Analyzing State Machines, Part 2
In this post, we visualise the custom interval and state machine information available in Tracealyzer and explore how we can use it to better understand our application.
Tracing adaptive applications for IoT end devices
Tiny sensor devices are key elements in IoT systems, and they need to be as energy efficient as possible. Roberto Rodriguez-Zurrunero has successfully used Tracealyzer in his research to both minimise energy consumption and fine-tune timing.
Trace streaming over TCP/IP on Xilinx Zynq
Xilinx development kit ZC702 features a Zynq 7000 programmable SoC, lots of RAM and on-board I/O connectors ranging from HDMI to Gigabit Ethernet and USB. We set out to build a Tracealyzer demo application for this board, based on FreeRTOS and lwIP, with live trace streaming over Ethernet. During this work we discovered an interesting issue [...]
Analyzing State Machines
In the previous Hands On post we introduced the concept of intervals, which is the time between any two events and can be added to the timeline. In this post, we will take the interval one step further and see how we can use Tracealyzer to monitor state machines.
Introducing the World’s First Trace Profiler for OpenVX and Embedded Vision/AI Processors
Computer vision has become a core feature for all sorts of embedded systems. Therefore we have developed Tracealyzer for OpenVX, the world's first trace profiler for OpenVX and Embedded Vision/AI processors, in collaboration with Synopsys.
Understanding your Application with User Events
What if you want to visualize some application data in Tracealyzer, measure the time between two events or monitor a state machine? In this post, we will show how you can set up this kind of custom logging.
Tracealyzer 4 for On Time RTOS-32 Tops Busy Week at Percepio
Percepio has just released Tracealyzer 4 for one more RTOS platform: On Time RTOS-32. We build upon the tracing library included in RTOS-32, which enables users to trace kernel operations such as scheduling, task communication and interrupts. If you use Tracealyzer with RTOS-32 today, contact your nearest distributor or drop a mail to sales@percepio.com to [...]
New Plugins for Eclipse IDEs and Atmel Studio 7
Good news! We have now updated both the Eclipse plugin and the Atmel Studio 7 plugin for Tracealyzer 4, making it even easier to analyze and debug RTOS-based software using Tracealyzer. The Eclipse plugin works with most Eclipse-based IDEs for Arm-based MCUs, such as Atollic TrueStudio, MCUXpresso, Simplicity Studio, etc. Both plugins support snapshot tracing of FreeRTOS, [...]
Tuning Your Custom Trace Streaming for Maximum Throughput
The Tracealyzer recorder for FreeRTOS, SafeRTOS or Micrium µC/OS can be configured to stream the trace data via any interface you might have available. If you have designed your own custom stream port but are having problems getting a reliable transfer or sufficient throughput, there are several things you can try.
Zero To One Hundred
This fall, a team of dedicated students at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway, sets out to construct a driverless electric car. It is the eighth iteration of the school’s Revolve project and the first one that Percepio sponsors.
Identifying Memory Leaks Through Tracing
Have you ever seen your embedded system behave strangely and had that sinking feeling that you might have a memory leak? Tracealyzer offers several different methods to detect memory leaks.
Yes, it is actually rocket science
The cool thing about studying in Kiruna, Sweden's northernmost city, is that you may get to blast stuff into space on a rocket. The city is home to Esrange, a vast commercial and research rocket range, and the local technical university takes advantage of that with a menu of suitable courses, with names like "Spacecraft [...]
Verifying Task Timing and Scheduling
Quite a few embedded software developers don’t know whether their applications meet their timing requirements. In today's Tracealyzer Hands On post, we will explore how to use Tracealyzer to verify task timing and scheduling.
Academics everywhere enjoy free Tracealyzer
India, Norway, France … there has been a flurry of interest around Percepio’s free academic Tracealyzer licenses lately. End of summer and beginning of the fall semester probably plays a role here, as does our announcement a few weeks ago. One of the free licenses was awarded to Anil Joseph, student at the Birla Institute [...]
Tracealyzer 4.2 – New Trace View, Runs on Linux
Tracealyzer version 4.2 features a completely rewritten main trace view, and adds support for, among other things, Wittenstein SafeRTOS and tracing via ST-LINK debug probes. It also runs on Linux, so embedded developers using Linux hosts are now able to upgrade to the new generation of Tracealyzer.
