Op deze pagina vindt u gebruikerservaringen van onze klanten over de Zeroplus USB logic analyzers. De reviews zijn geheel onafhankelijk geschreven en niet door ons aangepast. De ervaringen zijn weliswaar in het engels geschreven zodat deze ook op de internationale website van Zeroplus gepubliceerd kunnen worden, maar ze zijn allemaal afkomstig van onze nederlandse klanten.
This is a brief review of my experiences with the Zeroplus Logic Cube Lap-C 16032 |
| Review ZeroPlus Logic cube Lap-c(128) I needed a logic analyser and a friend of mine told me that the Zeroplus was a very good value for money analyser. So I did go to www.eleshop.nl and did order one. Beside the Lap-c(128) I also did order some longer connection cables, because the ones that are supplied are to short to use. After a few days the packages arrived and I opened th box. All did look well and even the box looks professional. Inside was the Lap-c, a nice carrying bag, the cables and connectors, and the software. After installing the software I could not wait to try it. At first I did use the unit on a windows 7 machine and because the big computer is hard to move I also did install it on my laptop ( windows xp). Without any problems the installation was a piece of cake. Put in the cd and after running setup all was ok without any problems. Then I got a message that there was a new version for the software and I did downloadand installed it. I have a project that I had to reverse engineer. A controller pcb send rs485 data to a slave and I had to know what codes he did send. So I ordered ten extra protocol’s for 75Euro and did try to download and install the software. The EleShop, where I did buy it, did send me the money back and they told me that I could download 30 protocols for free from the zeroplus website. Thanks for that, great service! The downloading and installation of the protocols was at start not so easy. I did not know what I did wrong at first it did not work. But after a good reading of the help file I managed to get the protocols . I did unzip them and install them and after giving in the serial number that you get when you download the protocol. It worked great. A few weeks ago I did try to figure out the data that was send to the rs485 slave with a digital scoop. It was very hard and took me a lot of time. Now with the zeroplus. It was very easy. I did hook it on to the send and receive date connections of the MAX485 and beside showing me how the data did look, he also gave me the complete data code that was send in HEX. So in 5 minutes I did know more then in a few evenings without the zeroplus. I also did use it to scan the Canbus codes of a car. There was a error in the lightning of the car and by analysinf the data I could see that there was a error message from one of the canbus interfaces that controls the lights. Most of the men never read a manual, and I am one of them. But even without the manual it took me only half a hour to figure out how the analyser did work. So the interface is easy to use. I did like the zeroplus so much that i was very enthusiastic to my friends. One of them did hear my story and did order one for himself. So everything I wanted to have in a logic analyser it has and on this moment I don’t know what I would have for extra futures. It is relative cheap, and does all I needed. Best regards, a happy Lap-c user. |
| ZeroPlus LA Our company makes amongst others prototype electronics. It is a mix of analogue and digital technologies. We use 8 to 32 bit micro controllers and FPGA's. Those electronics are interfaced with a multitude of buses. Many are standard serial like SPI, I2C, I2S or UART. Others are parallel like synchronous or asynchronous RAM buses. Then there are the special signals like encoders, pwm or lvds. Many times those signals need no debugging and just work "out-of-the-box". A long time we just did with our digital scope to find the issues in the logic. But the more complex the interactions become the more constraints come forward from the scope. Time for a logic analyser. Then the hunt begins for a simple, cost effective but capable LA. From previous experience I did not like the closed systems that integrate the capture hardware and the data processing and set-up. You end up with a tedious and difficult to handle GUI at best. And every time one needs that one special function or trigger it is nowhere to be found. Then there are the obvious issues when one wants to store a capture for later reference. So a separate capture unit and software on a PC/Laptop it must be. After browsing the internet a few (and only a few) candidates came up. A local distributor had a Zeroplus LAP-C 16128 LA on stock for a great price. So it was in house a few days later. It comes in a nice carry case where all parts fit nicely. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many clip probes included. Connecting everything up is easy because of the clear markings on the device and the colour coding. Installing the software was easy too. Important for me is that the software can be installed on multiple PC/laptops. Depending where I have to measure I can just use the PC/laptop nearby, plug in the LAP-C, fire up the software, and you are good to go. The software is easy and intuitive to use. Even without reading the manual. Only when you need the advanced stuff the manual is mandatory. The software is clearly developed with a mouse in mind. It is sometimes hard to use the keyboard effectively. Also it is tricky to drag the A and B cursors without loosing them on the way. Loading and saving a capture is easy, but there is no easy way to compare two separate captures. The hardware just works, nothing much to say about that. A broad range of trigger levels and high voltage input protection up to 30V makes this thing almost bullet proof. A minor nag is the rigidity of the connecting wires, if you have a small PCB just laying on your bench the wires will pull it off if you are not careful. The LA saved the day on multiple occasions where I had difficult to understand problems. One time the SPI interface from a uP to a slave device would refuse to go over 12MHz while the specification clearly stated 20MHz. The LA showed the culprit to be a bug in the uP SPI hardware where the sample point was one uP clock late in relation to the SPI clock flank. An other time I had to find a bug in a RS485 bus system with multiple uP's connected together. Once in a while on slave took the bus too early, corrupting other packets. Software debugging took a few days already without finding the cause. The advanced trigger in the LAP-C found the issue in a few minutes. Pro's: Good price / performance. Compact. Self powered from USB. Easy to use software. Wide trigger range. Protected inputs. Adequate buffer (even 128KB). Data compression. Con's: Rigid wires. Capture speed (200MHz) too low for modern designs. Input capacitance a bit high for high speed signals. Software too mouse oriented. ZeroPlus stickers on the device loosen too easily. Would I buy it again? Yes, without hesitation. |
