Hi!
I am using the Saleae MSO with the Python API to perform automated timing measurements on some digital lines. Since I need trigger support I use the analog inputs (which limits me to the 4 lines). Checking the other threads I have seen mentions of plans to implement triggers on the digital inputs too.
Is there any official timeline/plans for when the digital triggers will/should be implemented in the Pyhton API library?
Also, is there a timeline for the support of separated device setup/capture start functionality?
Thanks and BR
Hi @andrej.nussdorfer,
Thanks for writing in, and I’m sorry this isn’t already available!
Good digital trigger automation support is held up by another project that we’re getting started on soon. Specifically, the approach we’re using today to managing captures for Logic MSO isn’t well suited for many API operations, and this is because it was originally designed around interactive analog capturing (where changing any view state parameter changes the hardware acquisition settings, and the acquisition is interrupted while these changes are taking place.) This approach isn’t well suited for coordination between channels and other systems, and is causing a few bugs in the software today, mainly with timer mode captures and single-shot captures. These issues are worse for the API, where it’s a bigger problem not to have perfect repeatability and reliability.
We’re starting on the overhaul for this soon. I don’t have an ETA for it yet though. Internally, we’re aiming to get this working over the next 3 months, but I’m not confident enough yet to make a public commitment. We have a lot we’re trying to pack into that time (not just this project).
Feel free to check back for updates. Also if you don’t mind, could you share the automation flow you would like to have? e.g. how our products fit into your application, and the details of the capture you’re trying to get.
Hi! Thanks for the quick reply and sorry for my late response…
Our workflow is rather simple. We have a device with a complex state machine and some tight timing requirements. We can configure pins to signal state transitions and use the pin toggles to verify the timing.
We do this by setting the trigger to a suitable pin and then run synthetic triggers across the relevant captured channel data to extract the events we are interested in. The idea is to have the test setup somewhere out of the way with all the measuring channels connected. The various tests would then configure which channels to use for measurement with manual interaction needed.
For now we make do with the 4 analog channels, but we would be could use the higher number of digital channels.
Also, to trigger the state changes we need to interact with the device. Running the capture in a separate thread is trivial, but the synchronization is a bit of an inconvenience. The capture function takes ~5s to start acquisition. As a workaround we set a longish capture timeout, but having a proper init->configure->capture flow would be much more convenient.
Thanks again and best regards!