debugging News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

June 30, 2022June 30, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

tio is a serial device I/O tool for Linux targeted at embedded developers

There are already several serial terminal programs such as Putty and minicom, and in recent times, I’ve been using Bootterm myself. But that does not mean there isn’t room for more and Martin Lund has developed tio serial device I/O tool for Linux. Martin found out many of the existing tools are very modem focused or a bit cumbersome to use, so he developed tio as the simpler alternative which puts less focus on classic terminal/modem features and more focus on the needs of embedded developers and hackers. While it’s possible to build tio from source…

$ git clone https://github.com/tio/tio
$ meson build
$ meson compile -C build
$ sudo meson install -C build

$ git clone https://github.com/tio/tio

$ meson build

$ meson compile -C build

$ sudo meson install -C build

it’s much easier to install as a snap (and you should get updates automatically):

$ snap install tio --classic

1	$ snap install tio --classic

Let’s see the options offered with the “help” parameter:

tio --help
Usage: /snap/tio/438/usr/bin/tio [<options>] <tty-device|config>

Options:
  -b, --baudrate <bps>             Baud rate (default: 115200)
  -d, --databits 5|6|7|8           Data bits (default: 8)
  -f, --flow hard|soft|none        Flow control (default: none)
  -s, --stopbits 1|2               Stop bits (default: 1)
  -p, --parity odd|even|none       Parity (default: none)
  -o, --output-delay <ms>          Output delay (default: 0)
  -n, --no-autoconnect             Disable automatic connect
  -e, --local-echo                 Enable local echo
  -t, --timestamp                  Enable line timestamp
      --timestamp-format <format>  Set timestamp format (default: 24hour)
  -L, --list-devices               List available serial devices
  -l, --log                        Enable log to file
      --log-file <filename>        Set log filename
      --log-strip                  Strip control characters and escape sequences
  -m, --map <flags>                Map special characters
  -c, --color 0..255|none|list     Colorize tio text (default: 15)
  -S, --socket <socket>            Redirect I/O to socket
  -x, --hex-mode                   Enable hexadecimal mode
  -v, --version                    Display version
  -h, --help                       Display help

Options may be set via configuration file.

In session, press ctrl-t q to quit.

See the man page for more details.

tio --help

Usage: /snap/tio/438/usr/bin/tio [<options>] <tty-device|config>

Options:

-b, --baudrate <bps> Baud rate (default: 115200)

-d, --databits 5|6|7|8 Data bits (default: 8)

-f, --flow hard|soft|none Flow control (default: none)

-s, --stopbits 1|2 Stop bits (default: 1)

-p, --parity odd|even|none Parity (default: none)

-o, --output-delay <ms> Output delay (default: 0)

-n, --no-autoconnect Disable automatic connect

-e, --local-echo Enable local echo

-t, --timestamp Enable line timestamp

--timestamp-format <format> Set timestamp format (default: 24hour)

-L, --list-devices List available serial devices

-l, --log Enable log to file

--log-file <filename> Set log filename

--log-strip Strip control characters and escape sequences

-m, --map <flags> Map special characters

-c, --color 0..255|none|list Colorize tio text (default: 15)

-S, --socket <socket> Redirect I/O to socket

-x, --hex-mode Enable hexadecimal mode

-v, --version Display version

-h, --help Display help

Options may be set via configuration file.

In session, press ctrl-t q to quit.

See the man page for more details.

I’ve connected a USB to TTL board to check it out:

$ tio -L
/dev/serial/by-id/usb-1a86_USB2.0-Serial-if00-port0

1 2	$ tio -L /dev/serial/by-id/usb-1a86_USB2.0-Serial-if00-port0

It’s detected properly, but not exactly in the usual way since the board is attached to […]

April 24, 2022April 24, 2022 by Sponsored Post - 7 Comments

StarFive releases Perf tool for highest performance RISC-V IP Dubhe (Sponsored)

As a StarFive Technology in-house developed RISC-V 64-bit ultra-high-performance core, Dubhe showcases the best performance RISC-V CPU core IP yet. It utilizes the latest RISC-V instruction set which includes RV64GC, bit operation extension (B), vector extension (V) V1.0, and hypervisor extension H (Hypervisor), making it ideal for high-performance computing. To pair with the Dubhe performance core, StarFive is now releasing “StarFive Perf Performance Profiling Tool”. StarFive has made Perf compatible with the hardware performance monitor (HPM) and micro-architecture events at the hardware level. Perf provides a reliable performance verification platform that not only facilitates customers to further discuss the Dubhe technical specifications but also accelerates the implementation of high-performance applications with RISC-V processors. Perf is an open-source and Linux-based performance analyzing tool capable of providing performance monitoring of the hardware events, tracepoints, firmware events, and dynamic probes. With the Perf profiling tool, we can monitor the performance of the predefined […]

April 19, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

WCH CH343 USB to serial chips support 1.8V to 5V IO voltage, 6 Mbps baud rate, custom VID/PID

