Profiler

The Profiler sample demonstrates the functionality of the Profiler subsystem. It shows how to use the Profiler to log and visualize data about custom events that are not part of the Event Manager.

Requirements

The sample supports the following development kits:

Hardware platforms

PCA

Board name

Build target

nRF9160 DK

PCA10090

nrf9160dk_nrf9160

nrf9160dk_nrf9160_ns

nRF52840 DK

PCA10056

nrf52840dk_nrf52840

nrf52840dk_nrf52840

nRF52 DK

PCA10040

nrf52dk_nrf52832

nrf52dk_nrf52832

nRF21540 DK

PCA10112

nrf21540dk_nrf52840

nrf21540dk_nrf52840

Overview

The sample initializes the Profiler and registers and periodically profiles the occurrences of the following event types:

  • Event without data (no data event) - This event is used to signal the occurrence of an event only. It does not contain additional data.

  • Event with data (data event) - There are several numerical values associated with this event. The values are updated periodically.

Configuration

See Configuring your application for information about how to permanently or temporarily change the configuration.

Building and running

This sample can be found under samples/profiler in the nRF Connect SDK folder structure.

See Building and programming an application for information about how to build and program the application.

Testing

After programming the sample to your development kit, you can test it by performing the following steps:

  1. Go to the scripts/profiler folder.

  2. Run the script real_time_plot.py, with the name that should be used to store the data as the argument. For example:

    real_time_plot.py test_name

    This command generates a test_name.csv file and a test_name.json file. The script opens a GUI window that displays events as dots on timelines, similar to the following diagram.

    Example of profiler backend script visualization

    Example of profiler backend script visualization

    See the Backend visualization section in the Profiler documentation for more information about the GUI.

  3. Connect to the kit with a terminal emulator (for example, PuTTY). See How to connect with PuTTY for the required settings.

After you connect, the sample will display messages in the terminal.

Note

If you use SEGGER Embedded Studio, make sure to stop debugging before you run Python scripts. Otherwise, you may observe problems with accessing RTT data by the profiler scripts.

Dependencies

This sample uses the following nRF Connect SDK subsystems: