Observability driven development for embedded software

Percepio AB has launched Percepio Detect, a groundbreaking tool that redefines how embedded software developers tackle testing, debugging, and observability challenges. Supporting the new best practice of Observability Driven Development (ODD), it enables next-generation DevOps for embedded software by seamlessly extending the capabilities of existing Continuous Integration and Continuous Testing (CI/CT) processes. Designed for edge devices and real-time systems, the tool empowers developers with real-time anomaly and brittleness risk detection and actionable debugging insights while providing businesses with a quantum leap in product quality and reliability.

The tool is engineered to make life easier for embedded software engineers by addressing critical challenges in modern development workflows:

Detect Anomalies Early: Monitor runtime performance throughout testing to identify subtle “near misses” and other stability risks that might otherwise evade detection.

Debug Faster and Proactively: Automatically capture detailed diagnostic snapshots – complete with core dumps, call stacks, and system traces – on the first occurrence of issues, saving days or weeks of debugging time. Analyse real forensic data from the system under actual execution and occurrence of anomalies.

Empower Teams: With a centralised server dashboard and remote access, teams can collaborate seamlessly to resolve issues in real-time, even on production hardware.

“This tool is like adding an advanced early warning system to your embedded software projects. Percepio Detect ensures developers catch anomalies before they escalate into costly problems,” said Johan Kraft, CTO and founder of Percepio AB. He added: “For example, you would know when the watchdog timer has timed out, but more critically, for quality assurance, you’d be notified if defined safety margins are breached.”

Percepio Detect represents a transformative opportunity to stay ahead in the competitive and heterogenous embedded systems market, where increasing complexity and connectivity demand advanced observability solutions from the start of every project. With comprehensive testing of products before market release becoming impracticable, every software-centric business needs to adhere to the Observability Driven Development paradigm.

Andreas Lifvendahl, CEO of Percepio AB, commented, “While cloud-native companies like Dynatrace and Splunk focus on large-scale IT environments, we’re bringing deep observability to the edge, where real-time insights are critical.” He continued: “Percepio Detect demonstrates our commitment to enabling Observability Driven Development (ODD) for the embedded community, helping them achieve faster, more reliable development-and-test iterations and higher quality software.”

Meet Percepio at the Embedded World Show in Nuremberg, March 11-13, 2025. They are co-exhibiting with the Zephyr Project c/o The Linux Foundation (Hall 4, Booth 4-170) and Logic Technology B.V (Hall 4, Booth 4-238).