SparkFun Forums

[paul@shubertnm.net]

My ESP8266 Thing started exhibiting some weird behavior.

Had it set up as a weather station, and it was running fine for a day or so, when suddenly it just "crashed." Power Off/On didn't do anything. Hooked up the Serial Monitor, and it appeared that it was in some strange mode where it constantly kept re-booting.

I re-jumpered DTR and re-downloaded the software. (I'm using the esp8266/Arduino environment from GitHub) Everything seems to have returned to normal. Wondering if anyone else was seeing this type of behavior?

The weather station was running continuously for about a day. It is outside and protected - no rain or lightning, and the temperature has been between 55F and 90F, so nothing too extreme.

[Valen]

How do you have it powered? Continuous reboots could mean the power supply cannot sustain the load as it boots up.

[paul@shubertnm.net]

Thing is powered with a 5V 1A USB Wall Wart Plus attached to a 400 mAh LiPo for backup.

This seems to be an amazingly repeatable problem. Runs Absolutely flawless for about 24 hours, then just "looses its mind". Nothing happens on power on/off. Just goes into constant reboot mode. I can re-program and it works just fine for another 24 hours, and then just crashes again. Has happened now repeatably at least three times.

One more piece of information - I think it's somehow loosing its flash memory. EEPROM seems to be erased after "crash". Not sure about the whole internal architecture of the ESP8266 + flash.

[uChip]

Sounds to me like a software error somewhere overwriting program memory. I would debug by falling back to simpler software, perhaps all the way back to a simple blinking LED if necessary. Then once you prove that the system will run more than 24hrs in that configuration (I.e. prove that the underlying hardware and base firmware is stable), start adding components of your application software back in a piece at a time. At some point the crashing will start happening again which will help pin point which software module is the culprit.

Alternatively, do a detailed code review. Focus especially on any code that writes data. You are looking for things like buffer over runs or pointer errors. If you find a potential issue or just a code block you don't fully understand, instrument it.
Good luck,
- Chip

- Chip

[stevech]

ESP8266

Caveat emptor

[mruck]

Stevech, Are you saying that ESP8266 modules often fail?
I'm just getting started with ESP8266, and the first board I have seems to have hardware problems. I've already emailed tech support about it. But if ESP8266 seems to have a lot of failures, then maybe I should look at a different wifi module.

[stevech]

"Fail" implies it previously worked properly.
At its price point... set your expectations accordingly.
And join in the ESP8266 hackers web forum.