networking example discussion

[folksman]

HI, i tested almost all examples and they working great except the nrf24l01_network_test.py.
i started 1 node as master by default settings and the 2nd i do Y > node '1' and on try connecting Mesh Network it always fail.
The master node is acting as master node so ther should be no problem.
Any fast help would be great!

[2bndy5]

Is the master node driven by c++ or by circuitpython?

I had trouble getting consistent results with mesh networking. There are commented out lines that I use to debug the problem, but calling print() while the mesh network layer is executing tends to slow things down significantly.

[folksman]

i use circuitpython on device. BTW i tested now as well Network mode and i see that only send 2-3 messages ok then it failed. this is on both sides

[folksman]

complete using circuitpython example

[folksman]

oh forget the issue on Network mode. looks like it was my mistake. i must idle on 1 node, correct? ohterwise the sender sends just 2-3 message and the failed
But mesh issue still there :(

[2bndy5]

Yes all nodes in the network/mesh (including master) must be idling if they are not emitting. The first 2 or 3 messages might be acknowledged by the radio itself, but the MCU must call network.update() (or mesh.update()) to keep the radio's RX FIFO unoccupied.

The mesh connecting process is very sensitive to timing because it doesn't really use the radio's auto_ack feature. What hardware are you using? RPi is somewhat faster than MCUs driven by circuitpython firmware.

[folksman]

Yeah network works fine as i see - no problems so far :)

Mesh: I use a Adafruit Express father board and a Adafruit RP2040 father board. both drive with actual firmware and your lib by simple use your nrf24l01_network_test.py example.
I really don´t know why just only this example with mesh not working :/

[folksman]

ohhhh please excuse my issue. i found out what happened. on mesh after create the master i must start as well idle to get it working. now all works fine :))

[folksman]

btw: impressive fast reply from you! love this kind of help

[2bndy5]

When testing this mesh layer, I mainly used a RPi as mesh master and my feather RP2040 board as a child node. I should note that it was better when there was already a mesh node connected to the mesh master because the middle-man node would allow auto_ack to be used for msg forwarding.

It's 7am here so, I'm going to try and get some sleep, but I'll spin up some MCUs to test when I'm fully awake.

[folksman]

i found already the problem as i mentioned. i not started idle before connect a child node.. now it works well :)
Only 1 question more.. how i can get the RX open always to not have any timeout for idle? in my project i not want interact with console

[2bndy5]

Oops. Didn't see that post while I was writing mine. Good to hear you got it working! I suppose I should add something to the example prompts to make it clear that idle() must be called... If you have any suggestions, I'd be very thankful.

[2bndy5]

how i can get the RX open always to not have any timeout for idle? in my project i not want interact with console

while True:
    idle()

There are other ways to do it, but this was the first idea that came to mind. The importance of using idle() is the network.update() call. So, you could do

while True:
    network.update()

As long as you don't want to emit() anything from that node.

[folksman]

Only 1 question more.. how i can get the RX open always to not have any timeout for idle? in my project i not want interact with console