Raspberry Pi Pico W, RTOS, and Wi-Fi hanging

[richteel]

On my blog, I wrote a post with sample code about the issue that I'm having with my code hanging when using FreeRTOS and Wi-Fi. The blog post is at https://teelsys.com/raspberry-pi-pico-w-rtos-and-wi-fi/.

The code works fine until I include FreeRTOS.h. Once in a while, the code works fine and it connects to Wi-Fi and continues. In my latest attempt, it took 12 resets before it connected and kept working. Currently I have no tasks setup and am only running code in the loop to check the Wi-Fi connection. I saw the note in "arduino-readthedocs-io-en-latest.pdf, section '29.2 Important Information' that states the following: "Multicore is supported, but only core 0 may run WiFi related code.
– FreeRTOS is supported only on core 0 and from within setup and ``loop`, not tasks, due to the requirement
for a very different LWIP implementation. PRs always appreciated!"

This is the reason that I'm running the code in loop rather than a task as it looks like tasks run in Core 1 rather than Core 0. If there is another way this should be done, let me know and I will give it a go to see if it resolves the issue. I have tried running the code in a task and it did not seem to work at all. I may not have hit reset enough times though.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank You

Sample Code:
code.zip

[richteel]

It appears that my intuition may have been correct and it is the statement delay(5) in WiFIMulti.cpp that is causing the issue.

I replaced delay(5); with the following code and it works fine. @earlephilhower, I will be submitting a pull request shortly.

`unsigned long tWifiDelayForRtos_start = millis();
while (millis()-tWifiDelayForRtos_start <= 5) {
   if(millis()<tWifiDelayForRtos_start) {
	// millis wrapped around to zero
	tWifiDelayForRtos_start = millis();
   }
}`

[richteel]

Pull request created, however it fails the astyle check. Not certain what is happening there, but I assumed it was that I had tabs rather than spaces for indentation. I changed that, but it still failed.

[richteel]

BTW: The new output is the following

START: Reading Config File
0.      MySSID_One Password1
1.      MySSID_Two        Password2
2.      MySSID_Three   Password3
FINISHED: Reading Config File
sdcard_init_complete = true
-----------------------------   0       165684
END: setup()    0       165684
.START: Restart Wi-Fi with new Config
------^^------ WIFI: Added AP MySSID_One ------^^------
------^^------ WIFI: Added AP MySSID_Two ------^^------
------^^------ WIFI: Added AP MySSID_Three ------^^------
Connecting WiFi...

WiFi connected, SSID: MySSID_Two, IP address: 192.168.0.28
Connected in 8603 ms
------^^------ WIFI: Starting Station Mode ------^^------
Wi-Fi Begin Completed
END: Restart Wi-Fi with new Config
START: Update IP Address
IP Address has changed to 192.168.0.28
END: Update IP Address
START: Print Debug Statement
Wi-Fi has changed to Station Mode
END: Print Debug Statement
..........checkWiFi     0       164804
...........checkWiFi    0       164804
...........checkWiFi    0       164804

[richteel]

Actually the root cause of the problem was within the FreeRTOS library, in the variantHooks.cpp file. There was a change submitted a few days ago with the fix and I had missed it. If you are running into a similar issue, it may be worth pulling the library from Earle's repository and replacing the code in your Arduino IDE library with the latest version from GitHub. Right now, the version in Arduino is 3.6.0. If your package is newer, then you should not be running into this issue. If you have board version 3.6.0, replace the code in the library with the code on GitHub.

For more details, see: #1878