From time to time, your friendly Impinj support personnel may require detailed information about how the reader/gateway interacts with both the client application and tags being read.  When this happens, we will ask you to provide an RDD and FDD file, which are our Reader Debug Data files. The process below will walk you through multiple ways of obtaining these files.

Items required to perform these functions are:

• A network connected Impinj reader/gateway
• A network connected PC that can communicate with that reader/gateway

IMPORTANT NOTE:  The process of collecting these files results in a lot of data.  Both files will become quite large very quickly.  To minimize the file size, please only capture RDD and FDD for as little time as possible (. We would also recommend keeping the capture window small, as to keep the file size reasonable.

When to Capture RDD and FDD

Before we discuss how to capture RDD and FCC, it is important to discuss When to Capture RDD and FDD.  Here are a few things to keep in mind: 

• Start capturing RDD and FDD before the
  • Client application starts configuring the reader if at all possible and/or
  • Issue occurs.
• Stop capturing RDD and FDD after the
  • Issue occurs.
• Intermittent issues that require a long run can make it very difficult to capture RDD
  • We may need to work together to programmatically stop the RDD and FDD capture at the right time

How to Capture RDD and FDD

Before we explain the methods for how to create RDD and FDD, please make sure to write down

1. What you were doing when you captured the RDD and FDD,
2. What was the observed behavior, and
3. What was the expected behavior

Please provide this information to the Impinj Support personnel after performing one or more of the following methods to capture RDD and FDD.

1. wget
2. Captastic v1.0.1
3. ItemTest v2.0+
4. ItemTest v1.14.0
   1. Including instructions when using a non-ItemTest Application

Once either of these methods described here has been performed, send the .rdd and .fdd file to your Impinj Support professional for analysis.

Note: The .rdd and .fdd files will be saved under the 'rdd' folder of the ItemTest program directory.

Method 1 - wget

The tools we provide for capturing RDD and FDD takes advantage of the reader Web stream API.

Important Note: The following commands assume you are connecting to https (SSL port 443).  Please update the URLs to http if you have https disabled.

Capturing RDD

You can run the following command to capture RDD and wrap it in another script that will split the file into manageable chunks as it is captured:

                       wget --read-timeout=0 -O $file --http-user=root --http-password=impinj 'https://READER_NAME/cgi-bin/rdd-stream'

 

Replace READER_NAME with the hostname or IP Address of the reader in question.

Capturing FDD

You can run the following command at the same time to capture RDD and wrap it in another script that will split the file into manageable chunks as it is captured:

                       wget --read-timeout=0 -O $file --http-user=root --http-password=impinj 'https://READER_NAME/cgi-bin/fpga-debug'

 

Replace READER_NAME with the hostname or IP Address of the reader in question.

Method 2 -- Captastic v1.0.1

The Captastic tool is a sniffer program that is capturing data with a rolling window (the last "x" minutes...whatever you have the Capture Window configured to). This will minimize the amount of information and help us analyze what's going on around the time of the problem.

Please contact support@impinj.com to open a case (if you haven't done so already) and get the Captastic application in a .zip file.

Please unzip this file to a folder on your desktop. Double-click on the Captastic.exe to run the program.

Fill in your reader information in the appropriate fields:

1. Hostname,
2. User Name, and
3. Password

Note: The default user name and password for our readers and gateways is specified.
Note: This version of Captastic requires http to be enabled to work.

Enter the capture window value (in minutes) which represents the number of minutes to store RDD before the file is recycled. 

Click Start!

Then run your program as you were doing before. As soon as you see the problem, you can click "Stop" on the Captastic window.

Once you hit Stop, Captastic will ask if you want to save the data capture 

Click "Yes" and specify where you want to save the data capture files.

Click the Save button to save both files (.fpga and .rdd).

Navigate to that location and send those files to support@impinj.com by attaching them to the case you opened.

If either file size is greater than 25MB, please get the instructions for uploading these files from the Impinj support case

When uploading files, please include the support ticket number that this information pertains to.

Method 3 – ItemTest v2.0+ controlling reader

You can obtain ItemTest from here.

Step 1.
Start ItemTest and connect to the reader whose debug data you wish to capture. Once connected, click the reader's name from the left sidebar, under the section 'Data Sources', then choose the 'Diagnostics' tab, as shown below:

Step 2a.
In the Destination field in the Diagnostics tab, click the BROWSE button to select the folder
where ItemTest will store the capture data.

Note: ItemTest will create a master folder above the one you select, and the name of the containing
folder will be the device's hostname

Step 2b.
In the Prefix box, enter a string of text to prepend to the filenames created by ItemTest.

Note: Filenames after the prefix will be in the format MM-DD-YYYY_HHh-MMm-SSs.fdd for FPGA
debug data (FDD) and the same format with ‘.rdd’ as the filename extension for reader
diagnostic data (RDD)

Step 2c.
In Capture window, enter a numeric value for how long you want RDD and FDD logs to be
captured from the device.

Note: Specifies the duration in minutes you want to capture diagnostic data. For example, if 10
minutes is specified, then only the last 10 minutes of RDD capture will be saved; everything
before 10 minutes will be discarded.

Step 3:
On the Diagnostics tab, click the Start button to begin capturing and saving the diagnostic
streams

Step 4:
Start your application by selecting the Inventory type you are trying to perform from the left sidebar under 'Showcases', and then clicking the start button in the top header:

 

Step 5:

After capturing the event/issue, you will need to stop the inventory, and then stop the RDD collection from the reader's 'Diagnostic' tab. The RDD/FDD files will be stored in the file location you specified in earlier steps.

 

Method 4 – ItemTest v1.14.0 Controlling the Reader 

Step 1a.

Start ItemTest and connect to the reader whose debug data you wish to capture. Once connected, click the ‘Reader Settings’ tab and click ‘Configure’ next to the reader you would like to collect data from.

 

Step 1b.

In the new window that opens, select the ‘Utilities’ tab, and you should see a section labeled for ‘RDD Capture’. This section will have two fields, ‘RDD file name’ and ‘Capture Window’. The capture window will determine the amount of the data that the RDD and FDD files will contain, the default is set to one minute’s worth of data.

Step 1c.

Click the “Start RDD” button and the reader will begin to capture data. Once it has been started, you will need to start an inventory run using ItemTest by clicking the "Start" button on the main ItemTest window. You can see the RDD capture is active via a status message in the bottom right corner. You would then stop the inventory run after 10 seconds, or until you see the issue occur.

 

 

 
Step 2:

You will now want to stop collecting the data. To do this, you can either click the ‘Stop RDD’ button in the Utilities tab of the Reader Configuration (where you started the RDD capture), or by clicking the ‘Stop all RDD’ button on the main ItemTest window (this will only appear when RDD capture is running).

Method 4a – Other Application Controlling the Reader 

Step 1a.

Start ItemTest and connect to the reader whose debug data you wish to capture. Once connected, click the ‘Reader Settings’ tab and click ‘Configure’ next to the reader you would like to collect data from.

 

Step 1b.

Click on the ‘Utilities’ tab, and you will see a section for ‘RDD Capture’

 

Step 2:

Click ‘Start RDD’ to start the capture.

Step 3:

You will then want to start your application, outside of ItemTest. For example, you could run one of the SDK examples or your own application such as the one shown below:

Step 4:

After collecting debug data for 10 seconds, or up to seeing the issue occur, you will want to stop the RDD capture by clicking either the “Stop all RDD” button on the main ItemTest window, or from the ‘Stop RDD’ button in the same window as where you started the capture.