ezSniffer USB Protocol Analyzer - Hardware Sniffing on a Budget

The ezSniffer Board
Plus Baseboard and Cable.

---

Shipping is $20.00 per order

$89.99

The ezSniffer is a hardware packet capture and analysis tool for inspecting and debugging USB connections to Full Speed and High Speed devices.

The ezSniffer is an add-on to the EZ-USB FX2LP board that is widely available on ebay and similar web sites. We supply the ezSniffer mounted on an EZ-USB board, together with a USB mini cable needed by the EZ-USB board. Alternatively, we also supply the ezSniffer as a bare board.

The ezSniffer is delivered with software for capturing and displaying USB traffic, plus these software interfaces:

• an API for custom applications to drive the USB packet capture hardware
• an API for user programmable USB packet decoders.

The ezSniffer is nifty and compact, around half the size of a credit card. Also check out the miniSniffer - the features of the ezSniffer, more portable, but a limited capture size.

Hardware

The red line is a USB link that we can inspect.

Insert the ezSniffer into the USB link.

Then attach an analysis/diagnostic computer and we are ready to go.

The ezSniffer can do all this:

• disconnect and reconnect USB devices. This makes it straightforward to capture startup packets, including descriptors.

• compresses capture data. It can capture up to 256MBytes of compressed data.

• sniff USB Full-Speed (FS) device traffic at 12Mbit/s.

• sniff USB High-Speed (HS) device traffic. 480Mbit/s High-Speed devices power up as FS devices and then attempt to move up to HS. The ezSniffer prevents HS devices moving from FS to HS, so the ezSniffer can sniff these devices as well.

Software

The ezsniffer app shows captured packet details as a series of labelled rows:

with accompanying decodes of USB Setup Transfers:

The packet capture dialog:

Programming and API

Programmable interfaces to the capture logic and the decode are standard.

• the capture logic interface can be driven by a Python, Lua, or similar scripting language. It can also be driven by a C++ application. The github repo includes a Python example.

• the decode logic interface drives the decode pane in the main display and is implemented in the Lua language. The github repo includes the scripts that are used for the defaullt display.

Requirements

On the Analysis PC

• the hardware requires a USB socket, either a USB socket on a PC or a socket on a USB Hub.

• If you buy a bare ezSniffer board you will need an EZ-USB board plus an A to mini-B cable. These are included in the alternative ezSniffer plus EZ-USB package.

On the USB connection being sniffed

• from the host to the ezSniffer: an A to micro-B cable, the most common USB cable type.

• from the ezSniffer to the target device: the ezSniffer has a standard type A socket, so you can use the target device's regular cable.

Downloads

chmod +x ezsniff-1.08-linux-64.run

sudo ./ezsniff-1.08-linux-64.run

cp ezsniff.rules /etc/udev/rules.d
udevadm trigger
udevadm control --reload-rules

The github repo is here.

Environmental Specification

Note

Please note that the ezSniffer is high-performance test equipment. It is designed for users who are familiar with electronic design and debugging, and familiar with the usual safety precautions when working with electronic equipment.