ESP32-S3 Feather Issues

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koala87
 
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ESP32-S3 Feather Issues

Post by koala87 »

Hello!

I recently got an ESP32-S3 feather and am running CircuitPython 8.0.0beta1 on it, but I'm having a few issues.
  1. The WiFi on my board seems to be non-functional (mostly). I've managed to get it to connect 3 or 4 times, but almost always I get a "No network with that said" (65% of the time) or "Unknown failure 2" (35%). I've tried this on a USB charger, on a LiPo battery, and connected to a computer. I've been using the code from the "CircuitPython Internet Test". I have a FeatherWing Proto board stacked on top, removing it has no effect. The WiFi scan regularly returns no results, and when it does, it never returns more than 1 or 2, which is really unusual since I'm in a dense area and there are 18-24 networks within range. My router is in the same room and is maybe 6 feet away, so signal strength isn't an issue. For testing purposes, I put the connect call in a loop with an automatic soft reset at 25 retries and it's tried to connect at least 150 times since I started writing this post with no successful connections.
  2. Less important, but still frustrating is that I can't seem to get battery percentage / voltage. I used the example code from the "Power Management" topic on the Learn site. I've grabbed I2C scan code from other topic and it finds 0xb as expected, but reading the percentage always says no I2C device found.
What are my options?

boot_out.txt:

Code: Select all

Adafruit CircuitPython 8.0.0-beta.1 on 2022-10-01; Adafruit Feather ESP32S3 4MB Flash 2MB PSRAM with ESP32S3
Board ID:adafruit_feather_esp32s3_4mbflash_2mbpsram

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dastels
 
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Re: ESP32-S3 Feather Issues

Post by dastels »

Have you tried CircuitPython 7.3.3?

Dave

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koala87
 
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Re: ESP32-S3 Feather Issues

Post by koala87 »

As far as I can tell the ESP32-S3 isn’t supported in 7.x - looks like it’s new to 8.x

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koala87
 
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Re: ESP32-S3 Feather Issues

Post by koala87 »

Well, looks like the version with 2mb PSRAM (which I have) only got supported in 8.0.0. The no PSRAM version seems like it’s supported by 7.3.3.

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koala87
 
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Re: ESP32-S3 Feather Issues

Post by koala87 »

I decided to mess with this more today, and all of a sudden it's playing a little bit more nicely, but I can't explain exactly why. My observations:
  • On initial power up today, WiFi scan showed me 12-14 networks and connected to WiFi immediately
  • After the first soft-reset, no networks were detected and I couldn't connect anymore.
  • Hard-resets (using microcontroller.reset() or unplugging the power) seem to have made no difference.
For testing purposes, I added a time.sleep(15) before attempting anything WiFi related (scanning or connecting), this seems to have helped as I see 12-14 networks again after a hard-reset. This makes no difference for a soft-reset though - scanning shows nothing and WiFi won't connect.

On a whim, I switched my WiFi to channel 1 and now I can consistently see my network after a soft-reset (it's the only one that shows up). Changing it back to channel 6 hides it from scans/connects on soft-resets. It kind of looks like there must be some sort of bug that is breaking WiFi on soft-resets, at least for networks not on channel 1. However, other networks on channel 1 don't show up (they have RSSIs in the -75 to -85 range)...

I can't explain why the sleep(15) seems to help on hard-reset though. Maybe it doesn't?

Maybe the board itself isn't defective, but the bug is particularly annoying. It seems like I can kind of workaround it for now, but I'm not exactly confident in this being a reliable workaround...

Still absolutely no luck on the battery voltage/percentage though.

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dastels
 
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Re: ESP32-S3 Feather Issues

Post by dastels »

Re: the battery reading issue. There's an open issue: https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/issues/6311

And an issue re: wifi issues; https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/issues/4093.

They may be (or be related to) what you're experiencing.

Dave

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neradoc
 
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Re: ESP32-S3 Feather Issues

Post by neradoc »

The I2C issue with the battery monitor is still not resolved, but in particular in the current 8.0 dev build we have a bug on all Espressif boards where wifi doesn't work well after a reload. The issue mentions that setting up auto-connect helps (likely because it just stays connected during reloads). Also disabling and enabling wifi seems to help too (see Anecdata's message at the bottom).

https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/issues/6866

You can also try the alpha from "Absolute Newest" to avoid that bug in particular, I think it came after.
https://circuitpython.org/board/adafrui ... _2mbpsram/

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koala87
 
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Re: ESP32-S3 Feather Issues

Post by koala87 »

Got it - I'll tinker with this more later today I suppose and cross my fingers for a reliable fix (though it is concerning that one of those issues has been open since Jan 2021!)

I wish these problems were noted somewhere on the product page or on the "Learn" page for the ESP32-S3 (like they limitations/issues for the ESP32-S2 are). It's a bit frustrating when you aren't US based and pay exchange, higher shipping, and additional duties. It never occurred to me to check Github to check whether the boards had notable issues like this.

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