Analyzing communication and data flow in an unknown software stack
One of the biggest problems in embedded development today is understanding what a software stack or demo that you didn’t write is doing. In this post, we’ll examine how we can find this out using the Tracealyzer communication flow diagram.
Percepio supports the next generation of embedded engineers
Percepio has its roots in academia, Mälardalens Högskola in Västerås, Sweden, to be precise, and we have long supported both technical universities and their students with heavily discounted Tracealyzer licenses. Today we are taking this to the next level with the launch of a completely free site license for qualifying schools. "The embedded community has [...]
Tracealyzer – more than a debugging tool
In our new blog series Hands On, which launches today, we will examine many ways that developers can Tracealyzer besides debugging.
Tracing Amazon FreeRTOS and AWS IoT
When Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched their IoT platform Amazon FreeRTOS last November, Percepio was one of four launch partners presented on stage. This week AWS published an article about AWS IoT development using Amazon FreeRTOS, Percepio Tracealyzer and the NXP OM40007 IoT kit, written by Percepio CEO and founder Johan Kraft. "Tracing Amazon FreeRTOS [...]
Version 4.1.5 adds IAR streaming support
We are happy to announce an update of Tracealyzer, v4.1.5, bringing trace streaming support for IAR Embedded Workbench, allowing IAR users to fully benefit from the powerful capabilities of Tracealyzer 4 using IAR I-Jet probes. This leverages the ITM module found on most Arm Cortex-M3, M4 and M7 MCUs. With a fast debug [...]
Tracing exceptions in Keil RTX5
When debugging or profiling your firmware, it is often important to trace Interrupt Service Routines (ISRs) such as timer interrupts or interrupts from communication interfaces. However, using a classic ”printf” call is typically not an option since it may increase the execution time of the ISR by orders of magnitude. The integrated ”exception trace” support [...]
We are Moving
Tomorrow Friday is a special day here at Percepio HQ – we're moving offices. We are not moving very far, the new office is a ten-minute walk from our current one, but it is absolutely a step up for the company. We'll have our own offices with plenty of space to grow (and we are [...]
An Unexpected Customer Meeting
I (Mike) was travelling to Barcelona for the RISC-V Workshop earlier this month. As I walked through the Barcelona airport I looked up and saw some big ass fans. I took a quick picture, enlarged the logo, and sure enough – it really was a Big Ass Fan! It's always cool to see a Tracealyzer customer's [...]
Tracing a drone flight
Percepio's Senior Drone Builder and Support Engineer Niclas Lindblom with his Embedded World drone. We knew we had to have something special. We knew we were going to show Tracealyzer 4 at Embedded World 2018, and we wanted the world to take notice – it was after all the largest improvement in at [...]
Tracealyzer v4.1 – Micrium and Arm ITM support
Percepio has released Tracealyzer version 4.1 with support for Micrium µC/OS-III. We have also added support for RTOS tracing via Arm's ITM interface (Instrumentation Trace Macrocell), that allows very fast streaming of software trace data with low overhead. “Tracealyzer 4 is such a massive improvement over previous versions and as we have been working closely [...]
Tracealyzer streaming over ARM ITM using ULINKpro/ULINKplus
Good news! As of version 4.1 (just released) Tracealyzer supports ITM tracing for ARM Cortex-M3, M4 and M7 MCUs. This is initially available for FreeRTOS and Micrium µC/OS-III, but support is planned for SafeRTOS and ThreadX soon. With a fast debug probe like Keil ULINKpro or ULINKplus, ITM allows for high data rates and low [...]
GDPR: Protecting Your Personal Data
You may have heard about the General Data Protection Regulation, better known as GDPR, which is the new regulatory framework for managing personal data of European Union citizens; it comes into force on 25 May, 2018. Since Percepio is based in Sweden, which is a member of the European Union, and have a lot of [...]
Let Tracealyzer show you the big picture
When you open a trace in Tracealyzer, it usually opens to the vertical timeline. This view, which shows all activity in the system, is in many ways the core of Tracealyzer and most of the other views link back to the timeline, but with its massive amount of information it is not always the best [...]
