7 ms·

Sigrok – a portable, cross-platform, FOSS signal analysis software suite

170 points by _Microft 2y ago

MobiusHorizons 2y ago
Quite a useful tool! I was trying to build an IR remote converter and I wrote a custom protocol decoder for sigrok to help compare the incoming signal and what my code was producing. Very useful debugging tool. Quite powerful with the cheap salae knockoffs
hommelix 2y ago
Sigrok wiki is a great source to check for protocol documentation of measuring device.
unwind 2y ago
Wow, cool to see Sigrok here, I wonder if there was some particular "trigger" story or how that happened. Glad to think that there will be many "lucky 10,000" [1] today. I haven't used it in years, but I clicked back to the first devlist email I had, and it seems that was from 2010. Wow. It's really old and feels well established, a great success! No idea how live it is as an open source project, I have to check out the current status. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- jdboyd 2y ago
  They don't seem to be too interested in releases. Their git is sadly gitweb, which isn't something I love seeing, but the main parts appear to have activity this year.
jdboyd 2y ago
My experience using sigrok with cheap fx2 based logic analyzer hardware was great, and I heavily recommend it. My experience using it as a GUI for an oscilloscope was less impressive (it wasn't so interactive). The next time I need my oscilloscope, I want to take a few moments to try out https://www.ngscopeclient.org/ https://www.ngscopeclient.org/
- enva2712 2y ago
  this comment is a masterclass in advertising start relatable: “my experience” add reinforcing detail: works well with fx2 hw add negative experience: bad for analog logic introduce habit trigger: next time use ngscopeclient for analog logic
  - ipdashc 2y ago
    I'm a bit confused, is the implication that they're shilling for ngscopeclient or something? It's not a paid product (neither is sigrok). They're not wrong either, Pulseview (sigrok) is great doesn't feel very designed for interactive use from the little bit I played with it.
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      Either way it is great marketing. Maybe they just have a knack for it!
      - fluidcruft 2y ago
        Maybe they just use LLM to proof their comments. You too can sound like dismissible ad copy with this one simple trick!
        jdboyd 2y ago
        I didn't use an LLM, but on rereading in the morning, I am cringing at "wasn't so interactive", so maybe I should have. There had to be a better way to put my complaint.
        actionfromafar 2y ago
        It's fine, we will all be suspected of being LLMs now. :)
- human_llm 2y ago
Laksen 2y ago
Sigrok is awesome. The pulseview UI is pretty much perfect for configuring decoders The only downside is the stability issues (fast crash to desktop). Happens pretty much every time I use it. Still the best tool of its kind
- abraxa 2y ago
  PulseView shouldn't be crashing a lot at all, honestly. Were you running the nightly or the 0.4.2 release? The 0.4.2 release is rather outdated, I'm working on making a new release soon to fix that.
  - Laksen 2y ago
    I tried some different versions and ended building from source. Currently on commit ls from the 14th of march The most consistently crashing behavior has been when trying to import or work with csv or vcd data (pure 0/1 data)
v1ne 2y ago
I don't know. My experience as a contributor to Sigrok was sad: I significantly improved a driver and wanted to upstream those changes, but was met with "well, the maintainer has little time, can you slice your changes into smaller pieces?", and honestly, after a months of doing that, waiting weeks for feedback, explaining things, I lost interest. Also, with time, I honestly don't remember some details of the changes beyond what's in the commit messages. I also found the style of the code quite antiquated, without any wish to change that. But that's my taste. So, in the end, my work on that driver felt wasted.
- daghamm 2y ago
  "can you slice your changes into smaller pieces?" You don't send a huge patch to a project as a first time contributor. I am sure sigrok would benefit from your improvements, but sometimes the maintainer has a busy life outside the project so you need to adapt to their pace, at least in the beginning.
  - klysm 2y ago
    > You don't send a huge patch to a project as a first time contributor. Although that’s a good guideline, it’s not true in absolute terms. Sometimes the contribution is a big patch!
    - evv 2y ago
      And sometimes the best way to contribute is by forking. Depends on the situation for sure, but this encourages an acceleration by the maintainers of the original library. If they don't have the time to do so, they can comfortably ignore the fork.
      - giancarlostoro 2y ago
        On GitHub most PRs come from works though? Or do you mean make an entirely separate driver?
  - xemdetia 2y ago
harvie 2y ago
I am still waiting for my driver to be merged :-( https://github.com/sigrokproject/libsigrok/pull/185 https://github.com/sigrokproject/libsigrok/pull/185
nezza-_- 2y ago
For me PulseView unfortunately has been very buggy and I never really got it to work (neither with an old Saleae 8, a new Saleae Pro 16, or an FX2 clone) well and without constant crashes. I tried on Linux & mac, but never could get it to run well. I'd be super curious to chat with someone who had a different experience on what you've been doing differently from me! I love the idea of Sigrok, so would love to get it to work (well) for me
