This is the main repository of the (FTDI-based) OpenVizsla 3.x USB protocol tracer.
The repository contains
- hardware contains the hardware design files (Altium design files, Schematics, PCB layout)
- software/fpga contains the source code to the digital logic inside the on-board FPGA
- software/host contains the source code to the libusb-based host software
Once you have obtained hardware, you can build the software and set up udev rules as follows:
git clone https://github.com/openvizsla/ov_ftdi
cd ov_ftdi
sudo cp software/host/52-openvizsla.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
make -C software/host
If the board was plugged in before copying the udev rules, either unplug it and plug it back, or run sudo udevadm trigger -s usb -c add.
To capture USB traffic, you need to know the speed beforehand; it is specified as one of ls, fs or hs. Sniff the traffic and print it to standard output with:
./software/host/ovctl.py sniff <speed>
(as of October 2019):
The hardware design and the FPGA gateware are considered stable and reliable, and have not been touched since late 2014.
The host software is quite basic and just gives you a textual / hex decode of the USB packets in near real-time. Alternatively the host software can save captures in following formats:
- ITI1480A that can be visualized with https://github.com/lambdaconcept/usb2sniffer-qt
- pcap (linktype 288) that can be visualized with Wireshark 3.2.0 or newer
There is basic integration with Wireshark using the extcap interface. The ovextcap available at https://github.com/matwey/libopenvizsla is known to work on Windows and Linux.
There is no code to aggregate packets into transfers. Future Wireshark versions will reassemble packets into transfers and pass the data to upper layer dissectors (HID, Audio, Mass Storage, CCID, DFU, etc.). The Wireshark dissector progress is tracked at https://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=15908
There's no integration with other tools like sigrok or the virtual-usb-analyzer. Integration with sigrok would be nice to show the packet level of USB.
At least partly due to the lack of availability of boards, there hasn't been any progress over the years, particularly not with the original project founder bushing passing away (see History section below).
We're looking forward to people who'd like to contribute in the area of the host software.
There was a Kickstarter campaign in 2010. The campaign was hugely successful and interested parties pledged more than USD 80k towards the development and fist production batches of the project. Development happened in 2011 and 2012 on a XMOS based hardware design (OV2).
Unfortuntely, progress was not as fast as originally anticipated for a variety of reasons.
By June 2013, bushing decided to go ahead with a much simpler design based on just a FTDI and FPGA, without the complexity of the XMOS. This is what came to be known as OpenVizsla 3 or OV3. In September 2013, the digital logic migrated from Verilog to migen (python).
You can find some blog posts by Felix "tmbinc" Dombke related to the time OV3 was under development at https://debugmo.de/tags/openvizsla/
In July/August 2014, all the backers finally received their boards.
In early 2016, the original creator of OpenVizsla, Ben "bushing" Byer had unfortunately passed away. One of the (lesser) consequences of this was that pre-built/assembled OpenVizsla 3.x boards became unavailable.
As an Open Hardware project, of course anyone could simple build them, but then if you just need one or a few boards, it's a lot of effort and not very cost efficient to do so.
In 2018, Harald "LaF0rge" Welte became interested in the project, and with the help of Felix "tmbinc" Domke, he managed to get hold of the left-over surplus boards that still existed from bushings' original production run. By early 2019 those boards arrived in Germany, from where they are now being made available via the sysmocom webshop at https://shop.sysmocom.de/
Hopefully with boards being available again, we can re-spawn some interest into OpenVizsla, and get some people to work on improving it, particularly on the host software side for visualization of the captured data.
OpenVizsla was originally created by Ben "bushing" Byer and pytey, and later joined by Felix "tmbinc" Domke. For detailed copyright statements, please see the respective documents or code.
The License for the hardware design is the "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License"
The License for the hardware design is a 2-clause BSD-style license, see software/fpga/ov3/LICENSE for details
The License for the host software is a 2-clause BSD-style license, see software/host/LICENSE for details
The OpenVizsla 3.2 hardware is finally again available for purchase. This means you don't have to build your own boards to work with the project.
You can obtain boards from:
- sysmocom, see https://shop.sysmocom.de/
- 3mdeb, visit https://shop.3mdeb.com/
Please note that it is in no way required to buy the boards from mentioned shops, the design is open hardware and you can just as well build it all by yourself.