I2C DRIVER
I2CDriver is an easy-to-use, open source tool for controlling I2C devices over USB. It works with Windows, Mac, and Linux, and has a built-in color screen that shows a live "dashboard" of all the I2C activity.
- USB to I2C interface with a built-in graphical display
- I2C master, passive monitor and capture-to-PC supported at 400 kHz
- Three I2C ports, each with high-quality color coded hookup jumpers
- Power monitoring: USB line voltage and target current readouts
- Flexible control: GUI, command-line, C/C++, and Python 2/3 host software provided for Windows, Mac, and Linux
It uses a standard FTDI USB serial chip to talk to the PC, so no special drivers need to be installed. The board includes a separate 3.3 V supply with voltage and current monitoring.
I2C is Everywhere
It’s in every phone, in your embedded electronics, in every microcontroller, Raspberry Pi, and PC motherboard. It’s a mature technology - still going strong after 36 years. Because it's everywhere, I2C is used by everyone from novices to embedded designers. But the common element of everyone's I2C experience is struggle. Instead of being easy, I2C very often feels really difficult. Because there are so many ways for I2C to go wrong, things rarely "just work" and instead involve some painful debugging.
I2CDriver Makes I2C Much More Friendly
While other I2C tools might offer a couple of LEDs, I2CDriver has a clear logic-analyzer display of the signal lines plus a graphical decoding of the I2C traffic.
In addition, it continuously displays an address map of all attached I2C devices, so as you connect a device, it lights up on the map. You'll never have to ask "is this thing even switched on?" again.
The current and voltage monitoring let you catch electrical problems early. The included color-coded wires make hookup a cinch; no pinout diagram is required. It includes a separate 3.3 V supply for your devices, a high-side current meter, and programmable pullup resistors for both I2C lines.
There are three I2C ports, so you can hook up multiple devices without any fuss.
I2CDriver comes with free (as in freedom) software to control it from:
- a GUI
- the command-line
- C and C++ using a single source file
- Python 2 and 3, using a module
Do More With I2CDriver
By controlling I2C hardware using the PC tools you're most comfortable with, you can get devices doing what you want in a fraction of the development time. Calibrating devices like accelerometers, magnetometers, and gyroscopes is much simpler and faster when done directly on the PC through I2CDriver.
I2CDriver ships with Python examples using small groups of I2C devices to make something useful.
Watch the Whole Network
As well a a live decode of the traffic, the built in display shows a heatmap of all active network nodes. So in an I2C network with multiple devices, you can see at a glance which ones are the most active.
See what I2C is Doing Instantly
When an I2CDriver is connected to an existing I2C bus, it can "snoop" the traffic and display it on the screen. This provides an excellent tool for debugging I2C issues, because you can listen in on the conversation as it happens.
Capture I2C Traffic to Your PC
I2CDriver can dump all I2C traffic back to the PC. I2CDriver's capture mode reliably records every bit to an exhaustive time-stamped log. This is really helpful for debug, analysis, and reverse-engineering. Supported formats include text, CSV, and VCD.
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