5 General Monitoring

The default capture mode of all Beagle protocol analyzers is the general All tab. The displays in the All mode do not necessarily present the captured data in a protocol specific way nor does it provide any protocol specific means of filtering the data.

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5.1 General Displays

Transaction Window

Figure 27: All Transaction Window

The transaction window (Figure 27) displays all the transactions that were captured on a serial bus in real time. When a transaction is selected in the transaction window, detailed information about that transaction is displayed in the Detailed window.

The All transaction window displays all the raw data from the bus capture without any parsing. The transaction table provides the following information:

Index
The transaction index number. The beginning of the capture is considered index 0.

Time
The time that the transaction was captured. The time counter starts at 0 when a capture is started. Every time a new capture is started, the time is reset to zero.

The time is provided in the following format: min:sec.ms.µs. The timestamp of the transaction is displayed in nanosecond precision in the timing detailed view.

Duration (Dur)
The elapsed time that the transaction was in the bus. The duration value displayed is shown in an abridged format. The full duration to nanosecond precision is displayed in the timing detailed view.

Protocol (Prot)
The type of data that was captured. This can be either I2C, SPI or USB.

Length (Len)
The number of bytes in the transaction.

Error codes (Err)
Error codes listing abnormal conditions that occurred while capturing the transaction. See Table 1 for the possible error codes.

In addition, there are additional error code values specific to USB transactions, as listed in Table 2.

Data
The bytes in the transaction.

There are also additional protocol specific transaction windows which provide high level information about the data captured by parse the data. Specific information about these windows can be found in their respective sections in this manual.

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Delta Time and Data Payload Display

When moving the mouse over the transaction window, the transaction that the mouse pointer is over will be highlighted. The time difference between this transaction and the currently selected transaction will be displayed as “Delta time” in the status bar at the bottom of the application window. The time displayed will be the time difference between the start times of the two transactions. The summation of the Length (Len) field inclusively between the two selected transactions will be displayed as “Data payload” in the status bar next to the “Delta time”. Moreover, the calculated bandwidth between the selected transactions is also displayed after the “Data payload” in parenthesis.

The delta time and data payload will only be displayed when the two transactions are from the same capture session. So if you start then stop a capture, then start another capture, these statistics will only be displayed when both the selected transaction and the one the mouse is over are from the same capture session.

Detailed View

The Detailed view provides detailed information about a specific transaction. There are two viewing modes that are common to all protocols: Data and Timing. The way the data is displayed in these modes will depend on the protocol type of the data.

Additional protocol specific viewing modes may be available and are documented in their respective sections.

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Data Mode

The Data mode (Figure 28) provides a general hexadecimal and ASCII dump of the contents of the transaction. In the general All mode, no additional processing is performed, the entire contents of the transaction is displayed regardless of the protocol specific structure of the data.

The data is displayed in a standard hexdump format which includes:

Figure 28: All Details Window - Data Mode

Offset
The offset position of the first byte in a row in hexadecimal notation.

0 to F
Bytes 0 through 15 of the row in hexadecimal format.

ASCII
The bytes from the row displayed as ASCII characters. If the equivalent ASCII character is a non-printing character, a “.” is printed instead.

Please note that in the All mode:

• In the case of the I2C protocol, I2C data will appear as multiple bytes per position. This is to allow the proper encoding of the ACK/NACK bit.

• In the case of the SPI protocol, the data will also appear as multiple bytes. The first byte is the MOSI value and the second byte is the MISO value.

Please see the protocol specific sections later in this document for more details.

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Timing Mode

The Timing Mode (Figure 29) provides bit-level timing for the data of the transaction. Each byte of the transaction appears as a row in this mode. All the bytes from the transaction will be displayed in this mode, including start and stop conditions.

The first line of the table displays the transaction timestamp as well as the transaction duration, both to nanosecond precision.

Each row contains the following information:

Figure 29: All Details Window - Timing Mode

Offset
The offset position of the byte

Time
The time in nanoseconds from the start of the transaction to the start of the byte.

Value
The hexadecimal value of the byte.

Timing
A graphic display of each individual bit of a byte. Each bit is displayed as being either high or low with the time in nanoseconds from the start of the current bit to the start of the subsequent bit.

The lengths of the timing blocks in the graph are not drawn to scale and are intended merely to provide a hint to the relative time scale of one bit time to the next.

Please note that depending on the protocol, the bit order may be MSB or LSB. You can determine the bit order by looking at the column label. The text in the label will indicate if the data is MSB (b7…b0) or LSB (b0…b7).

In the case of the I2C protocol, the timing mode displays 9 bits per line. The ninth bit is the ACK/NACK bit.

In the case of the SPI protocol, the timing mode displays both MOSI and MISO. The MOSI line is displayed in red and the MISO line is blue.

Please see the protocol specific sections later in this document for more details.

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5.2 Filtering Captured Data

The general set of filters available (Figure 30) for the All transaction window includes:

Figure 30: All Filters Palette

Minimum index

An integer number that filters the transactions based on a minimum index number. If the user enters 8, then all transactions with an index number greater than or equal to 8 are included in the transaction window.

Maximum index

An integer number that filters the transactions based on a maximum index number. If the user enters 200, then a transaction with an index number less than or equal to 200 will be included in the transaction window.

Minimum length

An integer number that filters the transactions based on a minimum length. If the user enters 8, then a transaction must be of length greater than or equal to 8 bytes in length in order to be included in the transaction window.

Maximum length

An integer number that filters the transactions based on a maximum length. If the user enters 200, then a transaction must be less than or equal to 200 bytes in length in order to be included in the transaction window.

Minimum duration

An integer number that filters the transactions based on a minimum transaction duration in nanoseconds. If the user enters 8000, then a transaction’s duration must be greater than or equal to 8 microseconds in order to be included in the transaction window.

Maximum duration

An integer number that filters the transactions based on a maximum transaction duration in nanoseconds. If the user enters 20000, then a transaction’s duration must be less than or equal to 20 microseconds in order to be included in the transaction window.

Data pattern

A data pattern that filters the transactions based on the data contained in the transaction. The given data pattern must match all of the data in the transaction in order for the transaction to be included in the transaction window.

Please note that this filter may affect the performance of the application during a capture. Therefore, it may be necessary to wait until the capture is complete to use the data pattern filter.

Syntax
The syntax of the data pattern is byte values in hexadecimal format with spaces separating each byte. In addition, there are two other values that can be included in the data pattern.

Because the data pattern filter must match all of the data in a transaction, the wildcard and placeholder values give the user more options when specifying a data pattern. If the pattern begins and ends with an asterisk, then the filter will search for the data pattern anywhere in the transaction’s data. If there is no asterisk at the beginning of the data pattern, then the filter will search for the given pattern only at the beginning of the transaction data. Conversely, if there is no asterisk at the end of the data pattern, then the end of the transaction data must match the data pattern. See Table 4 for examples of data patterns.

Show collapsed

For USB traffic, common packet groups (such as SOF, IN/NAK, and PING/NAK) are collected into a single transaction called a collapsed transaction. When Show collapsed is checked, the transaction window will display all the collapsed transactions with the type and number of packets. When this option is not checked, these entries will not appear in the transaction window.

By default, collapsed packets are displayed.

Show info

When checked, the transaction window will display all the informational packets about when the captures were started, when they were stopped and other associated information. Otherwise, these entries will not appear in the transaction window.

By default, information packets are displayed.

Protocol

Filter the transaction based on the protocol type of the transaction. The transaction must be of a type that is selected in the filter in order to be included in the transaction window.