Can the second analyzer software not do the same measurement as the first? Coming from a point of ignorance here: I lucked into some higher and DLAs (though not 5v compatible so they wouldn't directly help here) and their softwares allow both decode and measurements
Yes, but only in hindsight - and you have to take the "part 1" into account too.
An oscilloscope is able to show analog values. If you have no clue what a signal is, it is your best bet to start with. In this case it turned out to be a simple digital serial signal, but it could've just as well been a 0V-5V analog one or perhaps an open drain bus with pullups like i2c.
Logic analyzers only really work for binary values. You are able to set a single threshold: everything above becomes a 1, everything below becomes a 0. Great if you've got a purely digital signal, useless if it has analog components.
In the first part the author had to start with an oscilloscope to begin exploring. They could've probably switched to the logic analyzer before the first step of part two, but there isn't really a strong reason to do so - and there would still be a nonzero chance of analog components playing a role. Seeing that it was a simple digital "one wire TX, one wire RX" probably gave enough confidence to assume it was something like serial uart and move on.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough, I meant cutting out the gtkwave step. Oscilloscope is great, pulseview great, but what's gtkwave doing here that the others can't?
