Combining Visual TEST with ICE for embedded system testing

The testing of embedded software is a significant factor in its development cost and time to market. The use of standard tools for testing, when possible, is expected to reduce both of these. Commercial embedded systems testing tools are rare, expensive and require a lot of adaptation effort. For many embedded projects, such tools and efforts are too expensive to be applied. Microsoft Visual TEST is a low-cost tool that was originally designed for the automatic testing of Windows-based software. Since most embedded systems do not contain Windows, our idea was to use the Windows-based debugging tool ICE (In-Circuit Emulator) as an interface between our system and Windows. We used this combination at different stages of the project, for unit functional testing, component integration testing and even for system testing. The procedure was automatic and could be carried out accurately at any time