Observability Takes the Stage with New Percepio Solution

April 18, 2024

Story

Percepio is a Swedish company dedicated to what it calls observability in Embedded systems, and in a series of recent news announcements, it’s shown that the identification and elimination of bugs in software is the core of that observability.

Percepio recently announced a new reseller agreement with Lynx Software Technologies that will reportedly enable Lynx to provide Aerospace and Defense customers with the Percepio Tracealyzer. The Tracealyzer software is designed to enable comprehensive, full-stack observability that will accelerate software development and verification of critical edge applications, the company said.

According to the release, the agreement sets the stage for Tracealyzer’s integration with all of Lynx’s trusted platforms and even across the guest operating systems present in LYNX MOSA.ic. Lynx said it will now provide Tracealyzer as part of its LYNX MOSA.ic software framework, and the first customer delivery is already in progress.

“Comprehensive system observability is critical in accelerating the creation of highly complex mission critical systems,” said Ian Ferguson of Lynx Software. “Tracealyzer strengthens the platform capabilities of our LYNX MOSA.ic product offering, providing our customers with insight to guarantee system functionality, performance and real-time behavior.”

One of the key components of this partnership is the recently introduced Tracealyzer SDK that offers integration and customization capabilities for users of the platform. The SDK made it possible for Lynx to integrate Tracealyzer into its trusted software stack, including in the LynxOS-178 real-time operating system.

“We are proud to collaborate with Lynx to bring our observability solutions to the most advanced, high-assurance platforms and systems in Aerospace and Defense,” said Johan Kraft, CTO and founder, Percepio. “Aerospace and Defense applications are becoming increasingly complex, and observability is an effective remedy for improving productivity in complex system development. Lynx has identified observability as a key capability in their visionary roadmap and we are looking forward to help accelerate this mission together with our new partner.”

It's not all about partnerships, either. Percepio recently announced its new cloud-based diagnostics solution for remote teams and devices, the DevAlert version 2.0.

Percepio DevAlert is designed to help product teams detect crashes, errors and other software anomalies during system testing, field trials and in customer operation. After an alert is triggered, DevAlert then provides detailed diagnostic information to enable engineers to rapidly find solutions, according to the company. DevAlert reportedly is intended for small edge processors and IoT microcontrollers running RTOS-based software, with security, privacy, transparency, and scalability as key needs. If cloud connectivity is unavailable, Percepio says that the data can be managed using a locally connected host computer instead. This might include applications like monitoring system testing, or by plugging in a laptop during field service. All you need is a serial port or a debug probe.

“Software observability is increasingly critical for digital trust due to rising cyber threats and ever-increasing software complexity causing elusive bugs and vulnerabilities. Not only in the cloud, but even more so in edge devices that are exposed to unpredictable environments and physical attacks since they have many attack surfaces. Edge devices may have CAN buses, UARTs, JTAG debug ports and various other I/O interfaces that were not designed with cybersecurity in mind,” said Kraft. “With DevAlert 2.0 we take the next step by allowing users to collect any kind of device data, including core dumps for source code debugging, as well as customer-defined data such as device logs, network logs, sensor data, images and audio data. This enables powerful edge device observability, which is the missing piece for achieving true full-stack observability all the way out to the very edge.”

DevAlert 2.0 was built to offer several improvements to diagnostic capabilities, including core dumps for source code debugging targeting Arm Cortex-M devices. This allows for remote analysis of crashes, errors, or cybersecurity anomalies in full detail, including the function call stack, parameters and variables, and with source code display. When added to the Tracealyzer tool, and the recently released Tracealyzer SDK for custom trace integrations (see press release here), Percepio said it can provide full observability for any embedded software running on RTOS, or as a bare-metal application.

DevAlert 2.0 already has been integrated by Sensorbee AB, a provider of IoT-based outdoor air quality monitoring solutions. A video interview with David Löwenbrand, CEO at Sensorbee, is available at https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/879338662.

One note: DevAlert has not yet been tested on Linux-based devices, but the company says the platform is designed to enable Linux support. An integration with is included for Arm Cortex-M devices, and support for other platforms can be provided on request.

“The new design required solving fundamentally conflicting requirements – providing more detailed data from the devices, without sacrificing the customer’s data control and privacy,” Kraft said. “For example, viewing core dumps in a debug tool requires access to the right firmware image, sensitive IP that should remain in the customer’s private domain at all times. With DevAlert 2.0 we have generalized our “bring your own storage” design to ensure data privacy while also adding support for any kind of device data.”

Check out the demo here.