Find the Tracealyzer license that suits you
This spring has seen the release of Tracealyzer 4, Percepio's most significant update to Tracealyzer so far, but that is not all. We have also simplified our licensing options and introduced some new ones, including an all-inclusive subscription license that allows you to use Tracealyzer with all of our supported operating systems. No matter what [...]
Taking on the Top Ten Bugs
"Top Ten" is a well-tested catch phrase that can be attached to restaurants in London, high buildings over the world and, well, just about anything. And rest assured there's also a list of the Top Ten Bugs in Firmware. Written by industry veteran Michael Barr, former editor-in-chief of Embedded Systems Programming magazine and author of [...]
Tracealyzer 4 is here
We have talked about it for six months, and worked on it for much longer than that, but today it is finally here - Tracealyzer 4! Starting today, you can download the new version of Percepio's powerful visualization tool and try it out for yourself. If you use Tracealyzer today, the first thing you will [...]
Industry leaders praise Tracealyzer 4 at Embedded World
Tracealyer 4 took Embedded World by storm. Interest was intense and people were really impressed. During the show, we asked seven industry leaders if we could film their reaction to Tracealyzer 4. All agreed, and this is the result … Tracealyzer 4 brings five major improvements: Brand new user interface – fresh, [...]
Using Tracealyzer with Cypress PSoC devices
In collaboration with Cypress Semiconductors, Percepio Tracealyzer® now supports Cypress PSoC® MCUs, including the hardware profiler unit in the new PSoC® 6 family. Percepio Application Note PA-019 describes in detail how to get started with Tracealyzer on Cypress PSoC® MCUs and Cypress PSoC Creator. The example is for PSoC 6, Cypress' most recent MCU family, but except for [...]
Webinar: Designing and Debugging RTOS based IoT Applications
Embedded evangelist Jacob Beningo will present a free webinar on designing and debugging IoT applications. The webinar features topics like advanced RTOS application design techniques, event chaining and setting up an embedded connection to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Jacob will also use Percepio Tracealyzer to show how to trace an IoT application to not just understand how [...]
Improved Tracealyzer support for Microchip MPLAB X IDE
We are happy to announce improved Tracealyzer support for Microchip MPLAB X IDE, allowing for tracing of additional RTOSes. The updated MPLAB plugin now supports Micrium µC/OS-III and SafeRTOS, in addition to the previous FreeRTOS support. The plugin has also been updated and verified for the latest version of MPLAB X IDE (v4.0.5). The plugin saves [...]
Analyzing huge traces with Tracealyzer 4
Do you struggle with bugs that are difficult to replicate and isolate? Most embedded software developers encounter such problems now and then. With increasingly complex multi-threaded RTOS-based systems, such issues are likely to become more and more common in the future. They can be very difficult and time consuming to solve, and sometimes developers resort [...]
Happy Winter Holidays from Percepio
It's that time of year again – late December in Sweden means snow (mostly) and darkness (always), but it also means that the Christmas holiday is coming. Most of our staff will go on a well-deserved vacation break next week, so expect that it may take a little longer than usual for us to respond to [...]
A Month of Good News
November was a good month for Percepio and Tracealyzer. We saw record sales, a lot of interest in the Tracealyzer 4 preview videos and everything culminated on the 29th with the release of Tracealyzer v3.3 supporting Amazon FreeRTOS, just released by Amazon Web Services along with several new IoT offerings. We believe Amazon Web Services has taken [...]
Tracealyzer v3.3 fully supports Amazon FreeRTOS
Amazon Web Services launched their own RTOS yesterday, as part of a major improvement of its IoT offerings. We're happy to announce that Tracealyzer version 3.3, which we released yesterday, fully supports Amazon FreeRTOS, the new IoT microcontroller operating system from Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS and Percepio have collaborated to provide Tracealyzer support for [...]
Tracealyzer 4: see more with Intervals and State Graphs
This is our third preview video of Tracealyzer 4, due out early next year, and this time we focus on two entirely new features: State Graphs and Intervals. Both features allow you to customize the visualization and analysis for your own system and the issue at hand. State Graphs can be created automatically from your trace, [...]
