ClariFi adds tracing to analyse high-speed events in embedded Wi-Fi & Bluetooth applications

ClariFi Insight traces the behavior of a system, enabling developers to more easily identify and correct errant application behaviour by capturing high-speed events. This has been successfully tested at speeds of 100mbit/s UDP over Wi-Fi.

Unlike many debug tools, ClariFi Insight is non-intrusive and does not interfere with the normal behavior and functionality of embedded Wi-Fi and Bluetooth applications. Such interference is particularly problematic with high-speed applications as the typical trace debug process creates interruptions that interfere with system sequencing and performance. The small footprint of ClariFi Insight ensures that developers can trace and debug high-speed events without slowing the software application and impacting normal system behavior.

ClariFi Insight simplifies Wi-Fi and Bluetooth application analysis

As the high-speed connectivity of embedded systems increases, so has the challenge of debugging system behavior. The trend toward cloud connectivity, remote management and increased system integration requires once disparate systems to now work together. Firmware from multiple silicon vendors, real-time operating systems (RTOS)/operating systems (OS), and TCP/IP stack combine with a plethora of drivers such as USB, UART, and SDIO, as well as the connectivity stacks all operating under the customer’s own embedded application layer. ClariFi Insight provides information about how the various parts function and perform as they communicate and pass data to the ClarinoxWiFi and ClarinoxBlue components.

“Debugging high-speed, highly integrated systems can be a nightmare for developers these days. ClariFi Insight reduces that challenge, providing clarity into the behavior of even high-speed Wi-Fi, such as video streaming from a camera over Wi-Fi at tens of megabits speed,” said Gokhan Tanyeri, CTO, Clarinox Technologies. “ClariFi Insight is designed for debugging performance issues, but it can also be helpful for projects without a spare port for debugging or where the communications port, such as UART, is too slow to capture the high-speed events. It can also be used for Bluetooth applications such as A2DP music streaming.”

How ClariFi Insight works

ClariFi Insight uses a small memory buffer at a set memory location to trace functionality. A buffer — as small as a few kilobytes — is sufficient to enable a developer to debug a system crash or capture what is taking place on the target. When coupled with the option of defining custom events with short or long packets of data, these insights give engineers the visibility needed to trace whether one part of the system is attempting to communicate and/or pass data incorrectly or at the wrong time — typical factors that result in aberrant system behaviour.

Once ClariFi Insight records the predefined events, the data can be read into ClariFi, where the full set of tools, including the Lua scripting capability, can search and fully analyse the information. The ClariFi Insight information can then be used with or without these other ClariFi debug, protocol analysis, and automated testing features. ClariFi Insight performance measurements could, for example, be taken during an automated testing session driven by ClariFi scripting engine. Various data formats are supported for reading the data by ClariFi; currently raw binary, Intel hex format or Motorola S format is supported.

“Because of ClariFi Insight’ small, non-intrusive nature, application developers can embed it in the release code,” Trish Messiter, Clarinox Technologies, CEO added. “When added to the release code, ClariFi Insight can be used to collect data on customer-reported issues from the field, if needed. Developers — and their customers — can rest assured that any bugs that happen not only during development, but also afterwards, can be traced and fixed.”