device monitoring studio 7 beta

Device Monitoring Studio 7 Beta

Device Monitoring Studio 7 Beta 2 has been released for public beta testing. Your feedback and bug reports are greatlely appreciated. Download, install and use it. It's free for any purpose.

New Features

New and updated functionality compared to the Device Monitoring Studio 6:

Technical Features and Improvements

Multi-source Monitoring

New version supports joining monitored data from multiple sources of the same type into a single monitoring session. Now it is possible to monitor two or more serial ports, USB devices or network adapters. Device Monitoring Studio makes sure packets are correctly sorted and presented through a number of supported data visualizers. Data logging also supports multi-source sessions.

Remote Monitoring

DMS 7 supports monitoring USB and serial devices connected to remote servers. A single client may monitor several servers and a single server may be monitored by multiple clients. A separate server installation is provided. It includes a server access module, serial and usb monitoring modules, administration and management module and documentation. A server is managed using the MMC Snap-In or from Windows Scripting Host or PowerShell.

Windows 8 Support

DMS 7 officially supports Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

USB 3.0 Support

USB Monitor introduces support for USB 3.0 host controllers and devices.

Built-In and Custom Protocol Parsing

DMS 7 extends protocol parsing support for all monitoring modules: network, USB and serial. In addition, this version has new implementation of protocol parsing, which is more flexible and greatly improves performance.

New Data Processing Category

New processing category is introduced: data exportes. These are components that process monitored data in some way, but do not produce any visible output on the screen. Data recording module now belongs to this category. Other data exportes are Raw Data Exporter and Text Exporter (Not yet included in beta). Both these exporters are capable of using built-in or custom protocol definitions to parse monitoring data before exporting.

Parallel Processing

New version of Device Monitoring Studio utilizes multiple cores for more responsive monitoring session operation. It basically allows the user to still perform real-time monitoring of 1 Gb network transfer without packet loss and slowdowns while having such "heavy" processing like Capture Filter and Display Filter configured for a monitoring session.

User Interface Improvements

Devices Tool Window

New tool window that displays all devices the user can monitor in a single customizable view. For each supported device, its image, type and current state are displayed. The user may start, stop and configure monitoring sessions, view device properties, restart and rename devices.

Serial Bridges are also created and configured in this tool window. Device Monitoring Studio also puts log files into corresponding places in this device tree.

Session Configuration Window

New Session Configuration window greatly simplifies session creation and modification. There is a list of configured sources at the top of the window. Below are optional device configuration settings, buttons to add more devices and remove existing ones.

Depending on the type and number of configured sources, a list of available processing modules is populated. It is divided into two main categories: visualizers and exporters.

Double-click on the processing module to add it to the current session. Some of modules support configuration. Customized processing modules may be saved for future use.

Finally, the user specifies a capture filter, a generic (protocol-based) conditional expression used to filter out specific monitored packets.

Sessions Tool Window

New tool window lists all currently running sessions and their properties. It allows you to close data visualizers, add new data processing modules, pause, resume or stop sessions. It also allows you to quickly change data processing modules configuration. For example, for data recording, the current log file size is displayed. By clicking "End Stream", the user ends the current stream and starts a new one.

Protocol-Based Data Visualizers

Structure View data visualizer for USB, Serial and Network with additional filtering (Display Filter) and ability to specify root protocol.

Automatic Layout Loading

DMS 7 automatically loads separate tool window and command layout when monitoring session is started. Thus, until a session is started, a layout which simplifies device discovery and information retrieval is used. After the session is started, another layout is automatically loaded streamlining monitoring session usage.

Both layouts may be customized by the user.

Global Configuration Switch

Device Monitoring Studio provides you with a global switch to quickly turn it into Serial Monitor, USB Monitor or Network Monitor. This switch may be used in combi installations to temporary hide unneeded components.