Hi Mike,

Break/Pause

Stopping at breakpoints is optional because some people using drones and robots don;t understand that stopping means the robot might crash

There is a wiki link here that shows how to enable the Break/Pause property.

Expressions

To use the expressions window you need to have set a BreakPoint "When Hit" message specifying the data that you want to watch. Have you done this? The link above shows a simple view of a combined expression watch and text message breakpoint. 

Adding =? to variables makes allows them to be modified while the arduino is running:-

{myVar=?}

Using the shared Serial port?

If you do not see any trace window info or expressions the other thing to check is if your code is also using the Serial object but at a different speed to the debugger. If so then you can set the debugger to use the same speed your code is using by completing the RemoteSpeed project property. 

The debugger default is 115k

Sorry it's a pain for you I can confirm that lots of people are using the debugger so we should be able to find the problem or confusion. Let's tackle this one at a time if that's okay with you.

First to get some trace info and also to see some expression data ignoring the break/pause facility for now. Please set Break/pause = False then try these tests.

1)
There will be two compilations for debug, the word debug will appear in the 2nd

Do you see the word "debug" in the compilation message?

2)
If you add a breakpoint to the first line of loop() then compile and upload do you see the "Micro Trace" output window with a stream of messages confirming the loop() has been hit lots of times? 

nb: You must compile and upload for any changes to breakpoints to be recognized.


3)

If you then add a "When Hit" message to the breakpoint of {millis()} and compile upload do you see millis() in the expression window and the trace?

4)

Which Arduino board are you using?

Thanks

Thanks for the clear answers. Please zip and email the sketch1 folder and any sub folders to info [at] visualmicro.com so I can look at the settings.

Thanks

Great. It might be that you had opened a source code that wasn't included in the current project. This can be confusing because you would be able to add breakpoints but they would be ignored during compile.

The sign of an unconnected source code file is that when editing it, the solution explorer will have nothing highlighted when normally the current code file name would be highlighted.

Just a guess, ignore if wrong and great to hear things are working for you.