ESP debug goodies

Not all hope is lost, I was able to pinpoint issue with esp-canary, created an issue and esp8266 guys were able to help.

Here’s few things that might help with debugging apps & save time if you have troubles with your app:

Debug mode in platformio + output

platformio has this great feature of decoding crashdump on the fly directly in the console. That is great feature - the only thing you’ll need is someone who can explain what’s going on there.

[platformio]
build_type = debug
monitor_filters = esp8266_exception_decoder

Don’t forget to compile & upload project before trying to troubleshoot. (apparently it uses generated .elf file for matching, so just plugging faulty device & decoding would not work)

See Monitor Options for more details.

EspStackTraceDecoder

That’s cli command that would allow to decode. It requires manual copy-paste from console and running external tool to decode.

You’ll need:

• java + jar from github repo
• platformio compiled elf file (located in .pio/build//firmware.elf)
• toolchain-xtensa app (in ~/.platformio/packages/toolchain-xtensa/bin/)
• stacktrace saved to file

    java -jar EspStackTraceDecoder.jar \
    toolchain-xtensa/bin/xtensa-lx106-elf-addr2line \
    firmware.elf \
    stacktrace.txt

Compiler output

That’s really hardcore stuff for desperate times. (or handy tool for people who knows where to look for)

Here’s example