This project offers a Software-In-the-Loop (SIL) test environment for IRremote.
As a SIL environment, in allows testing and debugging on the host computer.
(Presently only rendering (IRsend::send*()), however decoding is planned.)
No changes to the to-be-tested software are necessary.
SIL offers the following advantages: There is no need to flash the to-be-tested software onto the target system, saving lifetime of its flash memory. It makes debugging on the host possible, using standard debuggers like gdb. The rendered signals can be easily analyzed on the host, using tools like e.g. IrScrutinizer and DecodeIR. Turn-around times are much faster.
This is a tool aimed at programmers, that want to test protocol implementations (IRsend::send* and, later IRrecv::decode*).
The reader is (therefore) assumed to master the basics of C++ programming and make.
The present version supports the main branch of IRremote, 18f12d3affb3491abbfe708d4859df12a6f84d5f. Minor changes might be necessary for other versions (in particular this issue).
It runs in an environment containing (host-) make and gcc (g++). This includes Unix-like systems
like Linux, Mac-OS with xcode, and Windows with Cygwin. Porting it to, say,
VisualStudio is probably possible, if someone cares...
The use of an IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans is not required, but recommended, in particular for debugging.
First make sure that gcc (g++) and make are installed.
Make sure you have the IRremote you want to test unpacked locally on the host.
(This directory is only read from, and not modified.)
Unpack/clone the project to another directory. Edit the Makefile so that
IRREMOTE_DIR points to the directory containing IRremote files.
The directory name must not contain spaces.
Issuing the command make test
should now build a program and invoke it to generate a number of test files, that can be analyzed
by your favorite IR analyzer.
By defining DECODE suitably, the generated files can be decoded under the control of the Makefile.
Note that the Makefile is parallelization safe, i.e. by using the -j flag to make, multiple processes
are run in parallel, to the extent theoretically possible.
Extend main.cpp as desired. Add the cpp file to the Makefile's PROTOCOL_FILES variable,
and the protocol names (in the sense of main.cpp) to PROTOCOL_NAMES.
Modify main.cpp, and/or the Makefile. Or another file...
The generated program irremote can be debugged as any other C++ program on the host.