Monitoring and recording the serial interface output of a microcontroller attached to an UART interface

Entwicklung / Development Firmwareschmiede / Firmware development
1

SBC-based serial data logger

Introduction

For continuous detached-but-not-quite babysitting-like debugging of the system at runtime, we are using a console monitor for the datalogger in order to be able to watch and record the serial interface output of the MCU.

For building this, get ready to integrate the listed components easily. We assume the system to be used for monitoring the other system is running Linux already.

Setup

apt install tmux build-essential
git clone https://github.com/openmoko/neocon /tmp/neocon
cd /tmp/neocon
make
make install

Operation

Synopsis

tmux new -s sermon "neocon -l /home/pi/sermon-workbench-fipy.log -a /dev/ttyACM0"

Description

This guy will

  • Attach neocon to the given UART interface.
  • Log its output to a file, eventually appending to that file. This will never overwrite existing data, e.g. after restarting the SBC system or the monitor program.
  • Run the whole shebang inside Tmux in order to be able to reattach interactively to the session later and to keep the software running after logging out of the SBC’s remote console.

Usage

  • Use CTRL+B, D to detach from the tmux session.
  • Use CTRL+D to log out from the SBC’s remote console.
  • Use tmux attach -t sermon to attach to the tmux session after logging back in into the SBC’s remote console.
  • As the UART output is also redirected to a file, watching it is as easy as invoking tail -F /home/pi/sermon-workbench-fipy.log.
2

AVR-based serial data logger