Monitor and debug

Start from the symptom, choose the observation that can confirm or rule out a cause, then open the guide for the tool on your bench. Most observations appear in the Embedder Monitor, which keeps serial output, plots, debugger output, and instrument captures beside your code and chat. It’s a panel in VS Code, or a browser view opened from the terminal UI with /monitor. For a full investigation from reproduction to regression check, follow Debugging and RCA.

Choose the evidence

You want to	Open
See boot output and logs, or send console commands	UART, SEGGER RTT, ITM/SWO, or XMOS xSCOPE. Serial transports compares them.
Find where the firmware hangs or faults: stack, memory, and peripheral registers	GDB and registers
See which code ran before a fault, or which lines a test covered	Coverage and trace
Measure current and energy during a workload	Power analyzer
Check digital edges and decode a protocol	Logic analyzer
View analog waveforms and take signal measurements	Oscilloscope
Sweep a frequency range and find RF peaks	Spectrum analyzer
Read CAN frames and decode their signals	CAN
Plot live numeric signals and calculated channels	Plots
Inspect BLE advertisements, services, and notifications	Bluetooth
See the network traffic a board sends and receives	Network packets
Repeat a check or a measurement as a script	Hardware scripts
Keep related readings and controls in one reusable view	Dashboards
Rule out a cause that one instrument can’t isolate	Combine observations

In a capture request, name the instrument, the physical channels, the duration, and the result you expect.

Open your tool’s guide

Each integration has its own setup, usage, and troubleshooting page. Choose by the tool connected to your board or computer:

Tool type	Guides
Serial	UART, SEGGER RTT, ITM/SWO, XMOS xSCOPE
CAN adapters	SLCAN, mjbots fdcanusb
Debuggers	SEGGER J-Link, OpenOCD, TI CCS and XDS, XMOS xTAG and xgdb
Logic analyzers	Saleae Logic, Digilent WaveForms, DSLogic
Oscilloscopes	PicoScope, SCPI oscilloscopes, Siglent, Digilent WaveForms
Spectrum analyzer	Siglent SSA3015X Plus
Power instruments	Nordic PPK2, Joulescope. Digilent’s supply and analog measurement features are on the Digilent page.
Trace and simulation	SEGGER J-Trace, XMOS xsim. The RTT, ITM, and xSCOPE guides cover event-recording prerequisites.
Wireless	Bluetooth Low Energy
Network packet capture	Network packets, with Wireshark and TShark
Programming and remote hardware	Flashing firmware, probe-rs, AURIX ADS and Flasher on Windows, remote bridges

A detected instrument or a catalog listing doesn’t mean every operation is supported. Check the tool’s guide for model-specific limits before you rely on a capture or output function.

Start an investigation

Open the project whose source and firmware build match the target.
In VS Code, run Embedder: Open Embedder Monitor from the Command Palette. The Monitor opens in the Panel as Embedder Monitor. In the terminal UI, run /monitor.
Ask Embedder to check the connected hardware, and finish any setup it reports. For bench instruments, you can also connect from the Monitor.
Describe the symptom and any target state you need to preserve.

The device stopped logging when the radio started. Read the existing UART
history, then attach with GDB without programming or resetting the target.

Act mode covers builds, flashing, serial monitoring, hardware scripts, and instrument measurements. Switch to Debug mode with /debug when Embedder needs to start a debug server and inspect a paused target. See Agent modes.

Work with Monitor tabs

Each Monitor tab shows one view, such as a serial port, a plot, an instrument, or a dashboard. A tab has its own toolbar. On serial and instrument tabs, the toolbar starts with a chip that shows the selected port or device: select it to choose another one or change its settings.

Select + (New tab) to open a new tab. Search for an instrument or view, or type a LAN address. Results are grouped under On the bench, Views, Saved plots, and Dashboards.
The Views group opens Serial Monitor, Plot, Logic Analyzer, Oscilloscope, Spectrum Analyzer, Power, Trace, Coverage, Debug Output, Packets, Sim IO, and Bluetooth tabs. See Open the Monitor for what each view shows.
Double-click a tab, or select it and press F2, to rename it. Drag a tab to an edge of the Monitor to split the panel.
When the tabs don’t fit, use the All tabs menu at the end of the tab bar to switch between them.

