Protocol Analysis and Libusb Linux Driver for the Uni-T UT61B Multimeter (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Protocol Analysis and Libusb Linux Driver for the Uni-T UT61B Multimeter (2014)

lukasschwarz.de

43 pointsosivertsson14 comments

Awesome work.

It's a shame that it _always_ has to be reverse engineering.

Vendors do not seem to understand there's value in providing adequate documentation. Devices that have the docs or have been reversed get consistently selected and/or recommended over the alternatives.

I also don't understand it, why comoanys don't do it. So i was very (positiv) surprised, when with the adapter for my Hioki DT4281, a manual came along with all the serial command.

https://www.hioki.com/download_file/9752/3

Yeah, it's a real shame. I emailed a laptop manufacturer once and asked for documentation, they gave me a link to Ubuntu help pages. Why are they so reluctant to provide documentation? It makes no sense, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. They don't need to spend money supporting stuff, they just need to not get in the way.

brymen multimeters are great, and they also will provide protocol documentation.

seriously, they are WAY better hardware than uni-t, basically fluke-level quality, but at much lower prices

> fluke-level quality

The quality of turning itself off after some minutes. Because it is portable. /s

power-saving feature?

From my experience (own the E variant), those are solid DMMs at a very reasonable price. Honestly I also got a Fluke 88v that's like 5 times more expensive and I like the UT61E+ better. Have you guys had a similar experience?

I have at work a Fluke 289 and i also don't like it very much. Of course it's a very good meter. But the display is crap. And why logging just one value per second. Etc... It's also now a 20 year old desing and still gets more expensive year for year.

In private I like my Agilent (now Keysight) U1272a. I have an very early version (still some bugs) but it's the best meter for me (but got very pricy too .. I guess they couple the device price to the stock price)

Last updated on the sigrok wiki in 2014 too. https://sigrok.org/w/index.php?title=UNI-T_UT61B&action=hist...

Really nice! I did this for my laptop as well and it was one of the most rewarding projects I've ever done. This article would've helped me a lot back then.

Do you think the Linux kernel would accept the drivers? That way the device would work out of the box. Reading comments on existing drivers gave me the impression they prefer to keep code out of the kernel and in user space if possible...

> Do you think the Linux kernel would accept the drivers?

Worth to try, for sure.

The optically coupled usb - is this a feature of the meter itself or the cabling?

I think it's in the cable. The user manual shows a cable with a big chunky adapter that slots into a modular port on the back of the meter. It seems that port also supports a Bluetooth module, so I'd guess it does direct digital signaling and the adapter in the cable contains the optical isolation.

https://archive.ph/ktAKQ

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