WiFröst: Bridging the Information Gap for Debugging of Networked Embedded Systems

ABSTRACT

The rise in prevalence of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies has encouraged more people to prototype and build custom internet connected devices based on low power microcontrollers. While well-developed tools exist for debugging network communication for desktop and web applications, it can be difficult for developers of networked embedded systems to figure out why their network code is failing due to the limited output affordances of embedded devices. This paper presents WiFröst, a new approach for debugging these systems using instrumentation that spans from the device itself, to its communication API, to the wireless router and back-end server. WiFröst automatically collects this data, displays it in a web-based visualization, and highlights likely issues with an extensible suite of checks based on analysis of recorded execution traces.

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Index Terms

• Human-centered computing

  • Ubiquitous and mobile computing

    • Ubiquitous and mobile computing systems and tools

• Software and its engineering

  • Software creation and management

    • Software verification and validation

      • Software defect analysis

        • Software testing and debugging