Given that my embedded Gadgeteer hardware is actually embedded in a sealed pressure housing, a wireless debug connection would be really useful. Based on the posts I’ve seen on this forum, it looks like this is doable with Bluetooth on a serial port. That sounds good to me since I already have one serial/Bluetooth connection that I use for data transfer to a PC using a pair of these The Best Motorcycle & Action Sport Bluetooth Devices | Sena . Before i start down this path I just had a few questions.
is debugging over serial/Bluetooth a realistic scenario, i.e., is it as stable as debugging over the USB port?
I tend to use a lot of Debug.Print messages. I can easily generate a couple KBytes/second of debug messages that I review after my app finishes. My Bluetooth gizmos have a max baud rate of 115K. How much of that bandwidth is already taken up by debug overhead and how much might I reasonably expect to be available for my debug.print messages?
Has anyone seen a straight wireless USB adapter (not necessarily networking over USB) that might work for debugging?
I’m using a Spider board but would also be interested in doing this same thing on a G120HDR.
I use serial debugging (because I need both USB host and client) converted back to USB with the FTDI chip and this works like a train, no difference noticed between USB debugging. So i guess Bluetooth should work just fine if the distance is reasonable.
I guess I’m not sure exactly how to switch to serial debugging. I’ve got my Bluetooth adapter plugged into a USB to serial adapter on COM 7 on my PC. I’ve got an identical Bluetooth gizmo hooked up to COM1 on my Spider. I’ve changed the project deployment setting in Visual Studio to use Serial Transport on COM7. When I hit the “Start Debugging” arrow all I get is a “Unable to communicate with device - Serial:COM7” error in the VS Error List. I’m pretty sure the Bluetooth connection is up because I have a program that sends data from my Spider up to the PC using the same serial/Bluetooth ports.
Help or a nudge toward any documentation that describes how to deploy/debug over the serial port will be greatly appreciated.
I don’t have a spider but since it’s based on EMX have a look at : http://www.ghielectronics.com/downloads/man/EMX_User_Manual.pdf
Section 5.2 H/W Access Interface and 9.2. Debugging Interface (Access Interface), should be LMODE pin IO71 on the EMX if I’m not wrong
I think that answers my questions. It looks like I have to set the configuration switches for Serial debug. Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait until the next time I crack the pressure housing to give it a try.
I have tested debugging over bluetooth. I had a silly video on the wiki for a while. Deployment over bluetooth is a bit slower than USB, but it is doable.
Just make sure that your bluetooth modules’ serial interface is set to a fixed 115k baud as the debug interface runs at that and nothing else…
