ESP8266 Community Forum

- Sun Oct 09, 2016 4:13 pm #56289 I'm having long term stability issues using a NodeMCU directly powered by a mobile phone charger connected to its micro USB port. The device is posting data to a server on the internet once per minute, and it never worked more than one week, sometimes works only a few minutes or hours, but most of the times it works for several days but no more than one week. It then gets blocked and it is necessary to power it off and on to recover. I'm using the latest framework - 2.3.0. From your experience, the NodeMCU hardware can be used in a device that should work 24/7? Any idea of what could be the issue? Any tip to try to diagnose the issue?
After facing this problem I added some debug but it seems it got even worse, I started logging errors (communication errors with the server) to a file (so I added SPIFFS) and also added the webserver to retrieve the log file, but after some days working without failures it is now failing very fast after each power/down/up cycle. When I introduced this log file I also introduced an automatic reset after n consecutive communication failures with the server (and added a post of millis to the internet server, so I can identify when the node resets), but even that way it blocks after some days. I also added the post of the heap size available every minute to the internet server to try to identify any memory leak, but it is constant until the node blocks (about 33k available).

Any alternative way to avoid the node blocking will be much appreciated!

Best regards

Fernando

- Sun Oct 09, 2016 6:12 pm #56294 Hi, for what it's worth I've found that conecting through various access points causes problems. Whilst connecting directly to the AP that hosts the DHCP works well. Changing settings on none DHCP APs can help depending on your setup.

- Sun Oct 09, 2016 10:33 pm #56301

From your experience, the NodeMCU hardware can be used in a device that should work 24/7? Any idea of what could be the issue?

I've have an ESP8266 project up for over a year and it has required only one (1) reset due to summer lightning causing on/off AC before a brownout which lasted several seconds before the substation switched to another feeder line.

Other than that one time, the unit is rock-stable. Having completed numerous ESP8266 projects, the only issue that continues to pop-up is the need for quality DC power, minimum 1A current with no voltage sag.

[*]Well filtered
[*]Low-Z
[*]Properly bypassed

The best and least expensive way to manage the above is with a DC-DC buck (step-down) converter, around $1 from AliExpress. This has worked so well, that I ordered qty 25 on my last order. I have never tried boost DC-DC, but I suspect it too would satisfy the critical requirements.


Ray's Projects


For reference only, not a recommendation:
Here

- Mon Oct 10, 2016 6:14 am #56313 Thanks for the feedback! I usually have an extreme care with power supply decoupling when I use the ESP-12 module due to all the known problems, now as I'm using the NodeMCU module I was expecting that the power supply decoupling was done by the NodeMCU, i'm powering it with a mobile phone charger (5V/1A). Do you think that the NodeMCU might have hardware stability issues?

Best regards

Fernando