Generic Serial Tap: Grey colored bytes in Hex view

Hi,

I am using a generic serial tap. Sometimes I see some bytes which are colored grey. Why are they colored differently? I couldn't find a description about this behavior.

Best Regards,
Shun

Shun,

By default, IO Ninja merges all blocks of the same data stream together (TX to TX, RX to RX) and highlights merged block boundaries using this grey-white checker pattern. You can turn off this highlighting and configure other details of the merging strategy here:

From your screenshot, I can see that (1) data arrives one byte at a time and (2) not all RX blocks are merged together.

(2) means that you modified the merging strategy (e.g. set to a 20ms threshold or something like that)

(1) most likely, it's caused by the custom buffering rules (e.g. the read block size is set to 1 byte). Unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise, it's recommended to use default buffer sizes.

Dear Vladimir,

thank you very much for your hint! I totally missed the check box "Highlight merged....". I concluded that the strange behaviour where I received data 1 byte each was because of an USB-UART adapter I used.

Just out of curiosity... Is it possible to get the "merged" data when I write a custom protocol analyzer?

@schunsky

Is it possible to get the "merged" data when I write a custom protocol analyzer?

This merging strategy is a part of the logging engine, so yes, it applies to all kinds of plugins, including custom protocol analyzers.

I concluded that the strange behaviour where I received data 1 byte each was because of an USB-UART adapter I used.

Hmm, a particular model of USB-to-UART is unlikely to cause this one-byte-at-a-time behavior. My guess is that the buffering settings are to blame (i.e., IO Ninja reads into a one-byte buffer). Check the "Buffering & compatibility" section in properties and try resetting it all to defaults.