Print to File

[jwizard93]

Is it possible to redirect the output while running the VS2013 Debugger with a Netmf 4.3 app.

Answers about how to do this normally include adding the redirection command line argument in Project Settings -> Debug.

This section of the settings is greyed out in my case.

I’m just trying to store a big CSV file in which I will capture 100 entries per second for upwards of two hours using Debug.Print()

Anyone know the best way to accomplish this?

[Brett]

debug.print x100 per second, I’d suggest you will struggle with the data rate, irrespective of getting it into a file. There’s a lot of things debug.print is good for, but this I’m suspecting is not one… string manipulation will likely put you in a GC spin.

[jwizard93]

Hi Brett,

Thanks for sharing your concern.

I ran this program for about 30 mins last night. The number of entries in the output matched the frequency of printing and duration of the experiment while simultaneously running the main app with a barely noticeable lag in performance from time to time. So I have no worries about this not working, it’s just an experiment to gather data about my battery life anyway.

I think it works because my app doesn’t have much work to do, it just needs to accomplish it quickly (in terms of human perception of latency) when it has work to do. So adding prints is probably just filling in the dead time.

I imagine after 180000 prints the GC ran multiple times (right?) that would explain the occasional hiccup anyway. But I’m not sure. When I’m not using the wireless link (which i’m not in this experiment) the Debug.Print would be the only thing causing allocation.

I found out I can save the contents of the Output Window after the fact using File -> Save Output. This gets the job done but a more configurable solution using redirection or something like that is still welcome. I still have to go in and clean out lines not printed explicitly by my code.

[Mike]

Check MFDeploy. It might have something to help.

MFDeploy uses a DDL to interface with device. With a little research and study, you should be able to capture the debug output with a simple program using the DLL.

[Brett]

ah, if it’s just your own data logging interest/concern and you’re not really doing too much other processing, there’s a chance it’ll work. You can even try to be smart(er) a bit about allocating strings and concatenating, all those things create more work for the GC…

Of course debug.print is just one way to get data out a serial port and into a PC. Using a terminal program (teraterm etc) you can direct output to a file easily, and don’t need to worry about a crash or something else causing a disruption. I’d set up a serial connection to a PC and do it explicitly rather than the hassle of figuring out how to get output windows or mfdeploy output captured.

[RoSchmi]

Hi,
some months ago I wanted to log the MFDeploy Output and, with the help of this community, made two PC WindowsForms Applications to write the output to a file on the PC.
Perhaps it helps.

Logger for MFDeploy Output

Hello, to debug an application that occasionally hangs I would like to have a logger for the program messages that show up in MFDeploy. I found that there is an API to use the MFDeploy functions but before reinventing the wheel I wanted to ask if someone has done this before and would be so kind to provide the code.

here is the link to download the programs:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vOiZ68v8DEgLwWxXN8eW9Wmu3kDoKYxC/view?usp=sharing

[jwizard93]

Well, I have no idea what changed since the other day. I used git to keep it the same! Maybe I simply got lucky a few times in a row with how the CLR was scheduling things. But everything you said came to fruition and it is only good for a couple minutes before it just freezes with no output or exception-thrown messages.

Serial link it is, then.

@RoSchmi thanks for sharing this MFDeploy based project. It is in my list of future tasks to explore MFDeploy and try to eliminate my need to distribute third party software including Fez Config. I hope this comes in handy for studying.

Thanks to all.

[Justin]

Set the option Redirect all Output Window text to the Immediate Window. We find it in Tools → Options → Debugging → General (fifth to last item).

Open the Immediate Window: Ctrl + Alt + I or Debug → Windows → Immediate Window

Enter a command like the following in the Immediate window:

> Tools.LogCommandWindowOutput /on C:\temp\mylogfile.txt

To stop writing to the file, enter the following command in the Immediate window:

> Tools.LogCommandWindowOutput /off