2022-08-28
Maintenance for the pi4raz igate / learning about esp32 power requirements
Since last Thursday the aprs server at aprs.pa4tw.nl is down. I used that aprs server for the weather station and for the igate. The change for the weather station was one word in a script, for the igate I had to remember how to change this with the Arduino development environment set up to support the esp32 board. The easiest way seemed to be from the computer, but every time after the igate started the running process after the setup it crashed and rebooted itself. I spent a lot of time looking for the answers, added debug statements all over the code and ended up in the WiFi initialization code as the place of crashing. And that was the hint, according to Crash when trying to connect to wifi - Issue #3935 - espressif/arduino-esp32 this is a sign of a power shortage. This is purely my fault: the pi4raz igate design calls for an external power supply feeding it. The solution was to go back to the separate USB power supply and not use a USB hub connected to the computer. Now the igate is started again and visible on the APRS network: track PE4KH-10 on aprs.fi.