Tracealyzer 4 lets you see network activity
Welcome to a second glimpse of Tracealyzer 4, showing how network activity can be visualized together with the RTOS events. This way, developers of connected IoT systems can get a wider perspective of their system's real-time behavior. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1O4AE4TEbE In this brief example we display events from a TCP/IP stack, but the same technique can be used [...]
Welcome to a first look at Tracealyzer 4
A completely revamped user interface and a much improved live view are two of the most prominent features of the upcoming Tracealyzer 4, which we showed for the first time at Arm TechCon last week. If you weren't there, you can still get a feel for the new product through a short video we have put together. [...]
RTOS Debugging: Everybody wants the fork
Deadlock is a well-known phenomenon even outside the embedded world. For a general description of deadlock, see this article; it is far better than anything I could ever hope to write. But I digress – back to deadlocks in RTOS-related programming. A clear indication that you may have a deadlock problem is when multiple tasks [...]
Praise for Tracealyzer 4
Percepio's stand at ArmTechCon. ArmTechCon 2017 is over and we have packed up and left. We spent two days talking to users and meeting partners, and we showed the upcoming Tracealyzer version 4 for the first time. We will have more to say about both Tracealyzer 4 and ArmTechCon in the coming weeks, but there's one little [...]
RTOS Debugging: When the important stuff has to wait
Priority inversion at work – the high-priority (red) task is blocked by lower priority tasks. The central idea underlying an RTOS with a fixed-priority scheduler is that a high-priority task should be scheduled ahead of one with lower priority. If necessary, the RTOS can even pre-empt the running task, forcing it to yield the CPU to [...]
RTOS debugging: Chasing the jitter bug
When you have a task in your system that is supposed to execute at regular intervals, say for instance that it needs to read a sensor value every 5 milliseconds, then you have a system that is sensitive to random delays – also known as “jitter”. When your task experiences jitter, it sometimes has to [...]
RTOS debugging: When the CPU has too much on its hands
In embedded systems using multitasking, you may run into a situation where some of your tasks run slowly or not at all. This is called task starvation (the affected tasks are starved of CPU time) and it can happen for a number of reasons; today we will look at one particular reason – a fixed [...]
Percepio announces Tracealyzer for FreeRTOS v3.2
Tracealyzer v3.2 adds powerful filtering functions to reduce the amount of data that must be sent to the monitoring host computer. This makes Tracealyzer applicable to a wider range of development setups. Today we are happy to present version 3.2 of Tracealyzer for FreeRTOS. The new version is available for download from percepio.com/download/ immediately. [...]
RTOS debugging: Dealing with timing issues
There is no doubt a learning curve when you begin using a real-time operating system (RTOS) in your development. You will work at a higher abstraction level, using more or less parallel tasks rather than just subroutines, and you will need to consider how your tasks shall share data and the processor time with each [...]
Tracealyzer Makers Edition is here
Photo: Sara Arnald, CC-BY Have you ever wanted to debug your hobby MCU project with a tracing tool, but felt that you couldn't afford a pro tool like Percepio Tracealyzer? Well, now you can! From now till the end of this year, you can purchase a non-commercial Tracealyzer Makers Edition license at the heavily discounted price [...]
Submit your trace – get a $25 gift card
A research group at Mälardalen University here in Västerås, Sweden, is investigating how RTOS trace tools like Percepio Tracealyzer can be extended for testing purposes and automatically detect bugs related to concurrency and timing. To validate their research, they need real-world bug examples. We at Percepio want to help them obtain RTOS traces, recorded with Tracealyzer, [...]
On the Horizon: two embedded conferences
Embedded Conference Scandinavia, ECS, takes place on 7–8 November, 2017 at Kistamässan in Stockholm, Sweden. Last year’s conference attracted just under 2,000 delegates so ECS now claims to be the largest embedded conference in Europe. The conference program is still in flux but the organizers have announced the first keynote speaker: Maarten Struys, Account [...]
ARC Summit: Common RTOS-related bugs – how to avoid and detect
Synopsys ARC Processor Summit is a free one-day event where you can pick from any of 25+ technical seminars on embedded development and electronic design. This year’s Summit takes place on September 26 and Percepio will be there discussing how to catch bugs in RTOS-based programming. Once again we are represented on the stage by [...]
