NRF24 questions

[espruino-discuss3]

Posted at 2014-03-30 by hansamann

I am starting to use the NRF24... modules I got with the espruino and the master/slave example that I found in the code examples worked really great initially. I then modified the example of the master slightly:

SPI1.setup({sck:A5, miso:A6, mosi:A7});
var nrf = require("NRF24L01P").connect( SPI1, B0, B1 );
var counter = 0;
function onInit() {
  //transmit, receive
  nrf.init([0,0,0,0,2], [0,0,0,0,1]);
  
  setInterval(function() {
    nrf.sendCommand("" + counter++, function(r) { print("=="+r); });
  }, 1000);
}
onInit();
setInterval(function() {
  nrf.masterHandler();
}, 50);

It sends the counter variable to the slave, then prints the response. So ideally it will print the increasing numbers.

Two observations:

• when starting up, and once also just in the middle of runing the master code, I see

TX not received 30
TX not received 30
==@
==
 
==�!�B
==�A
==8
==9
==�
==15

• I sometimes get an empty response - the output from teh print is just == in this case. That seems simple to check against, just wondering what the issue is and if it could be fixed.

• after running this counter till around 600, I disconnected. then connected again and got a massive out of memory error. is this because of the print statement which might queue the output?

All output is below:

ERROR: Out of Memory!
WARNING: Out of memory while appending to array
INTERNAL ERROR: Timeout on SPI TX
ERROR: Out of Memory!
WARNING: Out of memory while appending to array
INTERNAL ERROR: Timeout on SPI TX
ERROR: Out of Memory!
WARNING: Out of memory while appending to array
INTERNAL ERROR: Timeout on SPI TX
ERROR: Out of Memory!
WARNING: Out of memory while appending to array
INTERNAL ERROR: Timeout on SPI TX
INTERNAL ERROR: Timeout on SPI RX
ERROR: Out of Memory!
WARNING: Out of memory while appending to array
INTERNAL ERROR: Timeout on SPI TX
INTERNAL ERROR: Timeout on SPI RX
ERROR: Out of Memory!
WARNING: Out of memory while appending to array
at line 1 col 144
{this.setReg(7,48);digitalWrite(this.CE,0);this.setReg(0,10);this.spi.send(225,this.CSN);a=a.clone();a.splice(0,0,160);this.spi.send(a,this.CSN);digitalWrite(this.CE,1);for(a=1E3;a--&&!(this.getReg(7)&48););0>=a&&print("TX timeout");a=!0;this.getReg(7)&16&&(print("TX not received "+this.getReg(7)),a=!1);digitalWrite(this.CE,0);this.setReg(0,11);digitalWrite(this.CE,1);this.setReg(7,48);return a}
                                                                                                                                                ^
in function "send" called from line 2 col 124
in function "sendString" called from line 1 col 42
in function "sendCommand" called from line 2 col 67
in function called from system
ERROR: Error processing interval - removing it.
Execution Interrupted during event processing.
ERROR: Out of Memory!
ERROR: Out of Me

[espruino-discuss3]

Posted at 2014-03-30 by hansamann

Just ran the master/slave next to each other again with a 250ms interval. I experienced this before but reduced the interval as I did not want to wait that long/

From around 1600 calls, I get a permanent TX not received 30 - any ideas why?

1671
==1672
==1673
==1674
==1675
==1676
==1677
TX not received 30
TX not received 30
TX not received 30
==1678
==��
==1678
==1678
TX not received 30
TX not received 30
TX not received 30
TX not received 30
TX not received 30
TX not received 30
TX not received 30
TX not received 30
TX not received 30
TX not received 30
TX not received 30

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Posted at 2014-03-31 by DrAzzy

Make sure you're on v59.
The timer bug fixed in v59 was really nasty, and would cause breakage when things were left running a while - the timer would eventually go berserk.

I'd expect the master would drown in a flood of out of memory errors if it happened on master first, while if it happened on the slave, the slave would probably just start fumbling every message. So it matches your symptoms - maybe it's that simple?

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Posted at 2014-03-31 by @gfwilliams

Yes, that could be it...

The other issue could be if you're powering the receiver from your PC's USB and you're printing text. In this case if no terminal app is connected to Espruino, the PC/Mac won't receive the data printed from Espruino, and Espruino will just sit there waiting once its output buffer is full.

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Posted at 2014-06-11 by Andrey

how I can clean terminal buffer? I case of big number of error messages from NRF module , if slave doesn't respond, the master stops working because of buffer overflow.

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Posted at 2014-06-11 by @gfwilliams

Is this when you're connected via USB but there is no terminal app running? If so, just:

• Always run a terminal app
• Run off a USB charger instead
• Explicitly move the terminal to Serial1 with Serial1.setConsole()

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Posted at 2016-01-28 by user61900

For anyone else running into this, I discovered you can use multiple chrome profile in order to run multiple copies of the IDE simultaneously (one for each device)

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Posted at 2016-01-29 by @gfwilliams

That's really cool - thanks for the suggestion!