How do I debug on-chip with Arduino?

Question

Though an emulator is quite useful for debugging code that has no side effects, most real-world applications include some circuitry besides the Arduino. If a microcontroller on an Arduino had a JTAG interface, it would be pretty straight-forward, but what if it's e.g. an Arduino Uno?

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 28 '14 at 01:44

The Arduino Uno uses the Atmel Atmega328p microcontroller, which only has one debug option, DebugWire. There are a few tools that can work with it, but the least expensive and most commonly available is the AVR Dragon.

You can use AVR Studio 6 for this. You can use the .elf file file produced during the Arduino build process directly, but setting up the debugger is a little easier if you port the Arduino program to the AVR Studio. It's not difficult, but there are a lot of little pieces to deal with. There are guides online to help you through this.

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 16 '17 at 13:15

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This might not be right for you, but the Visual Micro plugin for Atmel Studio and Visual Studio has a USB debugger which only uses Arduino code.

In the background the debugger uses Serial which might affect some time-sensitive applications.

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edited Sep 16 '17 at 13:15

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jul 08 '15 at 14:50

Visual Micro

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How do I debug on-chip with Arduino?

2 Answers2