I am an almost daily-user of the zeroplus Logic Analyzer (LAP-C 16032) I first had my doubts about this product because it was priced fairly low compared to other logic analyzers of the same class. A quick look to the demo-software helped me to take the decision. |
| I am an electronics with has build several project using mainly Microchip PIC's as the uP. |
I think Zeroplus has done a Great job engineering this logic analyzer. The way I look at it, they managed to implement a lot of features in an small and easy to use device which does its job as you might expect from a device in this price range. |
| A while ago I bought the LAP-C 16032 logic analyzer for a school project. It is very useful once you get involved with serial protocols. So far I just used it for the SPI and I2C protocols but I could have never got my projects working without this logic analyser. If you can’t see what is happening you can’t debug your program. Serial protocols are being used more and more. If you want to control a colour display you need a serial protocol. If you want to use memory of any kind, you need a serial protocol. If you want to use shift registers, you need a serial protocol. Using the serial analyser you can for instance see if a device gives an acknowledge. Then you know it responses to you. If it doesn’t responses to you there is something wrong in your code. You can fix it. |
I was working on a project with rs232 codes and it did not get to work. |
| For a project we are working on, an audio subsystem that is being developed on an FPGA development board, we get to work with a number of peripherals. These peripherals vary from simple communication protocols like UART and I2C to more complex audio protocols like SPDIF. Usually when we're developing and testing drivers for these applications it remains a mystery what exactly happens on a physical level. So whenever something does not work as expected right away, it is usually a matter of trial and error to get things working as the logic analyzers that are available are scarce and cumbersome to work with. Using a Zeroplus logic cube gives us an affordable and practical means of getting direct insight in what is happening on the bus. It has helped us tremendously to speed up the driver development, find any issues encountered, and also get insight in protocols thanks to the protocol analyzer software. Particularly for a protocol like SPDIF the protocol analyzer proves to be very useful, because SPDIF uses biphase mark channel coding and it does not have a separate clock line that can be used as reference. And we use the logic cube for more than just the protocols we’re working on: since the Zeroplus logic cube has so many channels, we hook up the unused wires to GPIO pins we have in our system and use these for profiling the software. This is a very simple but effective way to see, for instance, when interrupts are triggered, how much time they actually need, when semaphores are gotten or freed. It is also very convenient that the results can be easily copied and pasted into documents and emails. I would definitely recommend the purchase of a Zeroplus logic cube to anyone whose daily tasks involve working with any type of low to medium speed peripheral. |
| The logic analyzer is one of my best purchases so far. It is certainly not too expensive and is very useful for a hobbyist in electronics as I am, but also for the professional electronics it is an indispensable tool. I was recently asked to create a DMX transmitter(DMX is a protocol used to control light effects on stages). I have studied the protocol and written some code for the microcontroller in the dmx transmitter. Because the code didn’t immediately worked, I used the logic analyzer to see what the dmx transmitter was transmitting. After a few milliseconds of monitoring the bus, the problem was found quickly. The software of the analyzer examinates the data and tells you what the data means. For example, in the DMX protocol there is a “brake”, “mark after brake”, “info”,… and the program gives the right name to the right piece of data. Through this I noticed that the time of the brake wasn’t long enough. A few adjustments to the code and everything worked like it should be. I have chosen this analyzer because it supports all the protocols that I frequently use like I²C,SPI,one wire and DMX. The logic analyzer supports many more protocols, so if I have to make another project in the future, with another protocol, I’m sure I can use my logic analyzer to debug the project if there are problems. The software is very user friendly. Like most electronics I only read the manual when a device is not working after 2 days of trying. But this was not the case with the logic analyzer, it was very easy to use. So far I didn’t have to read the manual. In no time, everything is ready to analyze a certain protocol. It is also very easy to find a certain data-package in al long string of data due to a very easy search engine. I didn’t find any negative points so far. The logic analyzer is highly recommended for any electronics because it saves you a lot of time debugging . Dries Hulens – Student Master in electronics-ICT |
| 1. Product
Zeroplus Logic Analyzer(PC_Based) Model No : LAP-C(16128) 2. The first impression The first impression that the Logic Cube gave when I saw it. The outside of the analyzer is small and elegant, everything nicely placed. At the top of the device we find the status lights and start button, on one side is the USB connector for connection to the PC and on the other side there are all the pins for the signal connection. 3. The signal probes To connect the signal to the device there are 2 options: First option is to connect the wire to a test pin on the tested board. This is a very useful way to connect to the board we want to test but not always possible that’s why there is an second way to connect the wires, this is with the probes. Very useful when connecting to an connector or IC. I think that the way of connecting to the device is very handful. 4. The LAP-C software The general impression of the software is very good because it’s completely structured in a practical way. The controls are nicely grouped in the menu’s and what is meant with it is also very clear. The layout of the signal lines is in color and makes it simpler to see the difference between the signal lines. it’s also interesting that there are different ways of analyzing. The 16128 is an analyzer with 2 ports for analyzing (A and B) with each 8 signal lines. When measuring a signal we can trigger on different styles for each channel. This makes it very interesting because not all signals need the same triggering. Labeling of the signals is also possible and useful for later. Because you know then about which signal you’re talking. Also handful when making a printout of your analyzed signal. The software also supports the use of 2 screens with the possibility of viewing on one screen or on the two screens. |