Matrix Portal Display freezes at random intervals

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joeboese619
 
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Matrix Portal Display freezes at random intervals

Post by joeboese619 »

Hi Everyone,
I've got 32x64 LED display being driven by the Matrix Portal M4. I've got a bit of python code that displays the current time and fetches data from a local webserver. After seemingly random periods of time the display will stop updating (sometimes an hour, sometimes a full day!). I have the Matrix Portal running off my laptop's serial port and I have "screen -L /dev/ttyACM0" running at all times. I'll see the usual log output being written when its healthy, but when it fails I just get "[screen is terminating]" and nothing useful in my log file!

Is there lower-level debugging I can do on this board? I've seen mentions of 'serial' connectivity, but I'm not sure if that is just referring to the USB debug output I'm already getting. I've got a soldering iron and pins on standby if I need to wire up something to troubleshoot further; just let me know what to do!

Thanks for looking;
Joe

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tannewt
 
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Re: Matrix Portal Display freezes at random intervals

Post by tannewt »

This can happen if the firmware hangs. The hang will starve USB and stop it from working.

Generally I use GDB at that point to see where the code is stuck. I have a GDB tutorial here: https://learn.adafruit.com/debugging-th ... 1-with-gdb

I use the same general approach for the SAMD51 and other Cortex-M microcontrollers.

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yemo20
 
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Re: Matrix Portal Display freezes at random intervals

Post by yemo20 »

Hi there, I am facing the same issue here (not sure if it's the same cause though). My display essentially 'hangs', and the Matrix Portal Neopixel LED freezes in Blue state, and then I have to manually restart the display to reset everything. Tried implementing wifi.reset() and supervisor.reload(), but unable to get around this issue yet. Any suggestions? I am using the WiFi Manager method as described in the tutorials.

Thanks!

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joeboese619
 
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Re: Matrix Portal Display freezes at random intervals

Post by joeboese619 »

I didn't get around to going the gdb route. I can say I have 2 totally separate sets of hardware and both freeze in this manner. And I hacked around the issue by having some automation that power cycles the board when it stops fetching data.....

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yemo20
 
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Re: Matrix Portal Display freezes at random intervals

Post by yemo20 »

Thanks Joe -- yup, I was reading more posts in the forums, and looks like that's what folks are doing for their projects as well: https://github.com/metro-sign/dc-metro/issues/3

Kind of disappointed that I invested in the Matrix Portal to make it easier to connect vs. using a Raspberry Pi to run the display. Eager to solve this though, since I think it's got a ton of potential.

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yemo20
 
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Re: Matrix Portal Display freezes at random intervals

Post by yemo20 »

Just thought to bump this up. What's also getting in the way here is that the watchdog timer has a limit of 16 seconds, which appears to be less than the time it takes to successfully reconnect to Wi-Fi in some instances, so results in the board going into a continuous restart loop for several minutes over the course of the day. Any suggestions to fix?

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drastamat
 
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Re: Matrix Portal Display freezes at random intervals

Post by drastamat »

Same issues as here. Haven't made any progress on debugging the freeze. Also have problems with the ESP chip failing within an hour no matter what I try.
Does anyone have any tips?
Thank you.

esoffron
 
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Joined: Mon Feb 15, 2010 10:45 am

Re: Matrix Portal Display freezes at random intervals

Post by esoffron »

Hey, me too! I'm glad I'm not going crazy. How do people do the watchdog process? I'd be happy(ish) if I could just restart on a crash but I don't get how I'm supposed to code that. There is a watchdog library in Micropython, but I don't think it's for the same board as in the M4. Right?

--Ernie

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