Introducing Analyzer2Go

Today we are excited to announce a new product that makes embedded development a bit easier.

It is the further evolution of the real-time watch feature that allowed the users of VisualGDB to see the precise timings of their code by automatically instrumenting it. With Analyzer2Go we took this approach even further – now you can use your development board to record, save and analyze digital signals in your design without no special logic analyzer hardware.

We designed Analyzer2Go to be extremely easy-to-use. It will automatically locate your board, install the necessary drivers and upload the necessary firmware. All you need to do is click on the signals on the board picture to immediately see a live data feed:05-zoomed

The Analyzer2Go firmware uses a thoroughly optimized DMA-based capture mode that allows sampling signals at high speeds (e.g. up to 72 MHz on STM32F746-Nucleo) and ran rigorous tests to ensure that the sampling is always properly timed.

We have designed Analyzer2Go to be intuitive and help you focus on the signals you are exploring instead of fighting the tools. Easy navigation for sparse signals, automatic zooming, powerful preview bar, previous frame history, so you can always roll a few frames back if your eye caught something suspicious… We have even added a note mechanism that allows you to easily place color-coded notes attached to different events and time spans, so you can keep a track of the meaning of the observed signals and not just their shape:notes

For slower signals we added a special continuous capture mode that can record gigabytes of logs continuously into a special optimized format that allows opening and browsing through them quickly no matter how large the log is.

To make it even more fun, we added easy-to-use drag-and-drop protocol analyzers for the UART, SPI, I2S and I2C protocols that support full-text search (optimized fur huge files, of course) and can automatically synchronize the timing view with the decoded data view:11-foundAnalyzer2Go currently supports 8 popular development boards from ST and we are planning to add support for more.

You can download it here and browse through some step-by-step tutorials on this page.

As always, we will be happy to hear your feedback and suggestions, so feel free to reach as via our support page. Enjoy!

VisualGDB 5.2 Beta 1 is out

Today we are proud to release VisualGDB 5.2 Beta 1. Aside from seamless unit test support for Embedded, Linux and Android projects, better Clang IntelliSense engine, Real-time Watch and a new MSBuild backend, it includes numerous usability improvements that make the development experience more streamlined and removes some annoying distractions. Let’s have a quick look through the main changes.

Continue reading VisualGDB 5.2 Beta 1 is out →

10 Reasons to Try Out MSBuild for your VisualGDB Projects

We have just released VisualGDB 5.2 Preview 3 that comes with out-of-the-box MSBuild support for Embedded and Linux projects (using both remote toolchains and Windows cross-toolchains). It is a lucrative alternative to the GNU Make and CMake build systems that VisualGDB supports as well, so let’s go through the main 10 reasons why it’s worth checking out.

Continue reading 10 Reasons to Try Out MSBuild for your VisualGDB Projects →

Introducing Dynamic Stack Verifier

One of the features most wanted from VisualGDB before version 5.2 was to detect stack overflows on embedded devices. On a typical ARM Cortex microcontroller where every byte counts, running out of stack space is not something out of the ordinary, and it can have catastrophic consequences and be hard to debug. So VisualGDB 5.2 Preview 2 comes with a feature that makes the stack usage analysis completely automatic and tracks the overflow event when it happens:break Continue reading Introducing Dynamic Stack Verifier →

Introducing the new Real-time Watch

One of the toughest types of problems faced by embedded software developers is timing problems. Seeing what exactly happened before a problem popped up and being able to put multiple events on one scale could save hours of time. The previous version of VisualGDB included an embedded profiler that could collect statistics on the runtime of various functions. VisualGDB 5.2 takes this even further and introduces Real-time watch – a framework for convenient recording and visualization of various real-time events in your program that works out-of-the-box with FreeRTOS and supports non-RTOS environments as well:rtw

Continue reading Introducing the new Real-time Watch →

The New Dependency View in Embedded Memory Explorer

Embedded Memory Explorer is one of the most loved Embedded features of VisualGDB. It helps you keep track of the FLASH and RAM used by your embedded project so you can be sure that your program fits into your device memory:memexpThe new VisualGDB 5.2 comes with a feature that makes this window even more efficient at finding out why is your program bigger than you wanted it to be. Continue reading The New Dependency View in Embedded Memory Explorer →

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