The Data Center Software is Total Phase’s bus monitoring software that allows users to interface with our protocol analyzers, including the line of Beagle protocol analyzers, the eSPI analyzer, and the Komodo CAN Duo Interface. The software has quickly become an industry favorite when it comes to bus analyzing due to its ease of use and real-time debugging capabilities.

In this blog post, we will discuss a few trademarked features within the software that allow users to monitor and debug bus traffic in real time, including LiveDisplay™, LiveSearch™, and LiveFilter™.

Data Center Software Overview

The Data Center Software was introduced to the market to provide an easy and efficient way to monitor embedded system’s buses. At the time, viewing bus data was complex and required expensive equipment. Total Phase wanted embedded systems engineers in all fields to have access to tools that would help them innovate and create products at an affordable cost. With this in mind, Total Phase developed a bus monitoring software packed with valuable features, including a Transaction window to easily view bus traffic, a Bus pane for viewing devices on the bus, USB Configuration management features, Command line operation controls, and much more.

The software allows users to interface with their I2C, SPI, USB, and/or CAN buses in true, real time. Data is populated in the software as it occurs on the bus. The real-time data population allows engineers to visualize real-world environments in which bugs occur. Knowing exactly when and where bugs occur is invaluable information when debugging and developing embedded systems.

Debugging in Data Center

The LiveDisplay, LiveSearch, and LiveFilter features specifically are unique components that make the software so powerful. With these capabilities, users no longer have to set up a trace, have it run for hours, and then come back and parse through the data; with the Data Center Software, users can view and even interact with data in real time. Let’s discuss each of these features in more detail and how they are helpful for real-time debugging.

LiveDisplay™

LiveDisplay technology allows users to view USB, I2C, SPI, eSPI, and CAN traffic as it is generated on the bus in true, real time, and can be viewed in the software's Transaction window. This window is the section of the software where all data is parsed and displayed on the bus in real time. It  shows all data transactions and bus events with information on when the capture began or ended. Each discrete message on the bus will appear as a single record that can be clicked and viewed in more detail.

The captured data is organized within the window by different columns. The columns include a timestamp, data length, device number, endpoint information, raw data, and a summary section for each transaction. Each data packet is also expandable for more significant insights into each captured data point.

LiveFilter™

For users that would like to filter for or against specific data information within the hundreds to thousands of captured records, the LiveFilter feature comes into play. The LiveFilter feature is located within the Navigator pane and allows users to filter through data during or after the capture is completed.

Data captured in the Data Center Software trace can be filtered for or against specific data parameters, including indices, errors, endpoints, device addresses, PIDs, data patterns, and more. For the sake of this post, please refer to the photo below to see a trace of a USB computer mouse filtered by data starting with “10 FF.” With this filtered applied, only this data will appear in the window.

When filtering data during a live capture, all information is continually captured and logged by the software regardless if a filter is applied or not. So, if a user filters to only see a specific set of data while a trace is live, once the filter is disabled, they will see all the captured data that occurred in the Transaction window within this time.

With this feature, users can easily switch between filtered and non-filtered views with a single click. This can allow users to easily see the data captured before and after an event to help determine the cause of the bug and the activity leading up to it.

LiveSearch™

LiveSearch, located at the bottom of the Transaction window, is a feature that allows users to search the data trace in real time for specific data patterns, bus events, and more to quickly locate areas of interest. With the LiveSearch tool, users can quickly find specific text, hexadecimal and ASCII data and jump to relevant data records within the window.

The most significant difference between the LiveSearch and LiveFilter features is that LiveSearch does not do any data filtering. So, when jumping to the data packet selected, users can see all transactions before and after the specific data packet. LiveSearch is a helpful tool to locate areas of interest that may otherwise be time consuming to locate.

Data Center Software Video

To view a video explaining these specific features in more detail, please visit:

Conclusion

The Data Center Software is an extremely powerful software package that allows engineers to get greater insights into bus data. Identifying and finding bugs in real time is made quick and easy with the help of LiveDisplay technology and the LiveFilter and LiveSearch tools within the software. Engineers can now view data captured on the bus in real time and no longer parse through hours of data traces to pinpoint specific data or areas of interest, With these trademarked features, this tool has become an industry standard for real time embedded systems development.