- abraxa 2y ago
  PulseView shouldn't be crashing a lot at all, honestly. Were you running the nightly or the 0.4.2 release? The 0.4.2 release is rather outdated, I'm working on making a new release soon to fix that.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  Not my experience. I got a cheap Sparkfun logic analyzer on a whim and it sat idle until I had a work problem that I spent a lot of WFH time debugging with it using Pulseview. I later recommended that we buy a Saleae analyzer just in case the SF one was hiding a problem and I didn't find any substantive difference between the two.
  - the_biot 2y ago
    It is my firm belief that everybody should have one of those $10 FX2 boards in their drawer, either for debugging some electronics board stuff (arduino and up), or just for learning about digital signalling. $10 and Pulseview is all you need!
night862 2y ago
Sigrok is a really valuable project. Thanks! The greatest issue I see is that this is a fairly niche field for open source software historically due to the difficulty of acquiring the actual logic analyzers for a personal or student lab at times. People in general see older projects as establish and will often guide their focus to their own greenfield interests. There are now a growing number of people entering this area of development however and more projects are being founded every month as availability and support for good-quality, stable hardware is increasing! This is an exciting time for open source analysis, and given the availability and maturity of older 24mhz logic analyzers, on-demand manufacturing and supporting protects (kicad) I expect this to continue. Hopefully sigrok takes on some new contributors who can engender even greater cooperation from this extremely relevant and exciting project!
mowfask 2y ago
Sigrok is amazing! The killer feature for me is sigrok-cli. With it you basically convert from electrical signal to Unix pipe. Super useful for running e.g. timing measurements and quick-and-dirty plotting. Or grepping through millions of signal transitions to pin down a nasty race condition.
godelski 2y ago
There's a lot of complaints here about how slow the project is and that it's single maintainer, but also how valuable and useful it is Is this a funding problem? Do we need to have the xz conversation again? I really do love OSS but we need to figure out something where valuable projects aren't just hobbies or side projects (not even a side hustle). With all this time can we not improve on our model? To get funding where it's needed? This is also a friendly reminder than most big tech companies will donation match, so maybe send $5 to a few of your favorite projects. You're making big money now, you can buy a few beers for you friend (and put a few on the company's dime).
- the_biot 2y ago
  > Is this a funding problem? No.
  - godelski 2y ago
    Why?
- abraxa 2y ago
  Honestly, it's a general FOSS problem in my opinion. sigrok is rather niche and spans a wide skill set across the various sub-projects. We have C code for 8051 for fx2lafw, we have C code for libsigrok, C++ code for PulseView, C and python for libsigrokdecode, and so on. There are plenty of people who drop off patches and move on but finding people who are willing to stay and take ownership of something is a challenge. Money would only help insofar as it would allow me to buy hardware I could test drivers with. However, I don't have the space for such equipment and even a simple scope costs so much that it would probably eat up a year of donations. I appreciate your thoughtfulness, though. In the end, all I ask is for contributors to see things from the project's point of view and try to make things as easy as possible. I hope that more people will join our efforts once the project has more visible signs of life again.
  - genewitch 2y ago
    Thank you for your commentary!
the_biot 2y ago
The current sigrok maintainer is trying to take part in this discussion (username abraxa), and is in general trying to reinvigorate the project. However, one or more of you idiots keeps downvoting every single one of his comments, and they're all marked dead, and invisible.
- BenjiWiebe 2y ago
  Email hn@ycombinator.com. I wonder if abraxa's account tripped some spam filter or something. The mods should be able to help. Edit: I sent the email myself.
- genewitch 2y ago
  I think i figured it out and i blame my illness for my failing to realize... it's september. HN comments have been upside-down world for a few weeks now. I just assumed my brain was having slight issues with comprehension and understanding how i was presenting my ideas; while that may perhaps be part of it, i don't think it's the full story. I don't think i've used sigrok (or the other product mentioned around here), but i do have one of those usb oscopes and now i want to check it [sigrok] out. Whenever i see a bunch of people bellyaching about free software i gotta try it out - it usually ends up a permanent part of my toolkit. thanks for replying, and i hope the maintainer gets their comments undeaded.
ttshaw1 2y ago
Anyone tried both this and QCoDeS? We use QCoDeS in our lab after deciding Keysight's Labber wasn't tenable, and I'm curious how they compare.

