How-to articles with debugging tips and tricks for embedded systems.
Learn practical and easy-to-apply software process improvements that even the smallest design teams can use to make firmware easier to code, debug and test, with a tools cost of less than $600.
On May 3, 2017, Barr Group CTO and software expert Michael Barr delivered this keynote about the safety and security of Internet of Things devices at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston.
Too often engineers give up trying to discover the cause of infrequent anomalies--because they can't be easily reproduced in the lab--dismissing them as "user errors" or "glitches." Yet these ghosts in the machine live on. So here's a guide to the most frequent root causes of difficult-to-reproduce firmware bugs.
Understanding software and hardware bugs in other embedded systems can help you identify, diagnose, and fix bugs in your own.
RedBoot is a portable, open-source ROM monitor that offers a download and debug environment. What more could you want?
Many embedded developers today use a ROM- or flash-resident software program that provides functionality such as loading and running application software, scripting, read/write access to processor registers, and memory dumps. A ROM monitor, as it is often called, can be a useful and far less expensive debugging tool than an in-circuit emulator.
A C coding standard can help keep bugs out of embedded software by leveraging common language features and development tools.
This second article on enforceable coding standards for embedded systems adds a set of additional bug-killing rules for using certain C keywords and naming global variables.
It’s a fact: When you create code, you create bugs. Listen in as we present the finer points of Test-Driven Development (TDD) - a game-changing approach to embedded software development that can greatly reduce bugs early in the development process. TDD is not a debugging technique but rather an approach to proactively preventing defects.
As if debugging traditional PC/server software or even smartphone apps wasn't hard enough, debugging embedded software adds significant challenges.
What's the difference between a mutex and a semaphore? Misuse of these two distinct types of synchronization primitives can lead to difficult to debug defects with potentially severe consequences in safety-critical devices.
Motorola's Background Debug Mode is one of a variety of on-chip debug technologies. Collectively, they offer some of the best features of debug monitors and in-circuit emulators—with far less headache and cost.
Memory leaks can be particularly risky for long-running embedded systems. Here are some tools to identify, track, and analyze memory leaks in embedded C and C++ programs.
Embedded systems programmers often value the assert() macro. This article explores the underlying definition of this handy macro, to show you how to roll your own.
The assert() macro is one of those simple tools that would not seem to merit an entire article, but I have come across an alarming number of engineers who have not heard of it or do not use it.
