2 minutes periodic transmission on Particle Photon

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi!

I was directed to WICED forum by Particle support for trouble in using Particle Photon for our IoT project.

We are using the Photon board for audio acquisition with an analogue circuit we have designed. In the circuit there is a microphone and some active filters. We need the Wi-Fi comunication but not the Particle cloud connection, so we use the Photon in SEMI-AUTOMATIC mode and Wifi.connect() in the setup().

After the Wifi connection, we have no interferences in the signal of the analogical circuit, although the Wifi is active and data are sent. Nevertheless, some minutes after the Photon turned on, we noticed an interference between our circuit and the Wifi signal. This interference is repeated exactly every two minutes.

Evidently, this interference is more powerfull than just sending data and we suspect that is due to the RTOS Wifi management.

Is there some activity which take place every two minutes and that needs this strong Wifi signal?

If so, there is a way to disable this feature in the WICED WIFi stack used in Particle Photon or reduce the WiFi transmission power?

Thanks for support

Best Regards

Emiliano Nardone

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1 Solution

emiliano.nardone_2260626

Once link has been establish you need to execute the following command:

wl phy_watchdog 0

If still issues you need to include the following in the nvram:

# delay onchip calibration from 120s

glacialtimer=240

# Wifi Adaptivity

edonthd=-70

edoffthd=-76

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8 Replies
Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi!

Someone at Cypress can help us to solve the problem?

Thanks to all!!

Emiliano

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GauravS_31
Moderator
Moderator
Moderator
10 questions asked 250 solutions authored 250 sign-ins

Is this periodic interference reproducible in other WLAN projects that use the wiced wifi stack? Can you attach the wireshark logs for analysis? This will help us in isolating the cause.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi and thanks for your tips.

Unfortunately this is our first project that involve the WICED wifi stack. We have tried to use the system with different WiFi connection device (home router, company network, mobile phone in tethering). The results is the same in all different conditions.

At the moment we have configured our system single copy for work around the problem but we'll build other systems soon and we'll try for wireshark logs analysis.

We'll send info asap!

Best regards

Emiliano

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DaBa_2244756
Level 5
Level 5
25 likes received 10 likes received 10 likes given

Hi,

My opinion, that bad board layout or schematic, shielding.  Analog part do not must interference with wifi part.

You want analog problems resolve with software.  Maybe you have in nearest range radio thermometer? Try check your device in other place.

Darius

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emiliano.nardone_2260626

Once link has been establish you need to execute the following command:

wl phy_watchdog 0

If still issues you need to include the following in the nvram:

# delay onchip calibration from 120s

glacialtimer=240

# Wifi Adaptivity

edonthd=-70

edoffthd=-76

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi

Thank you very much for your answer. It seems to be the one that helps us to work around our problem.

First of all we're developing using the Photon IDE (Atom). With this IDE we have a restricted access to the system resources and configurations. We only can write our application code in C\C++.

Just few questions about your answer:

- the command that you indicate is a command that we can locate in our application code? Can we define this variable and init to 0 value (wl pay_watchdog(0) in C++)?

- if necessary where we have to locate the nvram configuration for correct setting?

Best regards

Emiliano

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Hiemiliano.nardone_2260626​, could you point us to documentation of those parameters:

  • glacialtimer
  • edonthd
  • edoffthd

if you happen to know where to look for that? Web search does not seem to bring anything up that helps.

Thanks,

Johannes.

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Anonymous
Not applicable

HI Darius

We are conscious that this is an EMI problem. In addition i can tell you that maybe we have also problems with insufficient power supply for our complete system. Otherwise we have restricted time for system testing and delivery, so we're trying to work around the problem to go on with other program planned task such as software testing, cloud tool definitions etc...

We have also testes the system to isolate the causes and we are sure that the problems is the two system (analog board and photon board) connection or closeness.

Best regards

Emiliano

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