Random and frequent crashes

[volatile]

I am developing an application using the ESP32. Custom 4layer PCB, bare ESP32 chip and 16Mb of flash. The board uses a SMD stamped metal antenna. However at the current stage the ESP32 is crashing frequently and randomly with errors like this:

Code: Select all

Guru Meditation Error: Core  0 panic'ed (LoadProhibited). Exception was unhandled.
Core 0 register dump:
PC      : 0x4011e156  PS      : 0x00060030  A0      : 0x801191bb  A1      : 0x3ffd66e0
0x4011e156: rcReachRetryLimit at ??:?

A2      : 0x3fffb42c  A3      : 0x1e000107  A4      : 0x00060020  A5      : 0x3ffd67b8
A6      : 0x00000016  A7      : 0x00000000  A8      : 0x00000000  A9      : 0xe6b40e58
A10     : 0x3ffb140c  A11     : 0x3ffc8060  A12     : 0x80086bc9  A13     : 0x3ffb0560
A14     : 0x00000001  A15     : 0x3ffb0590  SAR     : 0x00000020  EXCCAUSE: 0x0000001c
EXCVADDR: 0x80086bcd  LBEG    : 0x4000c2e0  LEND    : 0x4000c2f6  LCOUNT  : 0xffffffff

Backtrace: 0x4011e156:0x3ffd66e0 0x401191b8:0x3ffd6710 0x40119728:0x3ffd6740 0x40119a69:0x3ffd6770 0x40088171:0x3ffd
67a0
0x4011e156: rcReachRetryLimit at ??:?

0x401191b8: esp_wifi_internal_set_msdu_lifetime at ??:?

0x40119728: lmacProcessAckTimeout at ??:?

0x40119a69: lmacProcessTxComplete at ??:?

0x40088171: ppTask at ??:?


Rebooting...

or this

Code: Select all

Guru Meditation Error: Core  0 panic'ed (IllegalInstruction). Exception was unhandled.
Core 0 register dump:
PC      : 0x401205ac  PS      : 0x00060d30  A0      : 0x80088188  A1      : 0x3ffd6720
0x401205ac: wdevProcessRxSucDataAll at ??:?

A2      : 0x3ffd7218  A3      : 0x00000094  A4      : 0x3ffbcb90  A5      : 0x00000001
A6      : 0x3ffd986c  A7      : 0x00000007  A8      : 0x00000000  A9      : 0x00000090
A10     : 0x00000000  A11     : 0x3ffb1e18  A12     : 0x00000000  A13     : 0x00000000
A14     : 0x3ffd54a4  A15     : 0xfff0ffff  SAR     : 0x0000001d  EXCCAUSE: 0x00000000
EXCVADDR: 0x00000000  LBEG    : 0x4000c2e0  LEND    : 0x4000c2f6  LCOUNT  : 0xffffffff

Backtrace: 0x401205ac:0x3ffd6720 0x40088185:0x3ffd67a0
0x401205ac: wdevProcessRxSucDataAll at ??:?

0x40088185: ppTask at ??:?


Rebooting...

I am a little lost here. Yesterday the board ran stably for hours, then today at a different place and WIFI it crashes every 30sec. Worse, when I try to google things like "esp_wifi_internal_set_msdu_lifetime" there aren't even any results.
What could be happening here? How can I debug this further, or even prevent the crashes?

[ESP_igrr]

Hi volatile,
from our experience random crashes in different places, especially with an IllegalInstruction exception, almost always are related to either power supply stability, or with signal integrity issues between ESP32 and the flash chip. So the first thing to do would be to try running same software on a commonly available development board, such as devkit-c or the Wrover-kit.

[volatile]

Thank you, I will try that (although I would be surprised if the board really had power supply issues). In the meantime I simply reduced the flash frequency from 80MHz to 40MHz and (for now) the stability seems to be much better (in other words: board has been running for 10 minutes now and not crashed once )

[jbkuma]

I know this post is a bit old, but I had a similar issue with an ESP32 Dev Module, and changing the frequency to 40MHz seems to have solved my issue as well.

[Praveen.kullu]

Hi, i might be facing a similar issue, has anyone found the underlying cause and the fix for it?

[ESP_Sprite]

As mentioned above: you first want to take a long, hard look at your power supply situation.