This project was used with the Saleae logic analyzer software to decode and recreate the raw data captured from the logic analyzer.
The equipment under test (EUT) stored its filesystem on a NAND flash chip and when the hardware booted up, the contents from the NAND flash were read from the chip. The flash chip used the Open NAND Flash Interface. (NOTE: We looked at this a few years ago and I don't remember which specification version we referenced.) We used the logic analyzer to capture the signal of the 8-bit bus (i.e., 8 wires carrying data) plus the WriteEnable and ReadEnable lines. Since we were only concerned with capturing the data read from the NAND flash, this plugin ignores the WriteEnable line.
Once we captured the data and ran this plugin to interpret the reads and each bit, we export the data to a file for further processing.
Because the logical analyzer is capturing all hardware level communications, you'll also capture the Error Correction Codes. This plugin doesn't remove or deal with the ECC data after each read. A simple python script can take care of that and I can't for the life of me find the script we used.
The Saleae Analyzer SDK is used to create custom plugins for the Saleae Logic software. These plugins are used to decode protocol data from captured waveforms.
The libraries required to build a custom analyzer are stored in another git repository, located here: https://github.com/saleae/AnalyzerSDK
This repository should be used to create new analyzers for the Saleae software.
First, fork, clone or download this repository. Forking is recommended if you plan to use version control or share your custom analyzer publicly.
Note - This repository contains a submodule. Be sure to include submodules when cloning, for example git clone --recursive https://github.com/saleae/SampleAnalyzer.git. If you download the repository from Github, the submodules are not included. In that case you will also need to download the AnalyzerSDK repository linked above and place the AnalyzerSDK folder inside of the SampleAnalyzer folder.
Note: an additional submodule is used for debugging on Windows, see section on Windows debugging for more information.
Once downloaded, first run the script rename_analyzer.py. This script is used to rename the sample analyzer automatically. Specifically, it changes the class names in the source code, it changes the text name that will be displayed once the custom analyzer has been loaded into the Saleae Logic software, and it updates the visual studio project.
There are two names you need to provide to rename_analyzer. The first is the class name. For instance, if you are developing a SPI analyzer, the class names would be SPIAnalyzer, SPIAnalyzerResults, SPIAnalyzerSettings, etc. The file names would be similar, like SPIAnalyzer.cpp, etc.
All analyzer classes should end with "Analyzer," so the rename script will add that for you. In the first prompt after starting the script, enter "SPI". The analyzer suffix will be added for you. This needs to be a valid C++ class name - no spaces, it can't start with a number, etc.
Second, the script will prompt you for the display name. This will appear in the software in the list of analyzers after the plugin has loaded. This string can have spaces, since it will always be treated as a string, and not as the name of a class.
After that, the script will complete the renaming process and exit.
python rename_analyzer.py
SPI
Mark's SPI Analyzer
To build on Windows, open the visual studio project in the Visual Studio folder, and build. The Visual Studio solution has configurations for 32 bit and 64 bit builds. You will likely need to switch the configuration to 64 bit and build that in order to get the analyzer to load in the Windows software.
To build on Linux or OSX, run the build_analyzer.py script. The compiled libraries can be found in the newly created debug and release folders.
python build_analyzer.py
To debug on Windows, please first review the section titled Debugging an Analyzer with Visual Studio in the included doc/Analyzer SDK Setup.md document.
Unfortunately, debugging is limited on Windows to using an older copy of the Saleae Logic software that does not support the latest hardware devices. Details are included in the above document.