> As part of my debugging efforts, I wrote a "StdOut" module that binds to
> the UART and provides various print(f) statements. This works like a
> "normal" OS, stuff to be printed is copied to a circular buffer, which is
> written to the UART async. (Since this is just a debugging thing, I broke
> the usual conventions, copied and don't do a putDone event or similar).
> Its like the dbg statement, but it works on the real hardware (which is
> really convenient, when I am breaking it). Doing a
> StdOut.print("Reached the bogus point in the packet parser\n"); is much
> better than outputting to the leds, I must say.
>
> Very nice. Then it occured to me that there might be some sort of
> mechanism to do this already in place? Is there? What are you guys doing
> when you want to debug on the real hardware and/or interface to stuff that
> is really hard to emulate on the pc target?
>
Very interesting work. I did a similar thing this spring but
yours seems to be more user-friendly -- it supports 'printf'
whilest mine just prints out strings and numbers in some fixed
formats.
On the other hand, there are other desirable debugging features
which could enhance the productivity noticeably. For example,
online query could be very useful. We can embed a small debug
run-time support routine in the TinyOS and use serial line or
another mote to interact with the mote being debugged, such as
querying or setting the value of a variable. The mechanism could
be something similar to Mate, just focusing on debugging.
It would be interesting if somebody implements a sophisticated
debugging suite for motes. Watching LEDs is a good sport but
sometimes it does not tell a lot...
lin
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