This project adds Ubuntu 14.04 support for the UNI-T UT612 LCR meter. It may work with other Debian based distros as well.

It's still under active development, but is completely usable in its current form.

• Can run live on a linux system against the UT612 LCR Meter.
• Decodes both the primary measurement value and secondary measurement value for all ranges
• Correctly displays high MOhm readings the same way as the LCR meter does (UNI-T:s windows software v1.00 shows incorrect values)
• Correctly handles data sent during swithes of measurement mode (UNI-T:s windows software v1.00 typically logs one erroneous value each time that happens).
• Correctly displays theta when meter in auto mode (matches meter reading, which is different from presentation and logging in UNI-T:s windows software v1.00)
• Can run against offline data sets collected using usb sniffing on a windows computer (i.e. to get bit-identical input to that used by UNI-T:s windows software)

I assume that you are running ubuntu 14.04, already have gnu make and a compiler (or else it may be enough to run sudo apt-get install build-essential)

git clone https://github.com/optisimon/UT612-linux-software.git
cd UT612-linux-software/src
sudo make prepare && make && sudo make install

If you don't want to do that, you'll have to read the rest of this section

In ubuntu 14.04, the cp210x driver is incorrectly trying to grab the LCR meter, and fails to open it (since that driver don't support the USB chip). To disable that driver from interfering, sudo make install will blacklist the VID:PID of the USB chip in the LCR meter. You might have to restart your computer once for that setting to take effect.

An alternative to restarting would be to to stop the cp210x module by running rmmod cp210x. If not restarting the computer, you will addditionally have to unplug and replug the LCR meter once if it already was connected during the installation. Note that turning the meter off and then on again won't be enough (the USB chip is always powered when connected to USB).

Start the UNI-T UT612 LCR Meter, and turn on USB mode. An icon with a small computer screen with an S inside it should appear in the top left corner of the LCR meters display.

Start the ut612 tool by running:

ut612

The tool will print one line of measurement data each time the LCR meter takes a new reading. All values on each line is tab-separated.

Typical output:

Typical output (when pasted into a table):

For the comlete listing of command line options, run ut612 --help

My intention is that the software should work on the latest LTS releases of Ubuntu (i.e. 14.04 and later 16.04), and preferably on most or all debian based distributions.

There is a script in the source folder, collect_debug_info.sh, whos output is essential to do any type of troubleshooting. If you create an issue at https://github.com/optisimon/UT612-linux-software/issues, the minimum required output is your description of the problem, and the output of collect_debug_info.sh [name_of_generated_report_file.log]. If there are more lines in the dmesg part than seems needed, feel free to trim it down...

If you for some reason don't want to have the software installed any longer, just go into the source folder and uninstall it:

cd UT612-linux-software/src
sudo make uninstall

Use at your own risk, especially since no protocol specifications or source code was available, and they've choosen to use a binary protocol instead of a clear text protocol. Something as simple as a low battery warning could potentially stop me from parsing the data :)

I'm using the hidapi library from Signal 11 Software (http://github.com/signal11/hidapi) to communicate with the UT612 LCR Meter. The main reasons for using that is

1. Nice license options (GPL3, BSD, as well as just embedding their code directly)

2. The library can communicate to hid devices under linux using either libusb or the kernels hidraw interface.

3. I chose to only use the hidraw interface, but still have the hidapi library as a middle man if I ever would port the software to windows, or would want to use the libusb library as a backend instead (for embedded platforms running ancient kernel versions)

4. Nothing I've tried could get the UART to appear as a regular device node under ubuntu 14.04.

Just clearly mention me as the source if this gets reused, and don't remove any of the copyright notices from any of the source files.

Copyright (c) 2016 Simon Gustafsson (www.optisimon.com)