ESP8266 Reliability and ID

9 thoughts on “ESP8266 Reliability and ID”

1. This is related to stability, but not directly to the topic in hand!

   correct me if i’m wrong but you are / can run a lot of WS2812 LEDs using your software. I’d like to ask you a few questions.

   I’ve been using the Arduino IDE to design some pretty cool lights, that can run complex animations in 2D from a strip, and over the last month or two my ESP have become pretty unstable… doing a lot of this random rebooting stuff. It has been driving me nuts… but the source of ALL the instability turns out to be turning off interrupts on the WS2812, whilst running wifi. If the IDE is downgraded to use SDK1.01 then there is no instability and it is fine. This issue can be reproduced easily by just using the web server, adding a nointurrupt()s period and pinging the ESP. see https://gitter.im/Makuna/NeoPixelBus

   so my question is, do you have this problem with your LEDs as you also run a lot of them? If you do not, do you update the LEDs a lot, or are they generally just one colour. i have no problems when they are just red.. but when they are updated at 30hrz then the ESP crashes eventually, as there is a lot of nointurrupts.. enabling the interrupts for wifi, solves the rebooting, but the LEDs now glitch and flash a lot!

   Cheers

   1. Hi there Andrew… yes, I have run more than 200 but typically I have a play toy here with 70, and a clock with 60. If you take a look at my code (well that bit isn’t mine – it’s a combination – but you get the idea) You’ll see I’m disabling interrupts – right now I’m having no problems. Well other than the fact that you CANNOT run Espressif’s new PWM at the same time – and when you set their PWM to off, it doesn’t actually stop it – a point I’ve raised with them – so it’s PWM OR RGB for me..

      Here’s the extract from my code… sometimes one colour – sometimes varying (makes no difference as I’d fill up the array outside of interrupts then blast the lot out. When you say update at 30Hz …. if you are referring to updating a whole bunch of LEDs, the LOT at 30Hz – then that would not surprise me that the thing would bomb out … erm, you could try doubling the clock rate – but then you’d have to adjust your timings accordingly…

      // —————————————————————————-
      // — This WS2812 code must be compiled with -O2 to get the timing right. Read this:
      // — http://wp.josh.com/2014/05/13/ws2812-neopixels-are-not-so-finicky-once-you-get-to-know-them/
      // — The ICACHE_FLASH_ATTR is there to trick the compiler and get the very first pulse width correct.
      static void __attribute__((optimize(“O2”))) send_ws_0(uint8_t gpio){
      uint8_t i;
      i = 4; while (i–) GPIO_REG_WRITE(GPIO_OUT_W1TS_ADDRESS, 1 << gpio); i = 9; while (i--) GPIO_REG_WRITE(GPIO_OUT_W1TC_ADDRESS, 1 << gpio); } static void __attribute__((optimize("O2"))) send_ws_1(uint8_t gpio){ uint8_t i; i = 8; while (i--) GPIO_REG_WRITE(GPIO_OUT_W1TS_ADDRESS, 1 << gpio); i = 6; while (i--) GPIO_REG_WRITE(GPIO_OUT_W1TC_ADDRESS, 1 << gpio); } void ICACHE_FLASH_ATTR WS2812OutBuffer(uint8_t * buffer, uint16_t length,uint16_t repetition) { uint16_t i; if (wsBitMask>16) return;
      ets_intr_lock();

      for (i = 0; i < 2; i++) WRITE_PERI_REG(PERIPHS_GPIO_BASEADDR + 8, 1<< wsBitMask); while (repetition--) { for (i = 0; i < length; i++) { uint8_t mask = 0x80; uint8_t byte = buffer[i]; while (mask) { (byte & mask) ? send_ws_1(wsBitMask) : send_ws_0(wsBitMask); mask >>= 1;
      }
      }
      }
      ets_intr_unlock();
      }

      1. Thanks for that… Ive seen that code before, its a little beyond me.. I’ve actually found a workaround that re-enables interrupts in between bits.. which seems to work most of the time. trying to improve on it. your right… i meant 30hrz.. not kilo hertz!

         The issue is really that I’m running the neopixelbus lib, and this has animations that you can set up that run with a fairly high refresh rate, leading to too much time without interrupts. my same application that takes adalight via serial and that is a lot more stable.

2. Hello Peter,
   Currently working on esp 8266 mesh network but cant anything.Do you have any idea about mesh network and plz provide some tips or guide on that stuff.

   1. Apparently the ESP mesh was supposed to get English documentation this week but there was some last minute change. As soon as I find out more I’ll report back as I’m interested in this myself but not with Chinese docs.

3. Is this related to the problem that I had – reliably setting the WiFi Access Point name in C?. I found that I first had to do a read of the WiFi settings before setting one item in the struct. Apparently, by doing a set without a read meant that I had to populate everything before I set it – the read first made sure that there were some default values in the items that I wasn’t changing.

   Just a thought!
   Tony

   1. Hmmmm.

   2. I’ve been using the Relay Board project from harizanov. His code boots as an access point which you connect to. It scans the available access points for you to choose the main one and enter the password. Then you commit the changes and the ESP8266 is on your wifi network.

      It’s a quick, easy and reliable process and it always reconnects when the router goes down.

   3. Hmm, that’s a good idea…. in my case that would have let to writing rubbish – what actually happened was my set name appears to have been utterly ignored.

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