Hey,
This entry is going to be a software one or rather one about a software tool that I've been developing for a few months now - STMViewer:
I’ve been using STMStudio for that purpose since it offers a high update rate data visualization without intervening in the software execution. All you need is the programmer that usually is connected to the target anyways during the development stage. STMStudio would be totally enough if it would be still supported, however, ST decided to abandon that project and currently, it is declared NRND. It has some annoying bugs; for example, it doesn’t support C++ mangled names directly using the list variables option (typing the names manually works, but sometimes it stops updating the addresses, no idea why). Moreover, it is only available for Windows. The CubeMonitor which should be the STMStudio’s successor turned out to be a disaster even though it seemed to have an interesting idea behind it, and it looks like its abandoned as well. Having no other options I decided to make my own real-time data visualizer, taking inspiration from the great STMStudio project.
STMViewer is almost a copy of the most important STMStudio functionalities that allow for basic debugging using time graphs, bar graphs, and tables. There are some small differences and changes though.
Similarly to STMStudio, it has two main sections – the workspace section on the left and the plotting area on the right. The workflow works as follows:
1. First you have to select your project’s elf file in the Options -> Acquisition settings
2. Then you have to add all variables of interest and click the update variable addresses button to try to find the addresses of these variables in the elf file you’ve provided. If this step didn't work, make sure you've got GDB installed and added to the PATH.
3. After that you simply drag and drop the variables onto the plotting area and the data acquisition can be started.
You can add multiple plots and changes their names and types. The table view supports writing new data using the “write value” column. This can be especially useful to issue some commands to the target you’re debugging. Read values can be displayed in hex, bin, or decimal formats.
Some more advanced functionalities are still missing:
- no math operations and statistics
- no dump to CSV file
- no “list variables from elf file” option
- no X-Y plots available
I’m going to work on these soon, however, since they aren’t essential to basic debugging, I'm releasing the first version of the STMViewer right now
If you've got any questions, or suggestions be sure to let me know.
