Tektronix MDO3COMP - Computer Serial Triggering and Analysis Module (RS-232/422/485/UART)
Serial triggering and analysis application modules
On a serial bus, a single signal often includes address, control, data, and clock information. This can make isolating events of interest difficult. The Serial Application modules for the MDO4000C, MDO3000, and MSO/DPO2000B Series transform the oscilloscope into a robust tool for debugging serial buses with automatic trigger, decode, and search for I2C, SPI, CAN, CAN FD, LIN, FlexRay, RS-232/422/485/UART, MIL-STD-1553, I2S/LJ/RJ/TDM, USB2, and Ethernet.
Serial triggering
Trigger on packet content such as start of packet, specific addresses, specific data content, unique identifiers, etc. on popular serial interfaces such as I2C, SPI, CAN, CAN FD, LIN, FlexRay, RS-232/422/485/UART, MIL-STD-1553, and I2S/LJ/RJ/TDM, USB2, and Ethernet
Bus display
Provides a higher-level, combined view of the individual signals (clock, data, chip enable, etc.) that make up your bus, making it easy to identify where packets begin and end and identifying sub-packet components such as address, data, identifier, CRC, etc.
Bus decoding
Tired of having to visually inspect the waveform to count clocks, determine if each bit is a 1 or a 0, combine bits into bytes, and determine the hex value? Let the oscilloscope with a Serial Application module do it for you! Once you’ve set up a bus, the oscilloscope will decode each packet on the bus, and display the value in hex, binary, decimal (LIN, MIL-STD-1553, and FlexRay, USB and Ethernet only), signed decimal (I2S/LJ/RJ/TDM only), or ASCII (RS-232/422/485/UART, USB and Ethernet only) in the bus waveform.
Event table
In addition to seeing decoded packet data on the bus waveform itself, you can view all captured packets in a tabular view much like you would see in a software listing. Packets are time stamped and listed consecutively with columns for each component (Address, Data, etc.).
Search Serial triggering is very useful for isolating the event of interest, but once you’ve captured it and need to analyze the surrounding data, what do you do? In the past, users had to manually scroll through the waveform counting and converting bits and looking for what caused the event. With a Serial Application module, you can enable the oscilloscope to automatically search through the acquired data for user-defined criteria including serial packet content. Each occurrence is highlighted by a search mark. Rapid navigation between marks is as simple as pressing the Previous (←) and Next (→) buttons on the oscilloscope front panel. The Search Mark table provides a tabular view of all events found during an automated search. The search mark data can be exported to a .csv file.