ESPixelStick V4 SD card wiring & FPP connect

Interesting. It looks like a I have a fragmentation boundary issue to fix. The list of files gets broken into chunks and you are describing an issue at the end of one chunk and the start of the next chunk.
 
I did not like the way this was working anyway. I just changed the mechanism to auto create a summary file when a file is added or removed. The UI then uploads the summary file and the world is good. No fragmentation boundaries no messy assembly code.
 
It is loading all sequences with the new firmware. I haven't done much but just load all of the sequences. Some of the sequence files look too small, I'll get back to it later tonight. Thanks again for looking into that.
 
All sequences do show up but now out of the 14 sequences only 3 are big enough to play. See the attachment for error in FPP. That's only 1 of the sequences but the rest of the errors for the sequences are like that. I reformatted the SD cards and rendered all the sequences between everything I tried below.
1. I loaded all sequences to the April 30th firmware board and another board I have that has V4 beta 5 running on it at the same time and all sequences loaded to the V4 beta 5 board but only 4 loaded to the April 30th firmware board.
2. I swapped SD cards with basically the same results V4 beta 5 loading all and April 30th only loading a couple.
3. I tried loading 1 at a time on April 30th firmware and the very first one didn't load the full sequence
4. On positive note April 30th firmware is showing the correct number of sequences now. (V4 beta 5 has always shown the correct number of sequences in file manager)
I've also attached the file management page for both builds. The April 30th build has more pixels on it so the files should be bigger than the V4 beta 5 build. Like I said V4 beta 5 is working.
Thanks again.
 

Attachments

  • FPP Remote Error.JPG
    FPP Remote Error.JPG
    44.9 KB · Views: 4
  • April 30th File Manage.JPG
    April 30th File Manage.JPG
    76.7 KB · Views: 4
  • V4 beta 5 File Manage.JPG
    V4 beta 5 File Manage.JPG
    79.1 KB · Views: 4
With the file sizes that different, it is clear that the xLights loader is once again truncating files. Not sure why.
Just uploaded a minor performance improvement on the end of file processing.
 
When I get home I'll try the new firmware. If I get the same results, xLights has an update that popped up last night when I started it up that I can try.
 
I just had a failure using my web browser. Going to try a bit of debugging. Maybe I can detect a bad file earlier and trigger a retry of some sort.
 
I tried a few things tonight. When I load the firmware I do set static address so that's not moving around.
1. Tried the latest firmware with xlights 2024.10, all files were too small.
2. Tried the same firmware with xlights 2023.20, all files were too small.
3. Tried the same firmware with xlights 2024.10 and only 3 outputs enabled. 3 sequences loaded correctly the rest were too small. The 3 that did load are test ones without a lot of color changing or flashing. (These 3 files are smaller files and only 30 seconds long)
4. So I tried V4 beta 5 again with all 4 outputs on, xlights 2024.10 and all files loaded correctly the first try. I have 14 sequences and they all show up in the file management page of the ESPixelStick UI.
Any other ideas I would be happy to try.
 
I was downloading files yesterday and tracking the data. All of the data was offered to the SD card driver in the OS and yet the file size at the end did no match the size of the offered data set. Need to dig into the OS now.
 
Making progress. It looks like the SD OS layer has an issue after about 10MB of data is written. I have added logic to detect and recover from this condition (close and reopen the file), but the logic is losing a few bytes of data each time it happens.
 
Code currently on main seems to have issues after a 200MB file. The smaller ones seem to work fine. Have been looking for a workaround for this. Cant find the bug in the IDF yet either.
 
That would explain why the 3 smaller sequences I have would load correctly. Thanks again for all the time you put into this.
 
I have made things better and worse at the same time. I have the SD writes marching along and at about 100MB the SD card write fails. Within a minute, the WiFi layer goes offline. After that the ESP reboots. Sigh. Smells like a memory leak.
 
I got a little time to load the the newest firmware from EspixelStick CI. See attached, the first number is what was expected and the second was what loaded. I loaded all 14 sequences in one shot. Notice the 2 smaller sequences loaded. That's all I had time to look at right now.
 

Attachments

  • SD Card 5-3 Firmware.txt
    402 bytes · Views: 3
Thank You for the data. FYI: I am seeing a regular 205 byte deviation. It seems to be something to do with the storage block sixe difference between the source file and the ESP SD file. That is something to fix after I get the main failure resolved. The FatFS the ESP is using seems to not work well on files over a few hundred kilo bytes.
 
Also I forgot to mention I was using Fiefox for web and had a lot of failures. Like some files wouldn't even load. I am now using Chrome and it seems to load files as seen in the above file attachment. Just an FYI for anyone trying any of this, I would not use Firfox.
 
Interestingly enough, I just ran into this statement:
  • Cons: HTTP/S is not designed for transferring large files, and you may encounter timeouts or other errors when attempting to do so. It also does not natively support file resume.
With large files defined as greater than 10MB.
Shifting focus to see if an FTP transfer with file resume can do the trick.
 
Just integrated an FTP server into the project. 50% faster transfer rates (using filezilla). Had an issue every few seconds where an SD save operation failed (just like I am seeing in HTTPS File Transfer). FTP recovered and continued each time. The entire file got transferred. Now to see if I can get a JS transfer session working.
 
Sounds like you're better off than me. I was trying to load sequences last night, did something and none will load with any firmware. Shut down the puter and will get back to it tonight. It was late, tired fingers hit something. Just sit back and laugh, not much else I can do. LOL
 
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