Author Topic: alternative to UART for microcontroller debugging.  (Read 2494 times)

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Offline dunkTopic starter

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alternative to UART for microcontroller debugging.
« on: August 02, 2008, 03:19:51 PM »
so you know every now and again you get an idea which seems really obvious in retrospect?

so i'm currently working on a little radio receiver that's going to live in a RC glider i'm building.
it turned out a little bigger than i would have liked it and i got to thinking how i could reduce the board size.
i usually put UART header pins on anything i build with a microcontroller in it so i can output debug text if i run into software problems.

the breakthrough i had was rather than connect the UART to a computer running terminal software,
i can just save the debug info to the microcontroller's EPROM and then copy it off afterwards using the programming cable and save it as a text file.

like i say, simple in retrospect.
i wonder now why i had never thought of doing it before.
thought it was worth sharing as i've never seen reference to anyone else getting feedback from their microcontroller this way so maybe i'm not the only one missing this useful debug tool.

dunk.

Offline izua

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Re: alternative to UART for microcontroller debugging.
« Reply #1 on: August 02, 2008, 04:09:38 PM »
I've done EEPROM writes a few times for debugging. It's not really a pleasant way, you know. But it's useful if you don't have any other means of communication. IR, for example, would be killer in this kind of situation.

hmm, can you post the schematics for the radio receiver? :D is the emitter also suitable for robotics?
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Offline dunkTopic starter

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Re: alternative to UART for microcontroller debugging.
« Reply #2 on: August 03, 2008, 05:04:10 PM »
Quote
IR, for example, would be killer in this kind of situation.
IR would not be any more useful than UART header pins in this application.

Quote
hmm, can you post the schematics for the radio receiver?  is the emitter also suitable for robotics?
i'm using cheap RF radio modules.
far more reliable than home built radio from my experience.

can't be bothered uploading the schematic for the receiver but it's just an AVR with the RX module connected to it's UART.
the transmitter circuit is a PS2 gamepad connected to an AVR and the transmitter module.

dunk.

 


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