I wonder if there’s a way to lock the zoom level at the bottom right corner to a constant value e.g. 1s. This value always changes when finishing a capture and has to be re-entered again, which is a little frustrating.
It would be also cool if an automatic name is suggested when a new analyzer is added. e.g when adding an Async Serial analyzer, the suggested name could be
‘< channel name > (< baud >)’ instead of just ‘Async Serial’.
And finally it would be helpful if the order of added analyzers can be re-arranged.
@vpapanik Glad to hear you’re liking the software!
I wonder if there’s a way to lock the zoom level at the bottom right corner to a constant value e.g. 1s. This value always changes when finishing a capture and has to be re-entered again, which is a little frustrating.
This is certainly a software behavior we need to polish up. What kind of zoom level are you setting, and how long is the capture you are taking? The zoom level will stay the same as long as the previously set zoom level is still valid for the resulting capture length. This is because the zoom level cannot be set to a value that causes the capture to not fill the entire capture window. If the resulting capture is too short for the zoom level, the zoom setting will adjust accordingly. We should take a look at this again since I understand that this can be frustrating to work with.
It would be also cool if an automatic name is suggested when a new analyzer is added. e.g when adding an Async Serial analyzer, the suggested name could be
‘< channel name > (< baud >)’ instead of just ‘Async Serial’.
…
And finally it would be helpful if the order of added analyzers can be re-arranged.
These are great ideas! I don’t think anyone has suggested this yet. I’ll get this posted on our ideas site below so we can start tracking other users who might be interested in it: https://ideas.saleae.com/
Fixed zoom: I’m with @vpapanik on this. If I’ve set a zoom using the zoom popup menu I’d like to keep it until I either clear it in the popup or zoom with the scroll wheel.
There is an exception however. I’d like to be able to set a default zoom that is used when I start collecting data.
Analyzer names: I almost always rename analyzers to match the input name the analyzer is associated with. For multiple input analyzers that may mean looking for common prefixes or suffixes for data inputs for example. Personally, the baud rate isn’t an important part of an analyzer name but keeping names short is important.
@vpapanik@P.Jaquiery I’d like to get some more input from you on locking the zoom level. We were considering a preference option to “lock” the zoom and would like your feedback below.
Some backround on the way our zoom works now…
Right now, the main reason that the zoom level changes from capture to capture is due to the restriction that we don’t allow empty space in the capture once it’s complete (image below of what I mean).
Once the capture is complete, the capture will zoom in such that the empty space disappears. As such, if the previous zoom level doesn’t allow for this, the zoom will in fact change.
During a live capture, we do allow for empty space. Specifically, we allow users to zoom out to either of the following, whichever is greater:
a full range of 60s (like shown in the image above), or…
around 5x the length of the current recording, like in the image below
Allowing the zoom to be locked would require us to allow empty space in the resulting capture. We definitely need to cap this as we wouldn’t want users to infinitely zoom out and potentially lose their data in the process. Perhaps if we offered a zoom locking option, an easy implementation might be to restrict the maximum zoom out level in the same we we do above for live captures (i.e. cap it at 60s or 5x the resulting length of the capture).
Would something like this work out for you? Let us know if you have other ideas as well!
I don’t think that “lose the data” is an issue if the start of the data is pinned to the left edge of the display area when there is empty space to the right. Doing something special to constrain zoom is not an issue that really needs to be solved.
The more displaying live data and captured data can be made the same the easier it is to write correct drawing code and the easier it is for users to understand what is going on. That implies empty space at the end of the capture is OK, and further implies zooming in and scrolling during capture is OK! Actually making that work under the hood requires the data buffering and the processing pipeline be set with those processes in mind, and gets a bit fussy (our flagship software faces the same challenge).
Yes, that should work fine. I just need the zoom level to stay the same when capture ends. I usually set one-second zoom and do a few long captures over and over, so it is just annoying when I have to retype 1s in the right bottom corner every time.
The zoom really does need some work. On an oscilloscope, the scope will NEVER change the zoom without your input. In Logic, it does it all the time. It’s a huge frustration and a giant time sink.
As P.Jaquiery says, “Doing something special to constrain zoom is not an issue that really needs to be solved.”
