Ok, you’ve completed your latest logic circuit design and now what? Well, you’ll probably want to build a prototype to test its operation. A common logic probe is more than enough, if the circuit is not complex; otherwise, you’ll require one or more complex driving signals to exercises its operation, then you need a more powerful testing tool here!

No matter you’re home hobbyists or experimenters, you might want to build the super cool Mini Logic Analyzer. This Mini Logic Analyzer is a simple and cheap logic analyzer, where it has up to 32 channels, 128Kb of memory for each channel, sampling rate up to 100 MHz, external clock input, external trigger input and much more.

The mini logic analyzer consists of a hardware, software and firmware interface. The interface will buffer the signals that are sent from the computer’s parallel port to the circuit to be tested. Beside that, it buffers the signals that are returned from the circuit to the computer and shifts their voltage levels, where it to make it compatible with the PC’s logic levels.

The analyzer incorporates two basic functional blocks, where as:

1. A transistor buffer or inverter section; and
2. An analog switch section that feeds voltage comparators.

This mini logic analyzer also has a LED tester, where it is a simple firmware created in order to test the functionality of mini logic analyzer hardware!

Most of you must have heard about logic analyzer before, but have you ever built a FPGA-based Logic Analyzer?

If you don’t know what the FPGA is, then you need to stick with us and read on the article. For your information, a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is a semiconductor device that can be configured by the customer or designer after manufacturing, and that’s why it got the name “field-programmable.” To program an FPGA, you will need to specify how you want the chip to work with a logic circuit diagram or a source code in a hardware description language (HDL) first.

The FPGAs can be a very useful electronic component for implementing any logical function that an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) could perform. Furthermore, FPGAs contain programmable logic components called “logic blocks”, and a hierarchy of reconfigurable interconnects that allow the block to be wired together without any hassle at all. Logic block can be configured to perform complex combinational functions too!

Therefore, when you applied the FPGA into the logic analyzer, it would turn into a powerful tool that will benefit you in the end. What are you waiting for? Let get into the project and start the fun right now!

Are you felt it’s a troublesome to separate all the data acquisition, signal generation and so on into different tasks? Then, would you wish to have a super machine that can handle all those tasks and give you a relief?

If you do, it’s about time to check out this COMA tool. First of all, don’t misunderstood about the COMA word, as it’s an acronym for “Calculator Oscilloscope Multimeter Analyzer” or you can simply say that it’s a combination of four different components into one super cool tool!

Well, it might sound a little bit out of sense, but soon after you’ve tested its features, you’ll be amazed by its capable of performing multiple tasks in one tool.

Some of the main features of this COMA are:

• Two channels, 8 bit 16MSPS Oscilloscope
• FFT on acquired data
• Eight Channel Logic Analyzer
• Signal Generator
• Frequency Generator
• Multimeter
• Volmeter
• Ammeter
• Ohmeter
• L/C Meter
• Logic Probe
• Transistor Check
• Calculator

The great part about this COMA is it can be produced in a very low cost and the capabilities of the PIC32 are being maximized. In overall, this is the idea tool for all the home hobbyists!

How well do you think you’re known about the Logic Analyzer? For your information, logic analyzer is an electronic instrument, where it can be used to display signals in a digital circuit that are too fast to be observed and presents it to a user. As a result, the user can be more easily checked for correct operation of the digital system.

Beside that, logic analyzers are generally being used for capturing data in system, which have too many channels to be examined with an oscilloscope. The software running on the logic analyzer can easily convert the captured data into many forms, such as timing diagrams, protocol decodes, state machine traces, assembly language or any correlate assembly with source-level software!

Guys, let’s meet the “Scanalogic”, where it’s a simple and effective logic analyzer that specially designed to be easily built by all users, no matter you a newbie or expert! Regards of its simplicity, it can be used for debugging and analyzing in many projects.

This little thing is a very powerful buddy, where it can be used at sampling rates as high as 4 Million samples per second! Although it has only four channels, but it’s more than enough as you didn’t even use up to four channels in onetime.

How often do you involve yourself with AVR logic analyzer? Or, would you interested to develop a simple and powerful AVR logic analyzer for your own use?

Well, then you must take a seat first, as you’re about to going into the journey of AVR logic analyzer. This project is uses ATmega168 microcontrollers, where the microcontroller will use its pin change interrupt, so it can detect a change in logic level on any of the six pins.

So, if the pins detect a change, the value is to be stored in a 1000 byte buffer. If the serial port is not that busy, then it will send the data to the computer is a FIFO (first in first out) fashion.

Furthermore, the computer can be changed the interrupt mask register to enable or disable changes triggering a particular pin. Since the firmware is well written in AVR-GCC with AVR Studio, hence, it can be modified and applied on any microcontroller with hardware UART and pin change interrupts.

Since this is a very simple and easy to develop project, thus you don’t need to buy too fancy components for it. An ATMega168, a 16MHZ clock source and a reset button is more than enough here!