170 points by _Microft 2y ago

Quite a useful tool! I was trying to build an IR remote converter and I wrote a custom protocol decoder for sigrok to help compare the incoming signal and what my code was producing. Very useful debugging tool. Quite powerful with the cheap salae knockoffs

hommelix 2y ago

Sigrok wiki is a great source to check for protocol documentation of measuring device.

unwind 2y ago

Wow, cool to see Sigrok here, I wonder if there was some particular "trigger" story or how that happened. Glad to think that there will be many "lucky 10,000" [1] today. I haven't used it in years, but I clicked back to the first devlist email I had, and it seems that was from 2010. Wow. It's really old and feels well established, a great success! No idea how live it is as an open source project, I have to check out the current status. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/

jdboyd 2y ago
They don't seem to be too interested in releases. Their git is sadly gitweb, which isn't something I love seeing, but the main parts appear to have activity this year.

jdboyd 2y ago

My experience using sigrok with cheap fx2 based logic analyzer hardware was great, and I heavily recommend it. My experience using it as a GUI for an oscilloscope was less impressive (it wasn't so interactive). The next time I need my oscilloscope, I want to take a few moments to try out https://www.ngscopeclient.org/ https://www.ngscopeclient.org/

enva2712 2y ago
this comment is a masterclass in advertising start relatable: “my experience” add reinforcing detail: works well with fx2 hw add negative experience: bad for analog logic introduce habit trigger: next time use ngscopeclient for analog logic
- ipdashc 2y ago
  I'm a bit confused, is the implication that they're shilling for ngscopeclient or something? It's not a paid product (neither is sigrok). They're not wrong either, Pulseview (sigrok) is great doesn't feel very designed for interactive use from the little bit I played with it.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    Either way it is great marketing. Maybe they just have a knack for it!
    - fluidcruft 2y ago
      Maybe they just use LLM to proof their comments. You too can sound like dismissible ad copy with this one simple trick!
      - jdboyd 2y ago
        I didn't use an LLM, but on rereading in the morning, I am cringing at "wasn't so interactive", so maybe I should have. There had to be a better way to put my complaint.
        actionfromafar 2y ago
        It's fine, we will all be suspected of being LLMs now. :)
human_llm 2y ago

Laksen 2y ago

Sigrok is awesome. The pulseview UI is pretty much perfect for configuring decoders The only downside is the stability issues (fast crash to desktop). Happens pretty much every time I use it. Still the best tool of its kind

abraxa 2y ago
PulseView shouldn't be crashing a lot at all, honestly. Were you running the nightly or the 0.4.2 release? The 0.4.2 release is rather outdated, I'm working on making a new release soon to fix that.
- Laksen 2y ago
  I tried some different versions and ended building from source. Currently on commit ls from the 14th of march The most consistently crashing behavior has been when trying to import or work with csv or vcd data (pure 0/1 data)

v1ne 2y ago

I don't know. My experience as a contributor to Sigrok was sad: I significantly improved a driver and wanted to upstream those changes, but was met with "well, the maintainer has little time, can you slice your changes into smaller pieces?", and honestly, after a months of doing that, waiting weeks for feedback, explaining things, I lost interest. Also, with time, I honestly don't remember some details of the changes beyond what's in the commit messages. I also found the style of the code quite antiquated, without any wish to change that. But that's my taste. So, in the end, my work on that driver felt wasted.

daghamm 2y ago
"can you slice your changes into smaller pieces?" You don't send a huge patch to a project as a first time contributor. I am sure sigrok would benefit from your improvements, but sometimes the maintainer has a busy life outside the project so you need to adapt to their pace, at least in the beginning.
- klysm 2y ago
  > You don't send a huge patch to a project as a first time contributor. Although that’s a good guideline, it’s not true in absolute terms. Sometimes the contribution is a big patch!
  - evv 2y ago
    And sometimes the best way to contribute is by forking. Depends on the situation for sure, but this encourages an acceleration by the maintainers of the original library. If they don't have the time to do so, they can comfortably ignore the fork.
    - giancarlostoro 2y ago
      On GitHub most PRs come from works though? Or do you mean make an entirely separate driver?
- xemdetia 2y ago

harvie 2y ago

I am still waiting for my driver to be merged :-( https://github.com/sigrokproject/libsigrok/pull/185 https://github.com/sigrokproject/libsigrok/pull/185

