Awtrix 0.96 & 0.94 on two Ulanzi TC001 reboot up to two times a day

[UCaGk]

Bug report

I use two different Awtrix versions on two Ulanzi TC0001 clocks.
The clocks are under control of Home Assistant MQTT, each clock only shows time and on different events ICON, Sound and Text, but mostly time in format HH:MM:SS or HH:MM in color white, brithness 1-20, depending on some events.
Every clock reboots at a purely random time, without an event, just like that. Sometimes a colored dot appears, sometimes part of the matrix turns bright white, then the firmware restarts and clock run again.
Looks like the display "freeze" (sometimes a few leds flicker) and a watchdog reboots...
Both clocks has accumulator removed, some changes to pcb and a 3.3V stepdown regulator.
I'm not sure if the clocks reboot more than 2 times, because I'm not sitting in front of them the whole day :-)

Devices involved:

• Model: 2x Ulanzi (TC001)
• awtrix3 version: v0.94 & v0.96

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

• not possible, because this happens randomly

A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.

• It would be nice to know if there ist problem in software, if so, a new version would be great :-)

[Blueforcer]

Check the RAM usage.
If your using the Homeassistant discovery entities very often the RAM usage increases because of a memory leak in the used library.
Switch to raw MQTT API commands and you're fine.

[UCaGk]

Oh, that was fast :-)

Sorry for my misunderstanding, but what do you mean with "Switch to raw MQTT API commands"

This is a code snippet: Is this raw MQTT ? If not, how looks it like ?

  - alias: Zeitformat HH:MM Hell
    service: mqtt.publish
    metadata: {}
    data:
      qos: 0
      retain: false
      topic: UhrWZ/settings
      payload: >-
        {    "TIME_COL": [255,255,255],  "WD": false,  
        "TFORMAT": "%H:%M",   "TMODE": 0, "ABRI": false,  "BRI":
        20 }
    enabled: true

[Blueforcer]

Thats correct.
i mean using the awtrix entities like

[UCaGk]

I checked the free ram usage of both clocks, each has about 135000 Bytes of free RAM.
HA reboot each clock in the middle of the night, so hopefully the memory should be free after that. Not sure how fast the free memory space shrinks.
But if my code is correct and memory looks like much enough, what could I do to prevent random rebooting ?

[Jeandhom]

if the clocks reboot more than 2 times, because I'm not sitting in front of them the whole day

You can monitor the device's uptime.

[Blueforcer]

Not sure how fast the free memory space shrinks.

Just use Homeassistants history, you can see the ram over time in a graph 📉

[UCaGk]

Thanks for the hints, i made some entities, here are the results.

The other clock looks similar, only the battery history is a line at 100%.
It`s a strange battery plot, but the uptime only restarts at ~ 4:30 h this morning. (I reboot the clock at 3 am every day)
If there is a power problem the uptime counter should restart more than once in this history, right ?
I think it's not a memory problem.

[Blueforcer]

RAM usage looks good, and there was no other cause of reboots in the past.
I have read your issue again carefully
I assume that something is wrong with the DIY power supply.
When the display freezes but some leds flickers, its not a software issue.

[UCaGk]

Thanks for your help, I was also worried that it was the power supply, I was already thinking about whether I would only use the RGB LEDs with housing from the Ulanzi and replace the hardware with a simple ESP, will see.

[Trychlik]

i have same behaviour - once a day it freezes to half display working and after few seconds/minutes it reboots and works to next day ok. it crashes about at 40MB free ram. connected to 5V 2A power. battery is always 100%. maybe memory is a problem.

[Blueforcer]

40kb is too low. Check wich automation cause the memory drop

[UCaGk]

Sorry for writing again, maybe it helps, if there is a bug.
After a better look onto the clock I saw that the pixel do not flicker. Often there is a dot on the uper left, the clock is frozen and about 10 s the colored AWTRIX - IP - MQTT startup comes up, after that the clock is running like before, if display was HH:MM
than ist shows HH:MM, was the display HH:MM:SS before, HH:MM:SS is shown and everything look like before.
Situation is like before, memory always >110kb

[Blueforcer]

You should read the whole issue. Don't control the HA entities often, instead use raw mqtt commands

[Blueforcer]

Did you find the error?