Display Setting Hex View

Before I received my new IO NINJA Serial Tap I was using the capture software with a regular common serial port in the evaluation mode and I really like the default Hex display mode as shown in the this next picture.

But now that I've received the Serial Tap, the display is not what I expected using it as the capture device and I can't seem to find out why. It probably has to do with the sample rate since many of the characters are duplicated in fractions of a second. I've pretty much kept the default setting during both captures and have compared the settings but I can't find anything that I can change in the IO NINJA Serial tap capture session that would change it to look like the common serial port capture. Here's what am seeing that I don't like.

I really hope that I didn't pay $235 bucks for something that I really can't use and I could have only paid $35 for the regular software and the common serial port capture option. Is there any setting that I can use to slow down the capture with Serial Tap so that the Hex display looks more like the common serial port Hex Display.

Thanks,
Tom

Hi Tom,

From the second screenshot, it's quite apparent that the incoming and outbound data are byte-to-byte the same. Most likely, you incorrectly wired it so that the same data is being fed to both the TX and RX connectors of the Serial Tap. Could you please share the wiring diagram (or a photo of how you connect your Tap)?

Also, are you sure about the correctness of your serial settings? The { 7 data bits + 2 stop bits } combo is much less common than { 8 data bits and 1 stop bits }.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! It was indeed the fact that I had several other devices in the loop and the Serial_Tap was placed in a way that the looped back receive data was going through it. The standard COM4 serial port was only seeing the transmit data. Once I removed the loopback, Serial_Tap then showed the same Hex display output as the serial COM4 port. When I get a chance later this afternoon I will produce a diagram of what my configuration was and then will be. Thank you again! Well worth the $235 bucks and now I probably will need to shell out the $35 for the standard serial com port capture option in the software. It's exactly what I was looking for.

Starting from left to right, the Fireberd 6000A puts out the "Quick Brown Fox" test stream and expects a loopback of the data sent. The Adtran DSU III TDM (two devices in the middle) doesn't really care how the data is formatted as long as it is sent at the correct baud rate and async. In this case it's 2400 baud. The DTech RS232 splitter is kind of a weird device. It has one input port and four output ports but if any of the four split ports responds, like a loopback, the data is only sent back to the input port which of course the IO Ninja Serial Tap received since it was connected inline. The return data is not sent to any of the other four ports so port 1, which is a standard serial com4 port, only sees the incoming data from the input port and not the loopback data which is sent back out of the "input" port. In the future I'll just hook up the IO Ninja to one of the splitter ports so that it doesn't see both TXD and RXD traffic.

Now for the Fireberd, it too is also a kind of weird device when it comes to the "Quick Brown Fox" test. If you hook up the output port of the Firebird directly to a standard serial port on a computer and run putty with the data format of 8,N,1 (any baud rate) the data is off and you can't read the incoming data stream which is "The Quick Brown Fox jumped over the lazy dog 0123456789". If you change the data format to 7,N,2 (any baud rate) on both sides you can then read the test message correctly. Hope that answers your question.

Now one more question please. In the Hex display I have plenty of display real estate left when running the capture and I would like to show more hex information and more of the test stream (all of it if possible) on one line. Is there a way to increase the number of hex bytes and translation to ASCII in order to show more data on one line?

Thanks,
Tom

Re 7bits vs 8bits -- understood. Alright, so 2400/7/N/2 it is!

Is there a way to increase the number of hex bytes and translation to ASCII in order to show more data on one line?

Absolutely. IO Ninja is highly configurable in what concerns binary data display. You can increase the number of bytes per hex-view line -- or maybe try the Plain-text view. This could actually work even better in your case because you don't have any unprintable characters except for CR/LF.

All this can be configured on the Settings screen:

Switching between hex-view and plain-text can also be done from the main app window:

That works perfect!

Last question. I think I do want to capture from a standard serial com port on the pc as well as the Serial Tap. Which software option do I need to purchase in order to keep this functionality after the evaluation time expires?

Thanks,
Tom

Glad to hear the binary data settings worked for you! Although I can't see the screenshot this time...

Regarding your question -- the Serial Terminal plugin requires org.jancy.io.serial.

Actually, all IO Ninja feature pages on our website show the capability requirements at the very top (as well as the status of a particular feature on your account):

Also, if a particular feature is locked, and you try to use it from the app -- a pop-up with the required capability should appear (but you have an active evaluation now, so all capabilities are unlocked).