The Monitor holds up to 10 tabs. Close one before opening another when + is unavailable. To read a serial port, see Open a Serial Monitor tab. To use an oscilloscope, logic analyzer, power analyzer, or spectrum analyzer, continue with the next section.

Connect a bench instrument

Oscilloscopes, the spectrum analyzer, power analyzers, and Saleae, Digilent, and PicoScope MSO logic analyzers connect from the Monitor. Their Oscilloscope, Spectrum Analyzer, Power, and Logic Analyzer tabs share the same controls: a device chip at the start of the toolbar, which lists detected and saved instruments, and a ⋯ (Device actions) menu.

Open a new tab

In the Monitor, select +. The On the bench group lists the instruments Embedder detects, with each one’s type, address, and status. Instruments that already have a tab are hidden until you search for them; selecting one then switches to its tab.

Choose the instrument

Select an instrument to open a tab bound to it.For a LAN instrument that isn’t listed, type its address in the search field, such as 192.168.1.20 or 192.168.1.20:5025, and select Connect to 192.168.1.20. Embedder probes the address and opens the matching tab. If nothing responds, the tab shows No instrument answered. In an Oscilloscope or Spectrum Analyzer tab, you can also choose Enter address… from the device chip. Power and logic analyzers connect over USB.

Set up the instrument

If the instrument needs software first, select Set up & connect. Selecting it approves setup. Embedder installs what that instrument needs, shows progress in the toolbar, and then connects.

The device chip shows the instrument’s status:

Status	Meaning	What to do
Detected	Embedder found the instrument, but it needs software before it can connect. The new tab’s list shows Needs setup.	Select Set up & connect, or choose Set up from the Device actions menu. If Python is missing, the menu also offers Get Python.
Setting up	Embedder is installing the instrument’s dependencies.	Wait for the progress message in the toolbar to finish.
Ready	Setup is complete.	A tab bound to the instrument connects automatically. Otherwise, select Connect.
Connected	This tab holds the instrument connection.	Choose Disconnect from the Device actions menu to release it.
Disconnected	A saved instrument isn’t reachable now.	Plug it in or power it on, then choose Rescan devices from the Device actions menu.
Unsupported	Embedder recognized the instrument, but the model isn’t supported.	Check the tool’s guide for supported models.
Error	Embedder found the instrument but couldn’t reach it or finish setup.	Read the reason in the toolbar, fix it, then connect again.

The Device actions menu also has Rename device to name the instrument, Rescan devices to search again, and Forget device to remove a saved instrument that isn’t currently detected. When an instrument needs software from its vendor, the menu links to it. When a chat is using the hardware, the toolbar shows In use by and the chat’s name. Select it to see who holds the hardware. After you approve setup once, Embedder sets up other instruments of the same family automatically, such as a second PPK2. It remembers each instrument’s name, address, and tab settings for the next session. The LAN instrument connected in a Monitor tab is also the default for hardware scripts. For example, scope_connect() or spectrum_connect() called without an address uses it.

Test one hypothesis

Check whether SDA rises too slowly. Capture SDA on scope channel 1 at the
current I2C speed, report the rise time, and compare it with the bus requirement.

Save the original capture before changing settings. After a fix, repeat the original condition and compare the results. Use a hardware script for a repeatable sequence, or combine observations when one instrument can’t separate the causes.

Preserve the target

A normal GDB connection can program and reset the board. Bounded J-Trace instruction and coverage captures also reset and run it. When the existing fault or RAM state matters, review the attachment precautions before opening a new debugger connection.

State restrictions in your request, such as “do not reset,” “do not transmit on CAN,” or “keep the supply below 3.3 V.” If another session is using the board, run /hardware-queue to see which session holds it.

Use the terminal UI

The terminal UI supports the same investigations and saved results. Run /monitor to open the Monitor in a browser on the computer that runs Embedder, with the same serial, plot, instrument, and dashboard tabs that VS Code shows. The page is served on 127.0.0.1, so it’s reachable only from that computer. /serial toggles a serial sidebar inside the terminal UI; see Use the terminal UI for what it can do. Plots of serial and capture data also appear inline in the conversation. See Use Embedder in the terminal.

Get started

Set up a project

Work with Embedder

Workflow guides