WCH CH340 family of USB to serial chip is very popular, and often found on development boards for debugging/access to the serial console, but the company has now introduced the CH343 “Gen3” chip – just like CH9102F apparently – with a higher 6 Mbps baud rate, support for 1.8V, 2.5V, 3.3V, and 5V IO voltage, and the ability to request custom USB VID/PID numbers. Three variants exist with CH343P, CH343G, and CH343K with different packages: QFN16, SOP16, and ESSOP10 respectively. CH343P contains an EEPROM for easy customization, while CH343G and CH343K PID/VID can still be customized for larger orders. CH343 key features and specifications: Full-speed USB 2.0 device interface Hardware full-duplex serial UART interface with baud rate varies from 50bps to 6Mbps. Automatic identification and dynamic adaptation of common communication baud rate of 115200bps and below. Supports 5, 6, 7, or 8 data bits, as well as odd, even, space, […]

April 15, 2022April 15, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

ESP USB Bridge project converts ESP32-S2 or ESP32-S3 into a USB to UART/JTAG chip

Espressif’s ESP USB Bridge is a project based on the ESP-IDF that leverages ESP32-S2 or ESP32-S3 USB interface to use the board as a USB to UART or USB to JTAG debug board. It can serve as a substitute for USB to TTL debug boards based on CH340 or CP2104 for instance, be used with OpenOCD in JTAG bridge mode, and also flash UF2 firmware file to the target board. As just mentioned, there are three main use cases: Serial bridge mode with a terminal program or a firmware flashing tool like esptool. In that case, it just works like your typical USB to TTL debug board JTAG bridge mode for JTAG debugging with OpenOCD, and if the target board is based on ESP32, you can use openocd-esp32 project Mass storage device where the board can be accessed by a file manager on the host computer. One of the specific […]

March 4, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

WCH CH348 is an 8-port USB to serial chip with up to 48 GPIOs

If you need to control or debug multiple devices over UART devices, you’d be glad to learn WCH has just launched the CH348 USB to serial chip with eight UART ports. Two models are offered CH348L in an LQFP100 package and CH348Q in an LQFP48 package. Both offer eight UART interfaces, but CH348L comes with more CTS/RTS and DTR/hardware flow control signals, as well as DTR, DCD, RI signals, and support for independent voltage for I/Os. CH348 key features specifications: High-speed USB device interface Hardware full-duplex serial port, integrated independent transmit-receive buffer Baud rate varies from 1200bps to 6Mbps. The serial ports support 8 data bits, odd, even, and none parity, 1/2 stop bit. Each serial port comes with a 2048-byte receiving FIFO and a 1024-byte transmitting FIFO. Signals RTS, DTR, DCD, RI, DSR, and CTS supported for hardware flow control The MODEM interface signal pins and 485 transmit and […]

November 2, 2021November 9, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Linux 5.15 LTS release – Main Changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds released Linux 5.15, an LTS version, this past Sunday: It’s been calm, and I have no excuse to add an extra rc, so here we are, with v5.15 pushed out, and the merge window starting tomorrow. Which is going to be a bit inconvenient for me, since I also have some conference travel coming up. But it’s only a couple of days and I’ll have my laptop with me. Sometimes the release timing works out, and sometimes it doesn’t.. Anyway, the last week of 5.15 was mainly networking and gpu fixes, with some random sprinkling of other things (a few btrfs reverts, some kvm updates, minor other fixes here and there – a few architecture fixes, couple of tracing, small driver fixes etc). Full shortlog appended. This release may have started out with some -Werror pain, but it calmed down fairly quickly and on the whole 5.15 was […]

October 19, 2021May 27, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Cortex-M55 based Arm Virtual Hardware is now available in AWS Cloud

The Arm DevSummit 2021 is taking place on October 19-21, and the first announcements from Arm are related to IoT with “Arm Total Solutions for IoT delivering a full-stack solution to significantly accelerate IoT product development and improve product ROI”, “Project Centauri” aiming to achieve for an extensive Arm Cortex-M software ecosystem in the way that Project Cassini does for the Cortex-A ecosystem, starting with support for PSA Certified and Open-CMSIS-CDI cloud-to-device specification, and Arm Virtual Hardware based on Corstone-300 IoT platform with a Cortex-M55 MCU core and an Ethos-U55 microNPU accessible from Amazon Web Services. The first two are quite abstract right now, and more information may become available in the future, but the Arm Virtual Hardware is available now from AWS as a public beta, with 100 hours of free AWS EC2 CPU credits for the first 1,000 qualified users. The virtual hardware does not emulate only the […]

September 14, 2021September 14, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 25 Comments

CH9102F – A replacement for CP2104 USB to UART bridge

I’ve just mentioned Silabs CP2104 USB to UART chip price had increased, and indicated WCH CH9102F chip could be used as an alternative instead in a post about LILYGO T-Display boards. I had never heard about CH9102 chips before (CH9102F and CH9102X), so I decided to investigate a bit more by checking out both CH9102 and CP2104 datasheets. The good news is that CH9102F and CP2104 have basically both the same pinout albeit with some small differences that may or may not matter depending on the application, and come in a 4x4mm 24-QFN package (4x4mm) meaning if you run out of CP2104 chips, CH9102F can be used as an alternative, and should be a drop-in replacement. CH9102X is pretty similar to CH9102F but offered in a 5x5mm 28-QFN package with extra GPIOs. Back to the main contenders… According to LILYGO, one of the differences between CH9102F and CP2104 is the […]