Digital Discovery: Portable USB Logic Analyzer and Digital Pattern Generator

$229.00
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SKU:
410-338
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What is the Digital Discovery?

The Digilent Digital Discovery™ is a combined logic analyzer, protocol analyzer, and pattern generator instrument that was created to be the ultimate embedded development companion compatible with a wide variety of digital systems. Digital Discovery was designed to optimize channels, speed, and portability. A small form factor facilitates easy storage and provides a whole suite of advanced features to allow you to debug, visualize, and simulate digital signals for most embedded projects.

Digital Signals Meet Flexibility

Digital signals are prolific in the engineering world making conveniently interpreting and producing digital signals a critical part of the engineers benchtop. Traditional logic analyzers are typically designed for a specific system with set specifications. The Digital Discovery was designed to be the most flexible logic analyzer on the market, able to be reconfigured on the fly at the touch of a button. Test one design with all 32 channels at 3.3 V, then switch to another design requiring the maximum sample rate at the full 800 MS/s and any other logic level between 1.2 V and 3.3 V, all with the same device. 

Digital inputs and outputs can be connected to a circuit using simple wire probes or breadboard wires; alternatively, the Digital Discovery High Speed Adapter and impedance-matched probes can be used ensure signal integrity on higher speed signals. 

The Digital Discovery is designed for anyone embarking on embedded development; with features and specifications deliberately chosen to maintain a small and portable form factor, withstand use in a variety of environments all powered by our free software, WaveForms. 

For a Getting Started Guide, Reference manual and other documentation, view the Support Materials tab.

  • 32-channel digital logic analyzer (1.2…3.3V CMOS, 8 channels at 800 MS/s*, 16 channels at 400 MS/s*, and 32 channels at 200 MS/s)
    • 11 Built in Interpreters, Custom Interpreters available via scripting
  • Protocol Analyzer Featuring Digital Bus Analyzers (SPI, I²C, UART, CAN, AVR)
  • 16-channel pattern generator (1.2…3.3 V CMOS, 100 MS/s)
  • 16-channel virtual digital I/O including buttons, switches, and LEDs – perfect for logic training applications
  • 4-channel programmable power supply of 1.2…3.3 V /100 mA. The same voltage supplies the Logic Analyzer input buffers and the Pattern Generator input/output buffers, for keeping the logic level compatibility with the circuit under test.
  • All Inputs and Outputs Programmable
    • Selectable Digital IO pulls
    • Selectable Drive, Slew, Pull and Frequency
    • Logic Level Selectable between 1.2 V and 3.3 V

*Note: to ensure signal integrity on speeds of 200 MS/s and higher, the High Speed Adapter and Logic Probes must be used. 

Digital Discovery (410-338): 

 Digital Discovery with High Speed Adapter and 16 Logic Probes (240-127):

 

What is WaveForms?

WaveForms is the free software application for the Digital Discovery and enables use of the available instruments. The software has been refined by customer feedback for over 10 years and features a computer and laptop friendly user interface that has the feel of traditional benchtop software. The Dogota; Discovery communicates with WaveForms via a USB connection to your computer, allowing users to capture, record, analyze, and generate mixed signal and mixed domain waveforms. WaveForms can be downloaded and installed in under 60 seconds and can be tested without hardware using its demo mode feature. In addition to the use of instruments in the application, the WaveForms application has a script editor tool, which allows custom scripting of the instrument in JavaScript. WaveForms is designed to be run on a laptop or desktop computer and is Mac, Windows, and Linux compatible.

The following instruments are available in the WaveForms application for the Analog Discovery Studio:

  • Logic Analyzer
  • Pattern Generator
  • Static I/O
  • Protocol Analyzer
  • Power Supplies

For even more customization potential, the WaveForms Software Development Kit (SDK) can be used to create custom applications and scripts in Python, C, and additional languages. The Analog Discovery Studio is also compatible with LabVIEW and the MathWorks MATLAB Data Acquisition Toolbox. 

LebVIEW logo

MATLAB logo 

Python logo

Learn More

The resource center for the Digital Discovery is the central hub of technical content for the device, and contains everything to get started and reduce mean time to test. This includes a Getting Started Guide, documentation, Tutorials on each instrument, example projects and a link to technical support. 

