DIPS: Debug Intermittently-Powered Systems Like Any Embedded System

J. de Winkel; T.S. Hoefnagel; B.T. Blokland; P. Pawełczak

doi:10.1145/3560905.3568543

DIPS: Debug Intermittently-Powered Systems Like Any Embedded System

J. de Winkel, T.S. Hoefnagel, B.T. Blokland, P. Pawełczak

Embedded Systems

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volume › Conference contribution › Scientific › peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

47 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Debugging and testing battery-free intermittently-powered systems is notoriously difficult. This is not only due to the additional complexity of maintaining state through power failures but also due to the lack of proper tools to test and debug these systems. As a solution, we present DIPS: a fully-featured hardware debugger for battery-free intermittently-powered systems capable of automatically verifying memory and peripheral state between power failures. Our solution seamlessly integrates an emulator allowing for emulation of any power scenario to the device under test. This allows our debugger to pause emulation and program execution when debugging or when state restoration issues are detected. Our new system is built around GNU Debugger (GDB): a widely-used debugging tool. Therefore, DIPS allows for a debugging process identical to state-of-the-art debuggers for continuously-powered devices. User studies found that our debugger is easy and intuitive to use. It allows embedded system developers to find bugs quicker in code written for battery-free devices. With our debugger we found unseen errors in state-of-the-art software frameworks for intermittently-powered systems.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	SenSys 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages	222–235
Number of pages	14
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450398862
ISBN (Print)	978-1-4503-9886-2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3560905.3568543
Publication status	Published - 2022
Event	20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, Sensys 2022 - Boston, United States Duration: 6 Nov 2022 → 9 Nov 2022

Publication series

Name	SenSys 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems

Conference

Conference	20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, Sensys 2022
Country/Territory	United States
City	Boston
Period	6/11/22 → 9/11/22

Keywords

Debugging
Software Testing
Emulation
Intermittent Systems

Access to Document

10.1145/3560905.3568543Licence: CC BY

3560905.3568543Final published version, 10.6 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

de Winkel, J., Hoefnagel, T. S., Blokland, B. T., & Pawełczak, P. (2022). DIPS: Debug Intermittently-Powered Systems Like Any Embedded System. In SenSys 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (pp. 222–235). (SenSys 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). https://doi.org/10.1145/3560905.3568543

de Winkel, J. ; Hoefnagel, T.S. ; Blokland, B.T. et al. / DIPS: Debug Intermittently-Powered Systems Like Any Embedded System. SenSys 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2022. pp. 222–235 (SenSys 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems).

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abstract = "Debugging and testing battery-free intermittently-powered systems is notoriously difficult. This is not only due to the additional complexity of maintaining state through power failures but also due to the lack of proper tools to test and debug these systems. As a solution, we present DIPS: a fully-featured hardware debugger for battery-free intermittently-powered systems capable of automatically verifying memory and peripheral state between power failures. Our solution seamlessly integrates an emulator allowing for emulation of any power scenario to the device under test. This allows our debugger to pause emulation and program execution when debugging or when state restoration issues are detected. Our new system is built around GNU Debugger (GDB): a widely-used debugging tool. Therefore, DIPS allows for a debugging process identical to state-of-the-art debuggers for continuously-powered devices. User studies found that our debugger is easy and intuitive to use. It allows embedded system developers to find bugs quicker in code written for battery-free devices. With our debugger we found unseen errors in state-of-the-art software frameworks for intermittently-powered systems.",

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de Winkel, J, Hoefnagel, TS, Blokland, BT & Pawełczak, P 2022, DIPS: Debug Intermittently-Powered Systems Like Any Embedded System. in SenSys 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems. SenSys 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), pp. 222–235, 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, Sensys 2022, Boston, United States, 6/11/22. https://doi.org/10.1145/3560905.3568543

DIPS: Debug Intermittently-Powered Systems Like Any Embedded System. / de Winkel, J.; Hoefnagel, T.S.; Blokland, B.T. et al.
SenSys 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2022. p. 222–235 (SenSys 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volume › Conference contribution › Scientific › peer-review

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AB - Debugging and testing battery-free intermittently-powered systems is notoriously difficult. This is not only due to the additional complexity of maintaining state through power failures but also due to the lack of proper tools to test and debug these systems. As a solution, we present DIPS: a fully-featured hardware debugger for battery-free intermittently-powered systems capable of automatically verifying memory and peripheral state between power failures. Our solution seamlessly integrates an emulator allowing for emulation of any power scenario to the device under test. This allows our debugger to pause emulation and program execution when debugging or when state restoration issues are detected. Our new system is built around GNU Debugger (GDB): a widely-used debugging tool. Therefore, DIPS allows for a debugging process identical to state-of-the-art debuggers for continuously-powered devices. User studies found that our debugger is easy and intuitive to use. It allows embedded system developers to find bugs quicker in code written for battery-free devices. With our debugger we found unseen errors in state-of-the-art software frameworks for intermittently-powered systems.

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de Winkel J, Hoefnagel TS, Blokland BT, Pawełczak P. DIPS: Debug Intermittently-Powered Systems Like Any Embedded System. In SenSys 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). 2022. p. 222–235. (SenSys 2022 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems). doi: 10.1145/3560905.3568543

DIPS: Debug Intermittently-Powered Systems Like Any Embedded System

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Towards Deployable Battery-Free Networked Systems