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Tool

Packetry

Great Scott Gadgets' USB 2.0 protocol analysis application for live capture with the Cynthion analyzer or for exploring previously captured traffic, working from physical-layer packet data at High, Full and Low Speed. Its GTK 4 interface offers a hierarchical view that expands high-level events into their transactions and packets, plus chronological transaction and packet views, while a device pane summarizes each observed device from its decoded descriptors, including HID report descriptors. Captures are opened and saved as pcap files with the LINKTYPE_USB_2_0 link type, and v0.5.0 added pcapng with custom blocks for non-packet events.

Targets
Protocol
Category
Protocol analysis tools
Relationship
Foundation tool
Sources reviewed

Requirements & limits

  • Release at review: v0.5.0, published 2025-09-30 with a Windows installer and a Linux x86_64 AppImage; the quick-start guide installs it on macOS with Homebrew. The reviewed main commit is 47 commits ahead with interface, dependency and minimum-Rust changes, while Cargo.toml still reports 0.5.0.
  • Live capture needs a Cynthion analyzer whose host software is installed and updated with cynthion update; the code also probes iCE40-usbtrace devices, which the documentation does not cover. Viewing existing capture files needs no hardware.
  • Source builds need Rust 1.93+ according to the README and Cargo.toml (the quick-start guide still says 1.85.1) and GTK 4 headers discoverable through pkg-config. The documentation warns not to build with --all-features, whose optional features are for debugging and testing and degrade normal use.
  • Captures come from the user's own USB devices and buses. The documentation notes that the hierarchical view can show packets out of chronological order. BSD-3-Clause.

About this entry

The description was reviewed against primary sources.

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Primary sources

  1. README.md GitHub · greatscottgadgets/packetry · Revision 5a7f98b
  2. docs/source/what_is_packetry.rst GitHub · greatscottgadgets/packetry · Revision 5a7f98b
  3. docs/source/quick_start.rst GitHub · greatscottgadgets/packetry · Revision 5a7f98b
  4. docs/source/user_interface.rst GitHub · greatscottgadgets/packetry · Revision 5a7f98b
  5. CHANGELOG.md GitHub · greatscottgadgets/packetry · Revision 5a7f98b
  6. Cargo.toml GitHub · greatscottgadgets/packetry · Revision 5a7f98b
  7. src/backend/mod.rs#L32-L40 GitHub · greatscottgadgets/packetry · Revision 5a7f98b
  8. LICENSE GitHub · greatscottgadgets/packetry · Revision 5a7f98b
  9. https://github.com/greatscottgadgets/packetry/releases/tag/v0.5.0

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