Firmware debugger via rs-232

future · Joined: 14 May 2004 Posts: 330

Is there a way to debug firmware using a rs-232 connection to the circuit?

See www.mecanique.co.uk/code-studio/ their solution adds a header to the firmware to add the debug functionality. I´m looking for something like this, but for C.

You have a pic with a bootloader, then you load the header+firmware and use the built-in debugger to run step by step.

AllanL5 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 6

The way MBasic does this is to insert a debug call between every Basic token. I don't know how the Code Studio gets the debug information -- there's a slightly cryptic note that it uses "HSERIN/HSEROUT to send the debug information" which makes me think Code Studio does something similar.

If you wanted to debug 'C' code this way, you would need to develop a pre-processor which would insert a 'debug_pause()' entry or something between each 'real' line of 'C' code. Then compile with the 'debug_pause()' lines enabled.

'debug_pause()' should send some data to your monitoring program, and wait for you to give it a carriage return or something from your monitoring program. This way, you can debug over the same serial connection you program with.

The ICD hardware solutions do this in hardware -- since the ICD controls the clocking of the hardware. Simulators (like MPLAB 6.10 on have) let you do this in software -- but then you can't monitor the hardware pins to verify the rest of the circuit works.