Resource Center

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9 Reviews Hide Reviews Show Reviews

  • 3
    Good Hardware, Software Lacking

    Posted by Ray Haynes on 6th Oct 2022

    Like the Analog 2 Discovery the Digital is a pretty decent hardware platform. My issue is with the software. If you are going to just capture some data this will work. But if you need to try and use the capture to the full depth you are going to run into software limits. Hopefully they will correct these limitations soon.

  • 5
    Excellent value

    Posted by John on 1st Feb 2022

    I recently designed a complex, FPGA-based embedded system for data acquisition, and the Digital Discovery was an invaluable resource every step of the way. I made heavy use of the logic analyzer, pattern generator, and protocol analyzer functions while debugging and optimizing my code. I was able to use it while working remotely with all of the equipment set up in my office. Overall, I am impressed with the quality of the hardware and software, and it was money well spent that helped me get my project done on time.

  • 4
    Digital Discovery

    Posted by Leon van Snippenberg on 16th Dec 2021

    A really great single box solution for digital testing. The combination of monitoring and generating digital signals makes it a single box solution for many testing and development tasks. What I like is the speed, and the buffer size. In one word, a great device for a very reasonable price. The only downside is that it uses USB2. Would it have an USB3 interface, real time monitoring of large amounts of data would be possible. Am looking forward to this and will be the first to buy it.

  • 5
    Excelent logic analyzer for the money

    Posted by Digilent Customer on 4th Jun 2020

    I bought the digital discovery with the high speed probes. For less then $300 I am able to capture signals at 800MHz. I've seen few devices in this price range that can capture at that speed. Some complaints I have was that it was a bit confusing to me that the sample rates needs to be set in two places to get the full 800MHz. At first I only set 1 place, and the signals where not displaying correctly. Also waveforms can be a bit slow at times. Someone complained about pulseview not working. The digital discovery does has a SDK, and it looks like it wouldn't be hard to modify libsigrok which is the backend of pulseview to work with the digitial discovery. Another option would be to write a file import module so that captures can be done with waveforms but the displayed in pulseview. The advantage of pulseview is the larger number of signal decoders.

  • 4
    Gets the job done

    Posted by Digilent Customer on 22nd May 2020

    I needed an inexpensive digital analyzer and pick up this unit. I have used devices from Digilent before and decided to give it a try. The device worked well for debugging a SDIO interface. I used the high speed probes an was able to visualize the signals I needed to see. It helped me figure what was wrong with my circuit. The software is a bit clunky, but once you know what the knobs do it is manageable.

  • 4
    Wish it had some analog support

    Posted by Digilent Customer on 30th Apr 2020

    Digital - That is no joke, that is all you get. The Analog discovery has the same capabilities for logic analysis, and signal generation, on it's 16 I/Os. With the Digital Discovery, you don't know what level your device you are probing is at. Only if it is 1/0. You would have to step the threshold until the state flipped. With so many ports I really wish there was at least 1 analog port if you need to look at noise, overshoot, impedance, output level, rise/fall time etc. That being said, it is still really cool, and when I brought my concerns up with Digilent, they were very receptive, and I am exchanging this for the Analog Discovery. I want to leave a good review largely due to the customer support. But I also must caution: The functionality is very limited; it's use case very specific.

  • 4
    Nice unit. Lacks variety of protocols

    Posted by Gary Amy on 27th Apr 2020

    This is an exceptionally nice unit. Especially with the high speed adapter. Waveforms has a couple of quirks. Not easy to control the sample rate. Also doesn't have a full complement of protocols as does PulseView. Also, PulseView does not support it...wonder why? Hardware gets 5 stars. Software, 3. averages to 4.

  • 5
    Best in it's class

    Posted by Mike on 13th Aug 2019

    I've used a good number of logic analyzers in this class, and I have to say, hands down, this is the nicest one I've encountered. Very nice high speed performance, no USB bottleneck choking like some of the others. Software is just great, I love it. Really nice job on this!

  • 5
    Very nice logic analyzer

    Posted by SM on 17th Apr 2017

    This is a very nice device. Working with Ubuntu 16.04, I installed Adept 2 and Waveforms 2015, both without any issues. Plugged in the Digital Discovery, launched Waveforms, and I was up and running displaying an i2c interface showing the logic waveforms and decoded data/control bits. If you are familiar with logic analyzers, it will all seem intuitive. Since I have a scope, I chose this over the Analog Discovery, and it is just what I needed. This could not have gone any smoother.