Category Archives: debugging

“DB” = Abbreviated Microcontroller Debugging

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We’ve all been there. When debugging a microcontroller project, we just want to put in a print statement to figure out what’s going on with the microcontroller in real time. However, advanced embedded programmers know that printf statements are verboten: they’re just too SLOW. While not fixing this plight entirely, [Atakan Sarioglu] has come up with a clever way to create readable debug messages with minimal runtime overhead.

[Atakan Sarioglu]’s innovation, called BigBug (Github), is a dynamically-generated codebook. The codebook translates abbreviated messages sent over serial (UART here) to longer-form human-readable messages. To generate the codebook, BigBug automatically parses your …read more

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Debugging Arduino is Painful: This Can Help

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If you are used to coding with almost any modern tool except the Arduino IDE, you are probably accustomed to having on-chip debugging. Sometimes having that visibility inside the code makes all the difference for squashing bugs. But for the Arduino, most of us resort to just printing print statements in our code to observe behavior. When the code works, we take the print statements out. [JoaoLopesF] wanted something better. So he created an Arduino library and a desktop application that lets you have a little better window into your program’s execution.

To be honest, it isn’t really a debugger …read more

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Why does my stack contain the return address to __libc_csu_init after main is initialised?

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I wrote a simple program in C, compiled it, opened it in gdb, set a breakpoint at line 11 and inspected the stack.

1 #include<stdio.h>
2
3 int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
4 char arr[4] = “AABB”;
5 i… Continue reading Why does my stack contain the return address to __libc_csu_init after main is initialised?→

Simulate PIC and Arduino/AVR Designs with no Cloud

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I’ve always appreciated simulation tools. Sure, there’s no substitute for actually building a circuit but it sure is handy if you can fix a lot of easy problems before you start soldering and making PCBs. I’ve done quite a few posts on LTSpice and I’m also a big fan of the Falstad simulator in the browser. However, both of those don’t do a lot for you if a microcontroller is a major part of your design. I recently found an open source project called Simulide that has a few issues but does a credible job of mixed simulation. It allows …read more

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How to extract the information about the stack or EIP/RIP registers from the ASAN (sanitizer) crash output?

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I am testing Netwide Assembler(NASM) and verifying the latest bug [CVE-2018-10254] Stack-buffer-overflow (out of bound read).

I am trying to overwrite the EIP/RIP and make it crash but I don’t know why it is not crashing wit… Continue reading How to extract the information about the stack or EIP/RIP registers from the ASAN (sanitizer) crash output?→

CortexProg Is A Real ARM-Twister

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We’ve got a small box of microcontroller programmers on our desktop. AVR, PIC, and ARM, or at least the STMicro version of ARM. Why? Some program faster, some debug better, some have nicer cables, and others, well, we’re just sentimental about. Don’t judge.

[Dmitry Grinberg], on the other hand, is searching for the One Ring. Or at least the One Ring for ARM microcontrollers. You see, while all ARM chips have the same core, and thus the same SWD debugging interface, they all write to flash differently. So if you do ARM development with offerings from different chip vendors, you …read more

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CortexProg Is A Real ARM-Twister

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We’ve got a small box of microcontroller programmers on our desktop. AVR, PIC, and ARM, or at least the STMicro version of ARM. Why? Some program faster, some debug better, some have nicer cables, and others, well, we’re just sentimental about. Don’t judge.

[Dmitry Grinberg], on the other hand, is searching for the One Ring. Or at least the One Ring for ARM microcontrollers. You see, while all ARM chips have the same core, and thus the same SWD debugging interface, they all write to flash differently. So if you do ARM development with offerings from different chip vendors, you …read more

Continue reading CortexProg Is A Real ARM-Twister→