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Support Question of the Week: Monitor USB Traffic with Data Center Software
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Q: I am interested in sniffing USB traffic on my USB 2.0 device with the Beagle USB 480 Protocol Analyzer. I have a few questions about the capabilities of the Data Center Software that can be used with the Beagle USB 480 protocol analyzer. First, when monitoring data, does the transaction log show all of the data bytes in the summary view? Second, is it possible to export all the USB data transactions into CSV format? Thanks for your help!

A: Thanks for your question! The Data Center Software is Total Phase's award-winning software used by engineers to monitor USB, I2C, SPI, and CAN data with any of the Beagle protocol analyzers and Komodo interfaces. With the Beagle USB 480 protocol analyzer, you will be able to efficiently and effectively capture and analyze USB 2.0 data quickly on the Data Center Software.

Once the capture has started, data will display immediately in the Transaction Window of the software. There are several columns in the transaction window, which provide helpful information such as length of data (number of bytes) and timestamp of the transaction. There is also the data column, which provides a summary of the bytes in each data packet. This data column does have a limit for the number of bytes it can show.

Note the different columns of information presented in the Transaction Window

In order to view all of the USB data bytes in a certain transaction, take advantage of the Details Window feature in Data Center. The Details window provides lower level detailed information about a specific transaction. When monitoring USB traffic, the Details window will display all of the raw bytes of a data transaction. To view all of the raw bytes of a specific data transaction, click on that packet in the Transaction Window. Right click on the data in the Details window to switch data view to 8b/10b, hex, ASCII, binary, decimal, or octal format.

The Details Window is noted by the blue box.

 

The Details Window lists all of the bytes in the data transaction

Regarding your second question, it is definitely possible to export USB data transactions into CSV format. After your capture is complete, go to File > Export to export the data capture in a CSV format. Saving your capture in a CSV format, or as a Data Center file, allows for easy collaboration between you and your colleagues. If you are interested in saving only a smaller section of the capture, you can export a filtered view of the data.

Export your data capture as a CSV file and easily collaborate with your colleagues

We hope this answers your question about using the Data Center Software with your Beagle USB 480 analyzer to monitor USB 2.0 traffic! Feel free to contact us at sales@totalphase.com or support@totalphase.com.