Facilitating the debugging and understanding of interactive electronic devices

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract
This dissertation describes three systems to help people better understand and debug the behavior of embedded electronic systems. The underlying shared principles across these projects are automatic instrumentation, visualization, and checking. The first, Toastboard, is a system for electronics prototyping that combines an instrumented breadboard with a web-based GUI and checks for common circuit construction mistakes. Bifröst extends this idea to systems that involve both code and circuits by simultaneously instrumenting a user's embedded code and microcontroller pins. Bifröst focuses on tricky to debug errors that can occur at the boundary between software and hardware. Finally, Wifröst addresses difficulties encountered when connecting embedded devices to the Internet. Wifröst instruments and collects data from a user's code as well as network infrastructure in order to guide users to the underlying reasons for and solutions to failures. These systems were evaluated through debugging tasks and user feedback. Taken together, these systems envision a future in which non-experts have a much greater understanding of the behavior of embedded computing devices in order to more effectively build, combine, repair, and audit their functionality.

Description

Type of resource text
Form electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource
Extent 1 online resource.
Place California
Place [Stanford, California]
Publisher [Stanford University]
Copyright date 2019; ©2019
Publication date 2019; 2019
Issuance monographic
Language English

Creators/Contributors

Author McGrath, William Brewton
Degree supervisor Hartmann, Björn
Degree supervisor Levis, Philip
Thesis advisor Hartmann, Björn
Thesis advisor Levis, Philip
Thesis advisor Agrawala, Maneesh
Degree committee member Agrawala, Maneesh
Associated with Stanford University, Computer Science Department.

Subjects

Genre Theses
Genre Text

Bibliographic information

Statement of responsibility William Brewton McGrath.
Note Submitted to the Computer Science Department.
Thesis Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019.
Location electronic resource

Access conditions

Copyright
© 2019 by William Brewton McGrath
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

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