Tag Archives: Debugging

CMSIS-DAP Debug Probe for Robots and Pixhawk with KiCAD

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Need to debug your robot or drone? In a HSLU university research project I’m using a Pixhawk and PX4 based drone hardware. Pixhawk and PX4 is an open standard for drone hardware and firmware and runs with NuttX RTOS. It is mainly used for drones, but is very capable for any other kind of mobile robots.

With the Pixhawk 6x-RT there is a powerful flight controller, using the NXP i.MX RT1176 dual-core processor. While this and other controller hardware do offer a hardware debug probe, it is not a simple task as there are different pin-outs and connectors, making debugging a mess with different cables and adapters. To simplify this, I have now a unified debug CMSIS-DAP debug probe using the NXP LPC55S69 as processor, with all the different headers and UART adapters included: the MCU-Link-MR (Mobule Robots) debug probe.

MCU-Link-MR (v0.1)

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NXP MCU-Link for Rust with probe-rs

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The Rust programming language is making its way into the embedded world, and getting more and more popular and not only at the Lucerne University. With Rust, the probe-rs is one of the popular debug choices, as it nicely comes with cargo. On the hardware side, the NXP MCU-Link is $15 debug probe hardware I use for many targets. Why not using the MCU-Link with probe-rs and Rust?

MCU-Link Board Top Side
MCU-Link Board Top Side
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Versatile OSHW Mini MCU-Link Debug Probe: External, On-Board, or Embedded

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Who needs a debug probe, if you have printf()? If doing serious development, you most likely want a hardware debug probe. We at the HSLU IET use different hardware, boards and kits, and for many of the classroom equipment it is very useful to have the debug probe embedded on the target board: less cables, easier to use. For this we have developed a new Open Source Hardware (OSHW) debug probe in KiCad which can used in different ways: as external debug probe, integrated and soldered on top of the target board, or fully integrated and embedded into a custom design.

OSHW Mini MCU-Link Debug Probe
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‘Experience Energy’ at the Verkehrshaus: The ‘House of Energy’ Construction Kit

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The ‘Verkehrshaus der Schweiz‘, the ‘Swiss Museum of Transport’ is Switzerland’s most popular museum.

In April 2023, it opened up a new building and the ‘Experience Energy!’ exhibition. For the opening event we created a unique construction kit to explore energy: from harvesting to storing and up to distributing and using energy.

“House of Energy” at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne
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Multi-Core Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) with FreeRTOS

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Maybe you are using a multi-core device in your projects, but have not tapped into multi-core usage yet? FreeRTOS V11.0 is out, and the big news is that it has finally Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) integrated into the mainline. This greatly simplifies FreeRTOS usage, as I finally can use the same RTOS for my SMP targets and boards, and I can easily switch between single-core and multi-core applications.

Dual-Core Boards running with FreeRTOS
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GNU Coverage (gcov) for an Embedded Target with VS Code

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An important part of every CI/CD pipeline is having a testing phase. In this article I show how to use GNU gcov (coverage) with an embedded target, using Visual Studio Code as front end:

GNU gcov with VS Code

With this, I can run the code on the embedded target which stores the coverage data on the host.

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VS Code: Data Breakpoints and Watchpoints

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There are many cases where setting a breakpoint on a line of code does not help much. Cases like data or variables get modified from somewhere. That can be data in a linked list somewhere, and all what I have found out so far that it gets changed or corrupted. But I do not know what piece of code is responsible for it.

The solution for such problems are ‘data breakpoints’ or ‘watchpoints‘. Still, not many developers seem to be aware of watchpoints? They are incredibly helpful. And VS Code has at least some basic support for it.

Data Breakpoints in VS Code
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Semihosting with VS Code on RP2040

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With semihosting I can use standard I/O function like printf() and I can read and write data on the host through the debug connection. If used with care, this is a great feature especially for unit testing.

Raspberry Pi Pico-W (RP2040) board
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Selecting J-Link Debug Probe by Nickname

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I have lots of hardware and debug probes on my desk, and I discussed using nicknames for debug probes to better identify them.

‘Green’ and ‘Yellow’ Robots and J-Link Probes

So far so good. At that time of the previous article, it was possible to assign nicknames to J-Link debug probes, but not to use the nickname instead of the USB serial number. Well, SEGGER was fast again, and responded with a new J-Link software pack version 7.92d which implements that features: I can now use the nickname to connect to a debug probe :-).

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New SEGGER J-Link-OB LPC4322-based Firmware with Target Power

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Sometimes I have a wish. Not every time it gets fulfilled. But this time I’m lucky and happy developer. A few days ago I wrote about the LPC4322-based SEGGER OB (on-board) J-Link firmware. It works great, but the board requires another USB cable to power the target board.

Rolf Segger contacted me, and a few days later I had a J-Link firmware with a ‘power-on’ feature:

That way, only one USB cable is needed. All what you need to do is to update the firmware.

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