Freemaster "read" memory dump

[Bohrfutter]

Hello Freemaster Team,

Is there a way to interpret a copy of the RAM as a file with Freemaster? Currently the read and write operations are carried out directly via CAN/JTAG/RS232 etc. on the hardware. I would need an offline variant, so to speak. A small tool would create a memory dump in the field, save it as a bin file, the customer send it via EMail and I could check it with Freemaster...

The small tool would need no admin rights for installation and I don't need to handover a map file to the customer.

Thank you in advance.

Best regards
Seb.

[MichalH]

Dear Seb,

this use case makes good sense, but it is not there. The fastest way to accomplish this would be to write a communication plug-in which would mimic "Read Memory" commands but would be returning error to everything else. Well it would need to "emulate" a living target board in some situations (e.g. when obtaining information about buffer sizes etc.) but it is doable.

We will add this to a backlog, but I would not expect the outcome sooner than in few months. If you have a Windows/COM+ skills in house, it can be easy for you to write it by yourself. The plugin API is in the FreeMASTER installation in "userdev" folder. 

Maybe a better alternative for you is to let customer to run FreeMASTER Remote Server and you can connect to his running target over internet. You keep the elf/map file secret and you can do a full runtime access to his variables.

Regards,
Michal

[Bohrfutter]

Hi Michal,

thanks for your response. Can you provide a sample project for a communication plugin? I don't see the implementation as a big deal - but the time to setup an environment to get a working dll. If we could get a running project as start vector it would be really helpful.
We plan to get the memory dump as a hex file which would be read back by the plugin.

Once we have finished the software we would share the source with you – so you can decide to put it in the next Freemaster release.

Thanks again for your help.

Best regards

Seb.

[MichalH]

Hello Sebastian,

I will reach out to you directly and will share a dummy plug-in example code with you.

This "offline memory reader" plug-in could be released in one of next FreeMASTER versions, so also others could benefit from this new feature. Its source code could be also released to this community later to be used as an example for other custom communication plug-ins.

Regards,
Michal