# GlasgowEmbedded/glasgow

Scots Army Knife for electronics

Repository: https://github.com/GlasgowEmbedded/glasgow
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/glasgow
Homepage: https://glasgow-embedded.org/
Language: Python
License: 0BSD
License Family: permissive
Topics: hardware, debugging-tool, fpga, glasgow-interface-explorer
Last push: 2026-08-26T14:02:50+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 77/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3146, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2202, forks 266 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:25.651805+00:00)

## What it is
Glasgow Interface Explorer is an open-source software stack (Python-based) for the Glasgow open hardware tool, an FPGA-based USB interface explorer for communicating with digital devices. It provides 'applets' for protocols like SPI, I2C, UART, JTAG, SWD, memory chip programming, MCU debugging, and sensing.

## Use cases
- talk to SPI and I2C chips from my computer
- debug an embedded board over SWD or JTAG
- dump and flash SPI flash memory chips
- reverse engineer a device's digital interfaces
- program AVR and iCE40 devices
- sniff UART and SPI traffic
- probe unknown JTAG pinouts

## When to choose
- you own Glasgow hardware and need a reliable, scriptable Python toolchain for digital interfaces
- you need a Swiss-army tool for embedded debugging, memory manipulation, and protocol exploration
- you want an open-source alternative to proprietary debug probes and logic analyzers

## When to avoid
- you don't have (or plan to buy) the Glasgow Interface Explorer hardware
- you need a pure software simulator or emulator without physical devices
- you need a turnkey commercial debugger with vendor support

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: developer-tools, embedded, cli, gui
- domain: embedded-systems, hardware, reverse-engineering, developer-tools
- platform: windows, bsd, python, cross-platform, browser
- tags: fpga, debug-probe, logic-analyzer, spi, i2c, uart, jtag, swd, open-hardware, flash-programming, protocol-explorer, debugging, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- GlasgowEmbedded/glasgow (main) score 77

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:25.651805+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:47:01.178937+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/GlasgowEmbedded/glasgow (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:25.651805+00:00, sha a4388e94ba09)
  - homepage: https://glasgow-embedded.org/ (fetched 2026-08-29T10:27:08.689401+00:00, sha c7fae93af9ba)
  - site_page: https://glasgow-embedded.org/en/install/index.html (fetched 2026-08-29T10:27:08.698747+00:00, sha ed559e7fd1d7)
  - site_page: https://glasgow-embedded.org/en/install/source.html (fetched 2026-08-29T10:27:08.700693+00:00, sha d386b6b6e9da)
  - site_page: https://glasgow-embedded.org/en/install/binary.html (fetched 2026-08-29T10:27:08.702461+00:00, sha a4d51fe1bfe4)
  - site_page: https://glasgow-embedded.org/en/develop/docs.html (fetched 2026-08-29T10:27:08.704190+00:00, sha 674976dab024)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.