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Can I Monitor SPI Traffic with the Level Shifter Board as a Pass-Through?
Rena Ayeras

Image by Geralt

Question from the Customer:

I am testing an SPI device and would like to capture the SPI traffic through a pass-through. From looking at your tools, the Level Shifter Board seems like it could work for this purpose.

For my setup, I will connect an SPI master device to the Adapter port and the SPI slave device to the Target port on the Level Shifter Board. Then, I will  use the Beagle I2C/SPI Protocol Analyzer to monitor the SPI traffic, but I do not want to perform any level shifting. Both the master device and the slave device use 3.3v signals.

Is it possible to use your Level Shifter Board as a pass-through without signal level changes?

Response from Technical Support:

Thank you for your question! Yes, this is possible to create a pass-through to monitor SPI traffic. While the Level Shifter Board is typically used to shift signals to lower logic levels, it can also be configured to pass signal through without level translation. For example, you can obtain 3.3V by selecting the 3.3V jumper on the Level Shifter Board as shown below.

A picture of the level shifter board that highlights where to place a jumper for 3.3V signal level

The functional difference is that the "Target Power" will be at 3.3V as opposed to 5V, but this is otherwise  equivalent for the signaling levels.

Here is a video that shows how to set up and use the Level Shifter Board:

We hope this answers your questions. Additional resources that you may find helpful include the following:

If you want more information, feel free to contact us with your questions, or request a demo that applies to your application.