IoT Expert reviews Tracealyzer
Alan Hawse, evangelist and 26-year veteran at Cypress Semiconductor, has published an informative blog post detailing how you can integrate Percepio Tracealyzer into Cypress’ developer toolset PSoC Creator. “As you have probably noticed, I have spent a significant amount of time in the last few months doing FreeRTOS projects,” he writes, and “One thing that [...]
A Busy Summer Ahead
Summer is finally approaching here in Sweden. Last Friday we celebrated Midsummer, and the coming weeks will be a bit slower than usual as most Swedes check out from work and enjoy their summer vacation. But only a bit slower, mind you: the lights will stay on at Percepio HQ as we work on new [...]
The Running Snail car team is back for another season
You may have heard about "Running Snail", a team of German university students building an electric race car as a school project – we blogged about them last year. Now they're at it again, they will build a new car for the 2017/18 competitive season, and of course Percepio will continue to sponsor the team with licenses [...]
Trace Debugging for Renesas Synergy and ThreadX
By Niclas Lindblom, Senior FAE at Percepio AB. Percepio has recently introduced Tracealyzer for ThreadX, which is good news for developers using Renesas Synergy. As you might know, the Renesas Synergy Software Package (SSP) includes the ThreadX RTOS and middleware from Express Logic, supporting Synergy S1, S3, S5 and S7 processors. Tracealyzer is a runtime [...]
Success at ZF in adopting automotive software tracing
Learn how ZF was able to improve their embedded software development by adopting Percepio Tracealyzer, the leading solution for RTOS-level trace analysis. ZF is a global leader in automotive driveline and chassis technology, active and passive safety technology, and a long-time customer of IntervalZero – providing technology that turns the Windows operating system into a real-time operating [...]
Tracealyzer for Keil RTX5 now available
After an intense cooperation with ARM/Keil, we are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Tracealyzer for ARM® Keil® RTX5, now available for download and evaluation. Click for more information on Tracealyzer for Keil RTX5 PRESS RELEASE Västerås, Sweden, 10 May, 2017 *** Percepio AB, the leading specialist in software tracing tools for real-time operating systems, has [...]
Tracealyzer for ThreadX now available
We are delighted to announce the immediate availability of Tracealyzer for ThreadX, now available for download and evaluation. Tracealyzer for ThreadX supports all ports of ThreadX, with explicit support for Renesas Synergy. PRESS RELEASE Västerås, Sweden, 26th April 2017 - Percepio AB, the leading specialist in software tracing tools for real-time operating systems today announced [...]
Tracealyzer for VxWorks v3.1.2
We are pleased to announce the release of Tracealyzer for VxWorks version 3.1.2, now available for download. Changes include several bug fixes and plenty of useful improvements, such as: User Event Log This view shows a text log of custom "User Events" that have been added in the embedded application code (much like "printf" call). [...]
Tracealyzer for FreeRTOS v3.1.2
We are pleased to announce the availability Tracealyzer for FreeRTOS v3.1.2, now available for download. Users of v3.1.x are recommended to upgrade to this version, especially if using the User Event features. Changes, v3.1.1 -> v3.1.2 - Several improvements of the User Manual, e.g., about snapshot trace via IAR Embedded Workbench. - Fixed a potential [...]
New Webinar: Mastering RTOS Debugging Techniques
In this all new webinar, attendees will become familiar with the latest and greatest techniques and tools necessary to debug their code. Important concepts such as properly sizing thread stacks, using event viewers and discovering issues such as priority inversions, deadlock and thread starvation will be examined. The webinar will provide hands-on demonstrations using the [...]
ARM’s new RTOS gets visualization from Percepio
PRESS RELEASE Västerås, Sweden, 14th March 2017 *** Percepio AB, the leading specialist in software tracing tools for real-time operating systems, has been working closely with ARM to develop Tracealyzer for ARM® Keil® RTX5, the new RTOS in Keil MDK and ARM mbed™ OS. Tracealyzer for RTX5 is based on Percepio’s latest Tracealyzer v3.1 platform [...]
