BLE Advertisement Failure on Seeed XIAO ESP32-C3

[a-a-crabtree]

CircuitPython version

Adafruit CircuitPython 8.0.0-beta.4 on 2022-10-30; Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C3 with ESP32-C3FN4

Code/REPL

from adafruit_ble_radio import Radio
radio = Radio(channel=1)
radio.send('test')

Behavior

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "adafruit_ble_radio.py", line 134, in send
  File "adafruit_ble_radio.py", line 151, in send_bytes
  File "adafruit_ble/__init__.py", line 215, in start_advertising
_bleio.BluetoothError: Unknown system firmware error: 30

Description

• Error when trying to start BLE advertisement on Seeed XIAO ESP32-C3 / Circuitpython 8.x.x
• Easiest to see when using BLE radio, but have seen same behavior any time when starting BLE advertising

Additional information

• Usually only seen between a hard reset and a soft reset. I.e., a soft reset will usually fix it, and it doesn't usually pop up until the board loses power or is hard reset, but it doesn't happen after every hard reset and I've seen it need multiple soft resets before it clears.
• Have tried on multiple boards and have seen the issue on 8.0.0.alpha.1 through 8.0.0.beta.4.

[dhalbert]

Do you have other Espressif boards you can test with? The BLE implementation on Espressif is limited due to some existing limitatations of the underlying nimble library, so we stopped working on Espressif BLE for a while. There may be remaining bugs.

[a-a-crabtree]

Just tried it with a couple QT Py ESP32-C3 boards, not seeing the issue on either, so seems to be specific to the XIAO.

[dhalbert]

MIght be an sdkconfig issue; I'll take a look later.

[dhalbert]

The sdkconfig files between the QT Py and the XIAO have no interesting setting differences: they are tiny and just specify the LWIP name.

The other file differences also don't seem to be significant. I am at a loss to explain the issue. It could be some strapping pin issue. Do you have a pointer to the schematic for this XIAO? I cannot find it.

[dhalbert]

I am going to move this forward to 8.x.x so that it doesn't block the 8.0.0 release.

[a-a-crabtree]

No, Seeed hasn't (to my knowledge) released a schematic for this version. I've been able to work around it by sending a dummy ble_radio message on startup, then if the error occurs resetting via microcontroller.reset(), which allows it to run without further errors. Not sure if that helps track down the issue.

…

On Thu, Dec 8, 2022, 7:28 AM Dan Halbert ***@***.***> wrote: The sdkconfig files between the QT Py and the XIAO have no interesting setting differences: they are tiny and just specify the LWIP name. The other file differences also don't seem to be significant. I am at a loss to explain the issue. It could be some strapping pin issue. Do you have a pointer to the schematic for this XIAO? I cannot find it. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#7180 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AXUALGDA7E6IH6UK6AW6R4TWMHWA5ANCNFSM6AAAAAAR22FJCI> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[RetiredWizard]

Came across this while trying to get CP running on the board.

https://files.seeedstudio.com/wiki/XIAO_WiFi/Resources/Seeeduino-XIAO-ESP32C3-SCH.pdf

[RetiredWizard]

I just tried this on 8.0.0-rc.1 and didn't see the issue.

I tried to flash the beta 3 version to confirm the error in the older version but couldn't get it to flash successfully. I'll give it a go again after I get some sleep.

[RetiredWizard]

I looked at the original issue again and realized the issue didn't happen all the time so I created a code.py file with the test script and I did get the Unknown system firmware error: 30 message once. I've been trying for a few minutes to recreate it using various power/cycle ctrl-d combinations and haven't been able to make it happen a second time.