simple logging for Arduino framework
When developing on microcontrollers, it's often not easy to know what's going on inside. A basic solution is to include 'print' statements in your code, showing where your code was running, what are variable values etc. Still there are a number of problems with this approach :
- how to monitor what is going on before the output to print is available, eg. in the constructors. You need some kind of buffering until the output is available
- if you have many print statements, you'll have a lot of output, and it becomes harder to find the output you need. You need some kind of filtering.
- sometimes in time-critical parts of the code, doing a print can slow things down and change the behaviour. Here you need a quick way to log something, then you output it some later time.
This logging class provides a solution :
- It creates a global object, so it is available from the real start of your program
- It will buffer the logged items, until the output becomes available
- It can easily be adapted to any kind of output
V 1.0.0 25-08-2020 First release
V 2.0.0 08-10-2020 Made it simpler by providing less public methods, but making them more flexible. Did extensive unit testing for robustness. Example of using snprintf : theLog.snprintf(loggingLevel::Debug, "Error in %s on line %d\n", FILE, LINE);
V2.1.0 11-11-2020 : Added the concept of a stack for loggingLevels (currently fixed to 4 elements depth). This allows you to temporarily change the loggingLevel and afterwards return to the previous level with simple push pop operation
V2.2.0 05-12-2020 : Added output to std::cout when compiled for Win32 io. Arduino target
V2.3.0 15-06-2021 : Added colored output option using ANSI escape codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#3-bit_and_4-bit This needs 'monitor_flags = --raw' in platformio.ini
V4.0.0 21-02-2022 : Added a feature to connect to multiple outputs. Added a set of unit tests.