Tracealyzer for ThreadX and Renesas Synergy
Leading software tracing tool soon available for the ThreadX RTOS and Renesas Synergy PRESS RELEASE Västerås, Sweden, 14th March 2017 - Percepio AB, the leading specialist in software tracing tools for real-time operating systems has been working closely with Express Logic to develop Tracealyzer for ThreadX. ThreadX from Express Logic is a leading embedded RTOS [...]
Industry leaders form the Embedded Tools Alliance
PRESS RELEASE London, UK: Wed 8th March 2017 Today a number of industry leading companies in the embedded tools industry announce a new milestone in embedded system development - the Embedded Tools Alliance (ETA). The embedded developers' toolbox is complex and involves many components: IDE (Integrated Development Environment), compilers, debuggers, trace tools, test tools, debug [...]
Tracealyzer v3.1.1 – better Eclipse support!
Tracealyzer for FreeRTOS version 3.1.1 is now available on the download page. This is a maintenance release, following up the big v3.1.0 release in december. The main functional improvement is a new Eclipse plugin, making it more convenient to use Tracealyzer with Eclipse-based IDEs like SOMNIUM DRT, Simplicity Studio, and others. The plugin allows for reading trace snapshots via any debug [...]
Using Tracealyzer on Micrium µC/OS-III and Silicon Labs EFM32 devices
Niclas Lindblom Sr. FAE at Percepio Not that long-ago, developers thought that a high-level language was not really needed when building embedded applications. Writing a good UART driver in assembler was done in only a day or two, so why bother with C? Besides, even if you wrote in C, who could trust that [...]
RTOS Tracing on STM32 over USB CDC
Niclas Lindblom Sr. FAE at Percepio As you might know, our Tracealyzer tools allows you to record and visualize the real-time behavior of your RTOS-based firmware. In previous blogs, I’ve talked about the possibility of streaming the trace data from your board, and today we’ll consider one such specific case - USB CDC. A few months [...]
Common RTOS-related Bugs – How Avoid and Detect
Last month at Embedded Conference Scandinavia, Percepio founder Dr. Johan Kraft made a very well received presentation called "Common RTOS-related bugs – How to Avoid and Detect". The presentation covered RTOS basics, the motivations and challenges of using an RTOS, then dived into specific RTOS-related problems - their symptoms, how to avoid them and means [...]
Tracealyzer for FreeRTOS v3.1
We are really excited to finally release Tracealyzer for FreeRTOS version 3.1, our largest update in over a year! Most of the effort has gone into the new trace recorder library, that now provides both snapshot and streaming trace in a single module with just three .c files. It has an improved common API for both [...]
ECS 2016: Common RTOS-related Bugs – How Avoid and Detect
Join us as Embedded Conference Scandinavia (ECS), in Kista (Stockholm, Sweden), November 22-23. Percepio founder Dr. Johan Kraft will give a presentation titled "Common RTOS-related Bugs - How Avoid and Detect". The presentation is on the 23rd, at 09:15 - 10:00 (track 1/M1). See you there! Abstract: Real-time [...]
Tracealyzer helps validate ESEO satellite firmware
When Surrey Space Centre was to validate an RTOS-based communications firmware for an ESA satellite, ESEO, they turned to Percepio Tracealyzer. In this video, Dr Chris Bridges and Pete Bartrum explains the satellite design, requirements and why they decided to use Tracealyzer. As you can imagine, firmware that is going into space has strict requirements on dependability [...]
The RTOS trend and the challenges of using an RTOS
Using an RTOS, or perhaps considering an RTOS for your next project? In that case, we recommend reading our article RTOS Trends and Challenges by Percepio founder Dr. Johan Kraft, featured on Embedded.com. The article discusses the strong RTOS trend in the embedded industry, including the motivations and fundamental challenges of using an RTOS, pitfalls that even caused NASA's JPL some serious problems during the [...]
Tracealyzer walkthrough with Infineon XMC4500 Kit
One of our users wrote a step by step walkthrough for using Tracealyzer for FreeRTOS on an Infineon Cortex-M4F XMC4500 Relax Kit. This is a great getting started guide. Download Infineon Walkthrough .PDF Would you like a walkthrough with your Tracealyzer on your hardware, with your tools? Book a free 45 minute consulting [...]
