Crash when controlling AXA Remote 2.0 synchronous

[rpoelstra]

Hi,

I'm using your code to control both a 'normal' AXA Remote 2.0 as well as a 'synchronous' version that has two motors connected.
The single motor version works fine, but with the double motor version there occurs a crash every now and then.
I'm new to ESPHome development, so I'm wondering how I can debug this issue.

Can you provide some support?

[galagaking]

Hi, i do not have two AXA modules to test. May be the serial port gives some feedback and you have to put a trace on the serial ouput to give some clue what is going on? The code will put also some logging to the LOG feed (accessible via Esphome LOG).

[rpoelstra]

Hi, Thank you for your answer. I've been able to drastically reduce the crashes by performing a bounds check when writing to the buff array in the while(available()) loop.
It still crashes about 4 times a day, but it's useable now. The communication isn't 100% reliable as the commands from ESPHome might interfere with the master slave communication in which case both messages are lost.
Unfortunately I don't have a spare set, otherwise it would be much easier to dive into the communication to see whether reliability can be improved.

[austwhite]

@rpoelstra
I think you'll find the crash related to the ESP chip losing power or browning out due to the extra draw from the dual motor setup. I have had occasional errors with that even with the single motor setup device (the 2.0)
You may need to increase track size for the DC power rails to the AXA and the ESP chip.

[rpoelstra]

I’ve monitored the power supply and it’s rock steady. I’m using the AXA supplied adapter and power the esp from there with a step down converter.
The crashes also only happen when the motors are idle so doesn’t seem related to the power that’s available to the esp.
I’ll try to find some time to dive deeper into the communication to try and find the remaining crashes.

[austwhite]

Just bumping this to keep it alive @galagaking
I am curious about this two as I have a weird window that would benefit from a syncronous motor setup also

[rpoelstra]

Hi @austwhite
Please note that the crash rate is low enough for the system to be workable (at least it's so for me).
I still need to find some time to dig into this, especially as I'm about to buy a second set of synchronous motors.

[rpoelstra]

@austwhite Please note that significant improvements for the synchronous setup are made here:
https://github.com/rrooggiieerr/esphome-axaremote

[austwhite]

Thanks for the update. I found another implementation that uses timings and ESP32 (in preference) though I was able to convert the code to use the ESP8266 software UART. The software UART is flakey, but for my purpose it will be fine as 99% of the time I will fully open or fully close the window and not partial open it.
I just needed some code that had been kept up to date