WARN - esp_wifi_internal_tx and wifi connectivity issues?

[yanshay]

I had/have issues with wifi on one esp32s3 device while on another everything is working great.
It's not that it didn't connect and didn't work, its just that sometimes connecting to wifi took long time, with errors that it was disconnected and getting IP could take long time or never succeed, but it is/was inconsistent.

The wifi code on both devices is exactly the same code.
The device model is different and the rest of the application is completely different.

I noticed a difference in logs where with the device with the issues I saw in the logs:

WARN - esp_wifi_internal_tx 12294
WARN - esp_wifi_internal_tx 12310

I couldn't find documentation for those warnings/errors, but found something that it may be related to memory/alignment.

I increase heap size and things seem to be better.

Could these issues be related to lack of memory? If so, why are they categorized as warning and not error?

[bjoernQ]

ESP_ERR_WIFI_STATE: u32 = 12294;
ESP_ERR_WIFI_TX_DISALLOW: u32 = 12310;

Seems like the code tries to send some packet (probably the DHCP request) while the interface isn't up yet.

Also explains why it takes some time to get an IP ... the packet is tried to send too early and IIRC the embassy-net implementation will wait 10 seconds for the next try

[MabezDev]

Might be a bug in embassy (or our embassy_net::Driver impl), should it be checking the interface state before sending packets? Or at the very least, DHCP should immediately try again in the case where the interfaces goes from down to up?

[yanshay]

After doing some more tests, adding more memory to heap doesn't help. Letting the device rest off for a while and turning it on brought back the issues.

And along the way I saw another error code:
esp_wifi_internal_tx 12290

Also explains why it takes some time to get an IP ... the packet is tried to send too early and IIRC the embassy-net implementation will wait 10 seconds for the next try

Recently there was another issue about slow to obtain IP, maybe it's related in some way: #3499
And I had similar slow to get IP issue #2264 which I couldn't resolved back then and had to configure my router differently to get wifi to work properly.

But the issues are also about connecting to WiFi, that's pre DHCP, isn't it?

The interesting thing is that if I reset the device to get it connected:

1. First few resets it is unable to connect to wifi with error Disconnected.
2. Then it consistently connects to wifi and for a few resets it doesn't get an IP
3. Then within a few times (10-20 resets) it is getting much better and connects at reasonable time every time.

Could it be due to the chips getting hotter or something and perform better RF wise maybe?

I would consider also blaming my router, but another device always work perfectly and I never saw those warnings.

[Lenoirio]

May I ask what kind of device this is?
I ask because there are some known issues with cheap "S3-Mini" or "C3-Mini" devices. Esp. those with these little ceramic antennas placed close to the ESP32 chip. The issue is within the hardware-design. You might see the same problems when using C.
I had the same problem: Code that works on different ESP-devices without any problem just failed on those "special" mini-devices.

[yanshay]

It's an esp32s3, not mini.