I am  currently working on a project that uses a Nordic nRF9160DK board to control an SPI CrystalFontz display. All too often, I see corrupted screens, such as wrong colors, wrong or missing text, and blank screens. I have saved all of the SPI transactions from within my code to a Hex file. I can analyze those results. However, I need a way to compare what is actually sent over MOSI.

The Data Center Software is Total Phase’s free bus monitoring software that allows developers to capture, display, and filter USB, USB PD, I2C, SPI, eSPI, and CAN serial bus data in real time. This data is displayed in the Transaction Window within the software where users can view high-level information, including data transactions, bus events, and meta information such as when a capture began or ended. Users can also view protocol-specific information pertaining to each supported protocol.

I am using the Beagle I2C/SPI Protocol Analyzer and Data Center Software with an product in development. The data transfers go well until the last byte. My assumption is the SPI slave signal line is going high too soon, giving a false indication the transfer is complete. I can see the data streams with the Data Center Software – how can I deeply analyze this issue with the data I see? Here are examples of the information I am looking at:

I2C, or “Inter-Integrated Circuit,” has become a de facto standard in the embedded systems industry since its inception in the 1980s by Philips. As the rapid adoption of electronic devices became more mainstream in the late 1900s and early 2000s, a need arose to make devices smaller and more portable. After all, people did not want to carry around a cellphone the size of a masonry brick everywhere they went. People wanted smaller devices that they could take with them on the go. With the new challenge of shrinking devices came the need to cram more systems into a smaller space. How do you add more with less space? I2C took a shot at answering that question.