Regarding the Thunderscope project, I wonder if it would be feasible one day to have a scope that can sample USB3 signals.
(Actually, a device that can measure bit error rates would be great too).
(Actually, a device that can measure bit error rates would be great too).
Yes, I mean sampling. I want to see the eye-diagrams preferably, using a DIY device. It should be possible, perhaps using delay-lines (as now on the HN frontpage).
Also, if a device like this exists, then maybe someone can write an open-source tool to compute the bit-error-rate from digital inputs. Or write some Wireshark extension to do decoding of raw signals.
This Keysight company makes nice tools but they are out of reach of hobbyists and small companies, and cheaper tools should be possible since we're all having USB3 devices in our computers already (digital ones, ok).
Unfortunately, the author burned out on it and project is dead. But the presentation is still worth watching.
If you're diagnosing signal quality you're going to want to look at the analog signals, which means sampling at a rate significantly faster than the baud rate, and at a 8-bit or higher resolution to actually see analog behaviour. Suddenly you're dealing with 400Gbps of incoming sampling data - and you have to do realtime analysis on that to trigger at the right time, and be capable of storing at least a few tens of thousands of samples for display.