ESP32-S2-EYE dev board locks when WLAN/BLE activated

[captainmidday]

I am using the above board and flashing it with GENERIC_S3-20220117-v1.18.bin

I can access the REPL, I've interacted with the LED and one of the buttons, so I know at least parts of it are working. But if I do the following at the REPL

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>>> import network
>>> nic = network.WLAN(network.STA_IF)
>>> nic.active(True)

The REPL prompt hangs. I cannot connect to the board so at least for a newbie "embedded" tinkerer, there's not much more I can do except reset the board. When I re-flash with the above, I can get back to the REPL prompt.

I powered this board up with the factory firmware and saw my picture on that tiny screen and it correctly put a rectangle around my face. I did not at that point check to see if wifi is working or even if their demo includes wifi.

Someone suggested this might be a power issue. I was using a USB <3.0 port on my Mac, which I think provides up to 500mA and the board requires 800mA. Thinking this might be a brownout situation, I found a way to power it through my monitor (of all things) it has a built-in USB3.0 (blue; 900mA?) hub. I powered it via a port on the back of my monitor and was able to connect to the REPL, as before.

But it still locked up.

After this, I tried removing the LCD hat. It still locks up.

Other news: the exact same behavior with the BLE class. It locks up on activate.

In the past, I also noticed that

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I2C(n).scan()

...returns and empty list, which I don't think should be the case. There are a few on-board peripherals that I believe should show up (for n=0 or n=1 fwiu)