Thanks for sharing the details. As you and the others may know I made
the journey from hobby to narrowly focused biz with respect to this
stuff, so my perspectives and biases are now very different from what
they were in 2012. I too am very wary of learning curves vs just getting
what you need done and moving on. So many of the tools we use can be
bottomless pits of hairy details and we have to ask ourselves if we want
to be a _____ expert or just skate across the ice and hope it's thick
enough.
I applaud your use of "task" in this context. As you say, it's
effectively like you have support for a background task even though
there may be no formal interfaces offering "real tasks". A wild stab
would be to suggest you have to be careful about non-reentrant code if
somehow you're reentering the timer code from a second tick. But you've
already routed around the issue.
-Pete
On 1/26/21 11:07 AM, John Vaughters via TriEmbed wrote:
Pete,
There is a debug port on the board for sure, not sure if it qualifies as JTAG.
I've never actually used a debugger on a micro-processor, only on regular
desktop/server programming. I never invested the time or money to get that up
to speed. I will say it dumps a bunch of hex code to the serial port when it
crashes and I did not really look at that either. The reason being that I never
ran into a limitation that prevented my pragmatic application results and I'm
more interested in the end result than the finer details. I just hack until I
get it to work. Same goes for oscilloscopes and electronics, I just use basic
concepts and practices and usually get it to work. However, I definitely want
to gear up with oscilloscopes and logic analyzers one day. But until I have the
time to play, no need in putting out the dough for it to sit on the shelf. This
attitude is from experience of too many things sitting on the shelf.
There are two timers on the board, but one is used for wifi. The other one is
available, and I might be able to use that with better results, but the Ticker
library does magic in the background and appears to act like a simple task
scheduler. So in the code it appears you are setting tasks, but behind the
scenes I have not investigated what it is actually doing. For sure if you use
the single timer you are limited to one task or a tight management of tasks on
that timer. I'm not quite sure because I did not go that route, I am just
parroting my perception of what I read. So I opted for the code appearance of
tasking through the Ticker library to make my code more readable. It seems to
work great so far and I am close to being done with my wifi modbus device. The
next application will be a very simple wifi serial to tcp converter to be able
to use with micro-processors that have no network connections. This will allow
modbus over TCP via serial conversion. You get the sense I like modbus? `,~)
What I found so far is that the serial to tcp application is already solved and
out there in multiple forms, so I just need to pick one and give it a go.
I never really exposed my end applications; it is for my home SCADA system that monitors
energy use for the goal of reducing energy while remaining comfortable. Basically, I am
trying to use technology to "Stick it to the Man" `,~) Oh and have fun learning
along the way. I'm pretty sure on just the electric controls implemented on the hot water
heater alone I have saved enough to pay for my electronics. So anything above that is pay
dirt.
For Robotics, I am really liking the ESP32 combined with some nano arduinos as
specialized processors. Top priority being a weed eater head remote controlled
lawnmower to minimize allergen exposure. And for the record that has been on
the task list for years and I wouldn't be surprised if it waits years longer,
but hey the technology keeps making the idea easier as time flies by.
Dreams are good, jobs are better! `,~)
Bottom line is I am loving the ESP line of products.
John Vaughters
On Tuesday, January 26, 2021, 10:20:04 AM EST, Pete Soper via TriEmbed
<[email protected]> wrote:
Does ESP-12E support JTAG debugging? It might be interesting to figure
out what the crash is about (maybe there isn't actually a task scheduler
present and if you don't "yield" back you've violated the API
contract?). But you've stuck with the pragmatic approach, John. Thanks
for the tip.
Getting SparkFun "Micromod" boards with ESP32 and ESP8266 (no idea what
flavors) and the "All the Pins" carrier board today. But these go on the
shelf as I wait for the RP2040 Micromod board, and my stack is pushed
anyway. Particle Land, here I come. :-)
-Pete
On 1/26/21 10:03 AM, John Vaughters via TriEmbed wrote:
In my playing around with the ESP-12e's that I have, I found something that may
save someone some time. Using the Ticker library to schedule a task, I quickly
found out that the task better be quick or it will crash the program. To define
quick, my task was maybe 25ms, which was enough to crash the program. To get
around this I found on the web a quick tip that made alot of sense. Just use
the Ticker task to flip a bool and then have an if statement run the task and
reset the bool.
It's not what I consider a great programming technique, but I consider it a
valid workaround on the limitation. And it still beats running the task on
every loop cycle.
I am certainly open to other suggestions, but it works quite well and I will be
sticking with it for now.
John Vaughters
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