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Professor IoT

Remember all that hard work you did during the ISDE Preparation and ISDE Build phases over the past couple of weeks? Well, that’s all for naught if you don’t get the final phase of the design process right: ISDE Debugging.

Shortchange this step and you introduce unreliable products to the market, tarnishing both market acceptance of your product and your reputation. 

The e2 studio Integrated Solution Development Environment (ISDE) helps you master the debugging phase by providing multiple ways to gain deep visibility into code execution. Here’s a quick summary of the capabilities I like best:

Kernel-aware features: Lets you look holistically at the entire code process, including viewing RTOS threads, queues and semaphores during debugging.

Integration with the Segger J-Link debugger: I prefer using a debugger that is designed to work with the workbench (ISDE) I’m using. Happily for me, the e2 studio ISDE fully supports the quasi-standard J-Link AND an onboard version of the J-Link JTAG debugger is included in every Renesas Synergy development and starter kit. Convenient! The J-Link debugger also includes special features, such as Flash breakpoints and additional breakpoints when I run out of core-provided breakouts.

Ability to optimize and tune applications for maximum performance: Using the ThreadX Execution Profile Kit (EPK), I can dynamically track execution time for threads, Interrupt Service Routines (ISRs) and idle system conditions.

Ability to visualize and better understand real-time system behavior: By using the TraceX analysis tool, I see a graphical view that provides me with complete visibility into tasks and performance, both at the hardware and RTOS level.

Other debugging capabilities provided in e2 studio ISDE that helps me quickly identify and fix errors include single-step, instruction and data pattern targeting, CPU register display, and run control.  While you debug your project, you’ll also come across some other useful e2 studio features, including: 

  • An image viewer that detects and shows files stored in memory
  • A waveform viewer that displays data stored in memory on the target graphically as a waveform (e.g., an array)
  • A real-time expression view shows real-time updates to global and static variables data (can see value changing while your target is running)
  • A real-time visual expressions view that provides a visual representation of global variables in real-time. As you can see in the below illustration, gauges, sliders or meters can be added to visualize variable changes while target is running

That’s it for this stage of learning. You have now mastered the e2 studio ISDE and are fully-equipped to optimally prepare, build and debug your Synergy Platform projects.

Next time, we’ll cover another topic that is of special interest to many developers: porting existing code to the Renesas Synergy Platform.

Live long and profit!

 

Professor_IoT

 

Hot Tip of the Week

Are you using the Synergy Forum located within Renesas Rulz to post questions about your Synergy Platform design? If not, you should. Other Synergy Platform developers regularly visit these forums and provide answers and insights to even the most technical questions. The Renesas Synergy Platform team also responds to these posts to make sure answers are on target.

While in the Forum, make sure you get familiar with the Synergy Platform Technical Bulletin Board. And last, but certainly not least, check out all of the previous Professor IoT blogs!