iotracer - a package for tracing digital signals.

Overview

When you have values that change over time, it is useful to be able to track them. This is especially useful for digital signals, such as GPIO values. Debugging problems with these signals firing when you don’t expect them to, or not when you do is much easier if you can trace them as they change.

This package provides a circular buffer implementation of a tracing facility. It also supports dumping the content of the trace buffer in Value Change Dump (VCD) format.

Automated package documentation for this Go package should be available from .

Getting started

You can build an example and run it as follows:

$ go build examples/sample.go
$ ./sample > dump.vcd
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261259046 = true
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261269046 = false
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261285446 = true
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261308246 = false
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261312746 = true
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261313746 = false
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261314846 = true
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261316046 = false
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261317346 = true
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261318746 = false
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261320246 = true
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261321846 = false
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261340746 = true
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261343346 = false
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261346046 = true
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261348846 = false
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261351746 = true
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261354746 = false
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261357846 = true
sample.ports.sig3 @ 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261361046 = false

The timestamps and true and false values are tracking trace events where sample.ports.sig3 changes. In addition to this, the above command generates a dump.vcd file.

NOTE: the dates in the above output refer to the actual timestamps at the time ./sample was running. VCD dump contains enough precision to reconstruct these timestamps to the precision used to generate the VCD dump. Specifically:

$ twave --file dump.vcd | head -30
[] : [$version top $end]
               sample.ports.sig0-+
               sample.ports.sig1-|-+
               sample.ports.sig2-|-|-+
               sample.ports.sig3-|-|-|-+
               sample.ports.sig4-|-|-|-|-+
               sample.ports.sig5-|-|-|-|-|-+
                other.ports.sig0-|-|-|-|-|-|-+
           other.ports.octo[0:2]-|-|-|-|-|-|-|---+
                other.ports.sig4-|-|-|-|-|-|-|---|-+
                other.ports.sig5-|-|-|-|-|-|-|---|-|-+
                                 | | | | | | |   | | |
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261255446000 x x x x x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261255546000 1 x x x x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261255746000 0 1 x x x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261256046000 1 1 x x x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261256446000 0 0 1 x x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261256946000 1 0 1 x x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261257546000 0 1 1 x x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261258246000 1 1 1 x x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261259046000 0 0 0 1 x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261259946000 1 0 0 1 x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261260946000 0 1 0 1 x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261262046000 1 1 0 1 x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261263246000 0 0 1 1 x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261264546000 1 0 1 1 x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261265946000 0 1 1 1 x x x xxx x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261266046000 0 1 1 1 x x 1 001 x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261266446000 0 1 1 1 x x 0 010 x x
2023-04-16 18:54:17.261266946000 0 1 1 1 x x 1 010 x x

See, that in the dump.vcd file (displayed with twave) the sample.ports.sig3 signal transitions at 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261259046000 and in the original ./sample run, it is recorded at 2023-04-16 18:54:17.261259046.

You can see how this trace looks using twave, as shown above, or with a more graphical experience with GTKWave. For the latter, gtkwave dump.vcd and selecting all of the signals displays as follows:

License info

The iotracer package is distributed with the same BSD 3-clause license as that used by golang itself.

Reporting bugs and feature requests

The package iotracer has been developed purely out of self-interest and a curiosity for debugging physical IO projects, primarily on the Raspberry Pi. Should you find a bug or want to suggest a feature addition, please use the bug tracker.