RTOS Tracing, your way
When debugging an RTOS-based system, tracing can often give a better understanding of the real-time behavior of your system. Percepio Tracealyzer supports two main types of RTOS tracing, snapshot and streaming, both offering the same powerful visualization although streaming allows for collecting longer traces. The Percepio trace recorder offers several options to allow developers to adjust the tracing [...]
New to Tracealyzer?
New to Tracealyzer? Get up and running fast! Book a free 45 minute consulting session with Senior FAE Niclas Lindblom This is not a slideshow presentation. Niclas will assist you to get started with Tracealyzer in a live video conference using your own project, tools, and hardware. Each session is unique. Contact support@percepio.com to book [...]
New Tracealyzer video tutorial series
Check out this new series of Tracealyzer tutorial videos that one of our users made last week. They include everything from using STM32 CubeMX to create a project, configuring the trace library, debug probe, and STM32 Nucleo board, all the way using Tracealyzer to view the FreeRTOS trace data. New Tracealyzer video tutorial series: Tutorial [...]
Getting started with Tracealyzer on Xilinx Zynq
Getting started with Tracealyzer for FreeRTOS on Xilinx Zynq This article shows you how to understand what your real-time system is really doing by adding trace capabilities to a Xilinx Zynq-7000 example project. The trace will then be analyzed using Percepio’s Tracealyzer. The starting point is a Xilinx Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC ZC702 Evaluation Kit, [...]
User Generated Content
Create a piece of content for us - Get a $100 Amazon gift card We’d like to encourage our user community to spread the word about Tracealyzer and help each other with tips and usage ideas, so we have an offer we will keep open until midnight Sunday, 25 September, 2016. We'd like you to host [...]
White Paper: Real time demands on the IoT
Delivering ultra-low power operation in IoT nodes means they will spend most of their time in a dormant mode, waiting to exchange data with a gateway. Could employing an RTOS help deliver a more reliable user experience? Read our latest white paper where Dr. Johan Kraft, Founder and CEO of Percepio, examines some of the [...]
Measuring Time
Microchip just published their latest edition of MicroSolutions including an article about measuring time by Percepio founder Dr. Johan Kraft, in their Design Corner. Download MicroSolutions, check out the article beginning on page 33, and then download a full featured Tracealyzer evaluation! Download MicroSolutions Download Tracealyzer Percepio’s market-leading visualization offers 25+ views, [...]
White Paper: How to visualize response times in FreeRTOS
Being able to measure the timing of RTOS tasks and interrupts is key to understanding the performance of a real-time system. Measuring response time is easy, but then what? Understanding the contributing factors behind performance anomalies requires good visualization that can explain the data. Read our white paper about how Tracealyzer can help you [...]
Day 1 at Microchip Masters!
Day 1 at Microchip Masters Conference. Steve Sanghi, Microchip CEO delivered the keynote, and kicked off 20 years of Microchip Masters Conferences! If you're attending, stop by the Percepio stand, say hello to Niclas and find out about how world leading visualizations can speed your debugging processes. If you're not attending, download Tracealyzer and [...]
New Tracealyzer video explores advanced features
Youtube user "Millsinghion" has made several FreeRTOS video tutorials and recently discovered Tracealyzer for FreeRTOS. Check his new video tutorial, how to get started and how to visualize the real-time behavior of his FreeRTOS system, for instance semaphores, I2C events and ADC readings. Percepio’s market-leading visualization offers 25+ views, which are cleverly interconnected to allow viewing [...]
Percepio lands at Microchip Masters!
After a full 24 hours travel from Sweden to Arizona Niclas has landed at Microchip Masters Conference. If you're attending the conference, stop by, say hello and find out about how world leading visualizations can speed your debugging processes. If you're not attending, download Tracealyzer and see for yourself! Download Tracealyzer Niclas [...]
Three software engineers and a bug
Sometimes debugging a problem can seem like the three blind men encountering an elephant for the first time. Each came in contact with a different part of the elephant and drew completely different conclusions. Read Mike Skrtic's blog on Electronic Specifier, or Download Tracealyzer and see the whole picture for yourself. [...]
