Have you heard of Ghost?

Liam Walton | August 23, 2019 | Arduino, Flowcode | No Comments

What is Ghost?

Here at Matrix, we have developed our very own technology called Ghost! This is a new technology which, when combined with Flowcode, provides a revolutionary way of debugging electronic systems.

Ghost technology provides a real time log of the status of all the pins on the microcontroller whilst a Flowcode program is running on the device. Ghost data can be viewed on the Flowcode Oscilloscope or Data Recorder at the same time as the flow chart simulation. We call this ‘In-Circuit-Test’.

It also provides the ability to control the program that is running on the microcontroller from Flowcode itself. You can run, pause, and step through, your program and view Ghost data at the same time and view variables, registers and other memory locations. We call this ‘In-Circuit-Debug’

When this data is combined with the PC-side processing capabilities of Flowcode it provides a very powerful debugging and learning tool. This saves huge amounts of development time – whether you are working at a pin level and getting your first program to work, or whether you are an advanced user wanting to perform a sanity check to make sure communications baud rates are set at the correct speed.

Both analogue and digital data is gathered through Ghost ICT and displayed on the Flowcode Oscilloscope. For communications busses decoding overlays for UART, SPI, and I2C are available. Ghost data can also be passed to simulation/SCADA components in Flowcode to provide Human Machine Interface style debug features.

Ghost is watching over your hardware!

How does Ghost work?

Ghost is a unique piece of technology, the entire system works in real time as ghost monitors all the I/O on the target chip and streams that data directly into Flowcode via USB.

Ghost: Oscilloscope

Flowcode includes a 4 channel, fully triggering oscilloscope, ideal for testing your applications in both hardware and simulation.

It works alongside Ghost Technology to allow users to monitor signals in real time using In-Circuit-Test. It can also be used in simulation mode.

Ghost: Data Recorder

Flowcode includes a data recorder ideal for testing your applications in both hardware and simulation.

It works alongside Ghost Technology to allow users to monitor signals in real time using In-Circuit-Test. It can also be used in simulation mode, though timing of signals is not accurate when using simulation. In simulation, it allows the user to see the results and values from raw data and components such as dials and measures. This data allows you to monitor the state of the various signals plotted to various channels.

The data recorder is very useful for analyzing data as it can accurately display information to identify patterns in the data as well as the speed data is being displayed at. Components such as the DSP range will automatically create their own Data Recorder channels, allowing for very simple yet powerful means of monitoring and debugging the system.