at all that I don't know what's going on there. so I don't know if that's I assume it's not the analyzer. that could certainly be a glitch in my uh, demo board cuz it's designed to, uh, do that sort of stuff I believe.

But um, yeah, so it works. and it's got search capabilities. You can actually go in there and uh, you can search for, um, a particular Um state or something like that. So uh, whether or not they occur simultaneously, locate occurrences separately so you know it's got a rudimentary, uh search capability.

But there you go. that's the user interface. Um, I'm not, uh, bowled over by it. Um, at all.

but it seems to do the job. and uh, for that sort of price category, uh USB Logic Analyzer I Guess it's not too too bad. I'm not going to, um, compare it with other logic analyzers on the market. don't ask me.

I haven't Lo looked at other lowcost, um, logic analyzers. This is not a review, this is just a mailbag. Uh, quick look. really.

So there's quite a few things that this logic analyzer seems to lack. You know, data? uh, compression, sample compression. uh. For example, if you exhaust your uh, you know, if you have um, very widely spaced D packets and you're trying to, you know, capture a very small packet which is, you know, tens of seconds apart or or something like that, then you're going to run out of memory pretty darn quickly because if you go into the acquisition setup, you'll see that Uh at 50 Nan there where we can change our sample time to 50 NS We're only going to acquire half a second of Uh data.

so you know if you're um, trying to capture events larger than that, you need a Um USB logic analyzer with Uh sample compression. This one doesn't have it. It's very basic. Uh takes a bit of advanced Um firmware in there to actually do sample compression, not Advanced, but it takes additional Um Hardware capability in the device firmware capability to actually do that usually implemented inside an Fpga Um, not sure if it'd be possible to do that in a Cpld.

Actually, it might be, but uh, Fpga would certainly be the solution for that. and it's just pretty rudimentary Triggering: There's no State triggering as I said and well, you know it's it's a it's a real Bare Bones logic analyzer, but it's seems to do the job. Might be uh, possibly a bit on the expensive side for what it does I Don't know. I'm not going to, uh, compare it directly with the other ones.

Um, but it does come in a very solid nice case. I Like the case, and if you have a quick look at the Uh price here, the basic Uh kit is $129 I presume that's uh, Us and wouldn't include shipping and the deluxe kit is $149 so um, it's uh, cheaper than uh, what? they had marked on the Uh package there. So certainly a reasonably priced logic analyzer, but if it's a value for money I Don't know, you'd have to compare it with the others on the market. So that's the mailbag segment.

I Hope you liked it and remember, if you do like it, give it a big thumbs up on YouTube And if you want to discuss any of this stuff, hop on over to the Eev blog. Forum Catch you next time.