Newsletter in March 2024

                   - Better Embedded Software Development with DevAlert
                     - Faster Time-to-Market, Avoidance of Project Delays

                               - Minimizing Risk in Software Delivery

- Optimization of technical Support
- Analysis of physical Malfunctions in the Field

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Here's an update for you as a visitor to embedded world 2024 in Nuremberg (April 9 to 11). In addition to SEGGER Microcontroller (Hall 4, Stand 4-367), Razorcat Development will also be exhibiting with automated test solutions for embedded software. You can also visit stand 4-410 in hall 4.   Of course, Percepio cannot be missing at the trade fair: Percepio will be presenting its Continuous Observability solutions in the Zephyr Pavilion in Hall 4, Stand 4-107.

Better Embedded Software Development with DevAlert Percepio DevAlert is a powerful monitoring solution for embedded software developers that provides alerts about anomalies in your software, such as bugs, crashes and cybersecurity warnings. With cyber threats growing daily, independently validating the security of its solutions was a top priority for Percepio.  The independent cybersecurity company Triop AB has awarded Percepio a technical cybersecurity certificate: The overall external cybersecurity of DevAlert and Device Firmware Monitor (DFM) is excellent. No critical, high, medium or minor security vulnerabilities were identified during the security audit. Organizations that trust Percepio to monitor their networked device fleets can rest assured that DevAlert and DFM are secure. The cybersecurity certification includes Percepio's cloud-hosted DevAlert diagnostic tool for remote monitoring of deployed IoT devices and DFM for debugging and optimizing firmware. The alerts provide deep insights into device software behavior to diagnose the issues, such as core dumps, software traces, logs and any other device data you want to include. There are several use cases for this type of observability. The following examples are based on feedback from DevAlert users in various industries.

Faster Time to Market, Avoidance of Project Delays During integration and system testing, it's not uncommon to encounter errors that are difficult to repeat and can be very difficult and time-consuming to troubleshoot. Your team may have to spend months of frustrating trial-and-error on various issues that arose during testing because you don't have enough information. With DevAlert, you can avoid this "debugging hell" by providing critical information for effective debugging. This can reduce debugging time by 90% or more. Debugging often accounts for about 50% of software development! This way you can get your product to market sooner, sell more units in the first year and increase your revenue. With DevAlert, you can monitor all devices under test and closely monitor issues remotely and with shared access for all stakeholders, without the need for bulky and expensive tracing hardware for each device. Developers can work remotely to troubleshoot system tests, for example when traveling or when problems occur in remote test labs or field trials. The DevAlert Dashboard provides an overview for product managers and other stakeholders who want to monitor test progress and the number of issues detected. You do not need a physical debug port on the device as the monitoring can use any I/O or network interface such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi or USB. DevAlert is not just for detecting errors and crashes, but can be used for any type of anomaly of interest. For example, if your system is tracking key performance metrics for which there is an upper limit, you can use DevAlert to report exceedances and include a Tracealyzer event trace to understand the cause. DevAlert is suitable for most embedded software tests. The data can be transferred to a host PC via a serial port or debugger, so you don't need any additional debugging hardware. You also don't need cloud connectivity in the device as the host computer can upload all alarms.

Minimizing Risk in Software Deployment DevAlert provides a diagnostic feedback loop from the deployed devices to the development and support teams, giving them comprehensive insight into device behavior at scale. From the first occurrence of a problem, DevAlert provides a notification to the development team and detailed diagnostic information such as core dumps and event traces for effective troubleshooting and rapid resolution. It is also possible to monitor critical system health metrics such as stack utilization and send an alert if a value exceeds the expected threshold. This allows developers to proactively make improvements to avoid future problems. The DevAlert Dashboard summarizes all alerts and provides a compact to-do list of underlying code issues and highlights new issues to ensure nothing is overlooked. You can also see how often each anomaly has occurred, so you can prioritize multiple issues at once.

Optimization of technical Support   DevAlert can help you to improve your technical support by implementing self-test functions and reports in your software, e.g. "Pump motor running slow, replacement required". This could be something you offer to your customers as a value-added service. DevAlert can help you check devices remotely in response to customer queries by giving you access to all the device's alerts and diagnostics. DevAlert can also help you identify issues from previous cases by matching symptoms with previously submitted alerts and reusing the solutions. Finally, by proactively updating software based on DevAlert alerts, you can reduce technical issues, support overhead and the number of returned devices.

Analyzing physical Malfunctions in the Field   Anomalies in the physical world are often observable by software, e.g. a disconnected connector leading to a software fault code or a sensor reporting an abnormal value. In the automotive world, these are provided as DTCs (Diagnostic Trouble Codes). DevAlert can provide a customized "DTC" solution for your product, with cloud-based remote access and in-depth observability if required. Sometimes an error code is all you need to know what's going wrong, at least if you're an expert in the field and have seen the same problem before.

Simplifying Troubleshooting   But not all team members have that kind of experience. DevAlert can simplify troubleshooting for less experienced team members by providing pointers to documentation on known issues and recommended solutions. More powerful diagnostics can be enabled with the efficient Tracealyzer Recorder for recording sensor readings, user interface events and other physical events that can be observed by the software. The latest data points can be included in your alerts and displayed in Tracealyzer to better understand what happened and why. Traditional logging tends to produce huge amounts of mostly irrelevant data and represents a trade-off between the amount of detail provided and the amount of data produced. DevAlert avoids this trade-off by only uploading the most recent data when anomalies are detected. This allows for very detailed logging while reducing the total amount of data uploaded by several orders of magnitude. Curious? Read here how you can quickly get started with DevAlert.

Exactly one year ago, I wrote: "Now mankind has almost overcome the pandemic. I hope that the mad Russian Putin will come to his senses before he sets the world on fire." And where are we today? With a little sarcasm, the only thing that comes to mind is: "Yesterday we were on the brink of an abyss. Today we are already a decisive step further." But, as we all know, hope dies last. Yours sincerely, Marian A. Wosnitza „If man had as much reason as understanding,  everything would be much easier.“ (Linus Pauling, US-American Writer)