phy: logging randomly emits garbage for timestamp portion

[i_am_mrp]

The "phy" logging activity randomly (almost always) emits garbage for what appears to be formatting of the time-portion of the reported timestamp.I have the output from the monitor below. This is very problematic since those junk characters often disrupt/stop the output. I am using "screen" as well as >make monitor utilities to view the logging output. Please note that the "phy" logging entry I am showing also does not respect esp_log_level_set("*", esp_log_level_t::ESP_LOG_NONE) either. This means my monitor output is almost always useless (the output stops due to the junk characters) since this happens early on in the startup sequence. I am using esp-idf and as of this post am on the lastest pull. I see this phy log entry when I am doing WiFi examples which I guess is triggering it.

I (139) cpu_start: Pro cpu up.
I (139) cpu_start: Single core mode
I (140) heap_init: Initializing. RAM available for dynamic allocation:
I (143) heap_init: At 3FFAE6E0 len 00001920 (6 KiB): DRAM
I (149) heap_init: At 3FFB7EA0 len 00028160 (160 KiB): DRAM
I (155) heap_init: At 3FFE0440 len 00003BC0 (14 KiB): D/IRAM
I (162) heap_init: At 3FFE4350 len 0001BCB0 (111 KiB): D/IRAM
I (168) heap_init: At 4008EE0C len 000111F4 (68 KiB): IRAM
I (174) cpu_start: Pro cpu start user code
I (43) cpu_start: Starting scheduler on PRO CPU.
I (13853) phy: phy_version: 359.0, e79c19d, Aug 31 2017, 17������?��ڴj5R2���͡���J�������������с�сJ́��������

[ESP_Sprite]

Can I ask what hardware you use? Asking because this looks very much like a situation where the ESP32 gets too much power. That should normally be caught by the brownout detector nowadays, but I'm still wondering if that could be the issue here.

[i_am_mrp]

Thank you for quick reply. I am using the SparkFun ESP32 Thing board silicon v 0.

I have it properly powered (metered power supply, the uUSB cable and sometimes by battery). I will follow up your hunch on a power issue.

I have successfully used these boards for over a dozen other examples/tests (GPIO, interrupts, timers, I2C, NVS, etc...). My WiFi tests so far have all failed.

For now I have reverted to v2.1 of the IDF and will work with existing WiFi samples to see if I can make progress.

Thanks again,
MrP