Binary Log Example

This example shows how to use the binary-log component to format and store logs in a binary packed form, either to disk or into a ringbuffer in memory.

This component simply exposes the p-ranav/binary_log binary logger, with some modifications in a fork finger563/binary_log to allow packer customization as is required on embedded systems such as with ESP-IDF.

The binary-log does not support all datatypes, but only some base datatypes such as integer types, float types, and string types.

The logger produces the following data:

1. Log data - these are indexes and the arguments which point to either the index data or the runfile data.

2. Index data - these are static data (format strings, constant arguments, etc.)

3. Runfile data - these are indices of the log file which run multiple times in a row.

For more information about the logging, its format, and the types supported, please see p-ranav/binary_log.

How to use example

This example is designed to be run on an ESP dev board which has embedded flash - the partitions and build are configured to match the QtPy ESP32-S3, though if you modify the sdkconfig.defaults and the partitions.csv you could run it on other dev boards easily.

The example does the following:

1. Use standard binary_log::packer to log in a loop for three seconds to files on the filesystem.

2. Print the contents of the log files.

3. Erase the file system.

4. Use the binary_log::ringbuffer_packer to log in a loop for three seconds to into an in-memory ringbuffer.

5. Print the contents of the log buffers.

Unpacking the logs

Getting the log data

You can copy the text from the example output into write_files.py, then run that script, and it will produce the relevant log.out, log.out.index, and log.out.runfile on your computer.

Unpacking the log data

Once you’ve done that, you can unpack the log data using the unpacker that is automatically built when you build the app and is located within your build folder as build/unpacker:

./build/unpacker log.out > log.inflated

Build and Flash

Build the project and flash it to the board, then run monitor tool to view serial output:

idf.py -p PORT flash monitor

(Replace PORT with the name of the serial port to use.)

(To exit the serial monitor, type Ctrl-].)

See the Getting Started Guide for full steps to configure and use ESP-IDF to build projects.

Example Output