nezza-_- 2y ago

For me PulseView unfortunately has been very buggy and I never really got it to work (neither with an old Saleae 8, a new Saleae Pro 16, or an FX2 clone) well and without constant crashes. I tried on Linux & mac, but never could get it to run well. I'd be super curious to chat with someone who had a different experience on what you've been doing differently from me! I love the idea of Sigrok, so would love to get it to work (well) for me

abraxa 2y ago
PulseView shouldn't be crashing a lot at all, honestly. Were you running the nightly or the 0.4.2 release? The 0.4.2 release is rather outdated, I'm working on making a new release soon to fix that.
HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
Not my experience. I got a cheap Sparkfun logic analyzer on a whim and it sat idle until I had a work problem that I spent a lot of WFH time debugging with it using Pulseview. I later recommended that we buy a Saleae analyzer just in case the SF one was hiding a problem and I didn't find any substantive difference between the two.
- the_biot 2y ago
  It is my firm belief that everybody should have one of those $10 FX2 boards in their drawer, either for debugging some electronics board stuff (arduino and up), or just for learning about digital signalling. $10 and Pulseview is all you need!

night862 2y ago

Sigrok is a really valuable project. Thanks! The greatest issue I see is that this is a fairly niche field for open source software historically due to the difficulty of acquiring the actual logic analyzers for a personal or student lab at times. People in general see older projects as establish and will often guide their focus to their own greenfield interests. There are now a growing number of people entering this area of development however and more projects are being founded every month as availability and support for good-quality, stable hardware is increasing! This is an exciting time for open source analysis, and given the availability and maturity of older 24mhz logic analyzers, on-demand manufacturing and supporting protects (kicad) I expect this to continue. Hopefully sigrok takes on some new contributors who can engender even greater cooperation from this extremely relevant and exciting project!

mowfask 2y ago

Sigrok is amazing! The killer feature for me is sigrok-cli. With it you basically convert from electrical signal to Unix pipe. Super useful for running e.g. timing measurements and quick-and-dirty plotting. Or grepping through millions of signal transitions to pin down a nasty race condition.

godelski 2y ago

There's a lot of complaints here about how slow the project is and that it's single maintainer, but also how valuable and useful it is Is this a funding problem? Do we need to have the xz conversation again? I really do love OSS but we need to figure out something where valuable projects aren't just hobbies or side projects (not even a side hustle). With all this time can we not improve on our model? To get funding where it's needed? This is also a friendly reminder than most big tech companies will donation match, so maybe send $5 to a few of your favorite projects. You're making big money now, you can buy a few beers for you friend (and put a few on the company's dime).

the_biot 2y ago
> Is this a funding problem? No.
- godelski 2y ago
  Why?
abraxa 2y ago
Honestly, it's a general FOSS problem in my opinion. sigrok is rather niche and spans a wide skill set across the various sub-projects. We have C code for 8051 for fx2lafw, we have C code for libsigrok, C++ code for PulseView, C and python for libsigrokdecode, and so on. There are plenty of people who drop off patches and move on but finding people who are willing to stay and take ownership of something is a challenge. Money would only help insofar as it would allow me to buy hardware I could test drivers with. However, I don't have the space for such equipment and even a simple scope costs so much that it would probably eat up a year of donations. I appreciate your thoughtfulness, though. In the end, all I ask is for contributors to see things from the project's point of view and try to make things as easy as possible. I hope that more people will join our efforts once the project has more visible signs of life again.
- genewitch 2y ago
  Thank you for your commentary!

the_biot 2y ago

The current sigrok maintainer is trying to take part in this discussion (username abraxa), and is in general trying to reinvigorate the project. However, one or more of you idiots keeps downvoting every single one of his comments, and they're all marked dead, and invisible.

BenjiWiebe 2y ago
Email hn@ycombinator.com. I wonder if abraxa's account tripped some spam filter or something. The mods should be able to help. Edit: I sent the email myself.
genewitch 2y ago
I think i figured it out and i blame my illness for my failing to realize... it's september. HN comments have been upside-down world for a few weeks now. I just assumed my brain was having slight issues with comprehension and understanding how i was presenting my ideas; while that may perhaps be part of it, i don't think it's the full story. I don't think i've used sigrok (or the other product mentioned around here), but i do have one of those usb oscopes and now i want to check it [sigrok] out. Whenever i see a bunch of people bellyaching about free software i gotta try it out - it usually ends up a permanent part of my toolkit. thanks for replying, and i hope the maintainer gets their comments undeaded.

ttshaw1 2y ago

Anyone tried both this and QCoDeS? We use QCoDeS in our lab after deciding Keysight's Labber wasn't tenable, and I'm curious how they compare.