RTOS 101: Semaphores and Queues
The use of a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) is increasingly common in embedded software designs. An RTOS makes it easy to divide your code into smaller blocks, tasks, which execute seemingly in parallel and independent of each other, as described in the first article in the RTOS 101 series. Having fully independent tasks is [...]
Open Pilot Next Gen tunes ISR with Tracealyzer
Steve Evans of Open Pilot Next Generation (OPNG) explains how they have used Percepio Tracealyzer to finely tune their flight controllers and ensure deterministic performance. They needed to perform some in depth analysis of their code timing, which runs on an STM32F4xx MCU under FreeRTOS. The best single characteristic of Tracealyzer for FreeRTOS can be summed up [...]
Visualization improves real-time software design and debugging
Humans are really great at assimilating visual data. Percepio Founder and CEO Dr. Johan Kraft discusses visualization and debugging real-time systems with Rich Nass. Percepio’s market-leading visualization offers 25+ views, which are cleverly interconnected to allow viewing the trace from multiple perspectives, for instance CPU usage, memory allocation, task synchronization and [...]
Tracealyzer for Micrium µC/OS-III
We are proud to announce the availability of Tracealyzer for µC/OS-III, targeting embedded software developers using Micrium's popular RTOS. In collaboration with Micrium we have also integrated support for Tracealyzer in the latest version of µC/OS-III (v3.0.6) which makes it very easy to get started. Tracealyzer for µC/OS-III visualizes the real-time behavior of the firmware running Micrium µC/OS-III and [...]
Customer Case: Mysterious Watchdog Reset
We collect examples of how Tracealyzer has been of used by our customers and have recreated these cases to illustrate the benefits of trace visualization for embedded software developers. In this case, a customer had an issue with a randomly occurring reset. By placing a break point in the reset exception handler, they figured out that it was [...]
Using ST-Link for RTOS trace streaming
Have you ever tried recording what happens in an RTOS-based firmware to find some bug or tune the performance? You will quickly find that there is a lot of interesting stuff going on, like in the below view from Tracealyzer showing a 50 millisecond section of a much longer trace. There are plenty of interrupts and [...]
Percepio Tracealyzer Supports FreeRTOS version 9.0
Leading embedded software tracing tool provides immediate support for latest FreeRTOS release Västerås, Sweden, 14th June 2016 - Percepio AB, the Swedish developer of RTOS visualization tools, announces the latest release of Tracealyzer, version 3.0.7 to support the newly released FreeRTOS version 9.0. This latest release of the leading embedded software tracing tool [...]
ARM ITM: why you need a fast debug probe!
When developing embedded software, a good understanding of the real-time behavior is vital. At Percepio we develop the Tracealyzer tools for RTOS trace visualization, but this post is about a related technology from ARM that we believe is of general interest to any developer using ARM-based MCUs. Having some form of diagnostic logging/tracing is necessary in most [...]
New website
We have just published our updated website, I hope you like the new design! There are a few issues remaining, especially the product pages don't look great at the moment. This will be fixed within the next days.
Starting with FreeRTOS and Tracealyzer on Renesas RZ/A1
Today I received an interesting new board to play with, a Computex board with a powerful Renesas RZ/A1 processor shown below. This has an ARM Cortex-A9 core at 400 MHz and 3 MB on-chip RAM. And if that is not enough, there is another 32 MB RAM on the board. Quite a lot of power [...]
Hands on at Embedded Masterclass
Niclas Lindblom, Percepio's new FAE is down in Benelux with Richard Barry of FreeRTOS fame, and our distributor Indes on the second of three Embedded Masterclass training seminars. This is the hands on session of the third Embedded Masterclass. If you are interested in having such a class in your area, let us know at info@percepio.com [...]
Tracing Exceptions on ARM Cortex-M MCUs
Software tracing comes in two main flavors, software-defined trace and hardware-defined trace. Hardware-defined trace means that the processor outputs a trace of low-level software events, such as control-flow branches and exceptions/interrupts. The resulting trace is very detailed and can therefore be overwhelming - you don't see the forest for all the trees! Software-defined trace means [...]