ESP32 - fs.open is slower as filename increments - arduino

ESP32 using VScode platformio.
Adafruit sd card module connected using spi and standard SD library for ESP32.
I have files stored on SD card and they are named as follows:
1, 2, 3, ... 253, 254.
All files are 3kb in size and contain ascii characters, and alternate files are exact copies.
I noticed that as the code continued to open and close files for reading (Starting from 1, incrementing by 1, finishing at 254), the output to my RGB display was becoming slower and slower.
I pinpointed the exact cause by measuring the time taken to execute some lines for file 1 and file 254. This line was causing the issue:
for (byte x=1; x<=254; x++) { // Iterate for all images on sd card
fname = "/" + String(x); // Form image file name
unsigned long t1 = millis();
image = fs.open(fname, FILE_READ); //LINE CAUSING DELAY
unsigned long t2 = millis();
unsigned long time = (t2-t1);
Serial.println("Time = " + (String) time);
Where fname is a number ranging from 1 - 254. It seems as the number increases it takes longer to open the file:
Time for file 254 = 74ms
Time for file 1 = 1ms
The time decreases in a uniform maner as file goes to 1. It is not caused by the filename length (ie. 254 is 3 digit, 1 is 1 digit), file 101 had a proportionate increase in open time than file 200, they were not the same.
Anyone have any idea why this is happening? It is a crucial issue in my code as the output needs to be at a constant speed and not decrease as the file increments.

Related

Correct data for 0x29AD BLE Weight Measurement? Currently seeing no value

Working with Arduino ESP32.
I managed to implement Environment temp + humidity using the specified BLE spec service and characteristic UUID's. I got lucky as I could see that the values were presenting wrong and could figure out what inputs were needed for correct outputs.
Now working with weight I am getting no value displaying for my weight measurement characteristic. I have the weight scale service (0x181D), Scale Feature (0x2A9E) and Weight Measurement (0x2A9D). I can send 0000 or 1111 to 2A9E to get a a formatted display of what the scale features are. Cool! I saw elsewhere on stack that having this characteristic set was required for the weight measurement to show.
I'm using 0000 as I don't need the timestamp or multi user. I've also read both datasheets (WSS_V1.0.0 & WSP_V1.0.0) for the characteristics I'm using and am still stuck. (WSS_V1.0.0 & WSP_V1.0.0)
WSS states the first byte sets the flags and the following bytes are for the weight. I've tried using
0000101010101010 == {0x0A, 0xAA} == 0000(flags) 1010(weight) ...
Which fits the format of 4 flag bytes followed by weight, followed by optionals.
still no luck. Online resources are limited, I've tried reading the docs and no examples are given.
Any help would be much appreciated and would assist in other looking for a similar answer
There's an example that has working code for those who stumble into this thread later down the line.
https://github.com/bneedhamia/CurieBLEBowlScale/blob/master/CurieBLEBowlScale.ino
A weight measurement has it's first byte dedicated to flags
/*
* Set the flags:
* bit 0 = 0 means we're reporting in SI units (kg and meters)
* bit 1 = 0 means there is no time stamp in our report
* bit 2 = 0 means User ID is NOT in our report
* bit 3 = 0 means no BMI and Height are in our report
* bits 4..7 are reserved, and set to zero.
*/
flags |= 0x0 << 0;
flags |= 0x0 << 1;
flags |= 0x0 << 2;
flags |= 0x0 << 3;
and the following two bytes contain the weight in big Endian.
bytes[0] = flags;
// BLE GATT multi-byte values are encoded Least-Significant Byte first.
bytes[1] = (unsigned char) newVal;
bytes[2] = (unsigned char) (newVal >> 8);
chrScaleValue->setValue(bytes, sizeof(bytes));

Run arduino sketch from an sd card

Is it possible to put a sketch (.HEX file) to an SD card and run it from there?
My objective is to utilize SD storage instead of flash memory for a program.
If yes, are there any libraries doing exactly this?
All i found was "flashing arduino from sd card", which is not what i need.
UPDATE:
the sketch's loop calling is implemented in the bootloader.
so i assume there is something like this in the bootloader:
while(true)
{
call_sketch_loop();
}
can it be changed to this? :
//signature changed from void loop() to int loop()
while(true)
{
int retval = call_sketch_loop(); //get loop call's return value
if( 0 == retval )
continue; // if 0, iterate the loop as usual
else
{
//copy 1.HEX from sd to flash and reboot
copy_hex_from_sd_to_flash( retval + ".HEX" );
reboot();
}
}
change loop singature to int loop()
put {int}.HEX files to an SD card - 1.HEX , 2.HEX , 3.HEX
the loop() call returns 0
continue with next iteration as usual
the loop() call returns 2
copy file 2.HEX from SD card into program flash memory
reboot device
with this approach, we can run flash-capacity-exceeding programs if we split them up to smaller subprograms.
The technical term you are looking for is "SD card bootloader".
Have you looked into this: "https://github.com/thseiler/embedded/tree/master/avr/2boots"?
As far as I understand, 2boot will first load the hex into the flash and then execute it from there. This is not exactly what you are looking for (you want to load it directly to RAM, right?).
The problem with what you are looking for is that arduino's RAM is really small. And there is liittle advantage in loading directly to RAM. Therfore such library might not exist at all.
I can sugget a poor-mans approach for doing this. First write a sketch that contains a function that have an infinite loop inside it and inside this loop, put the code of your desired "loop". In the setup of the sketch take the pointer to this function and write sufficient ammount of bytes into a binary file on the SD card.
Then upload another sketch wich has an empty buffer. This sketch will load the binary file into it and refernce to it's beginning as a pointer to a function. Viola, you can now execute your "loop".
This is ugly and unless you have very specific and isoteric need for loading directly into RAM, I suggest to try the 2boot library.

Arduino Due output TIOA and TIOB without interrupts

I am an electrical student and want to use arduino due to generate pulses for driving MOSFETs. I am making a inverter and want to generate pulses. I have arduino due with me. My main aims are :
1) one software interrupt for sampling the next time period (this will be changing..). After three cycles I will analogRead() new value of time period and same continues .
2) During one time period,set by RC count of Timer channel TC0, I want to load RA0 and RB0 with appropriate counts to get output pulses with different duty ratios(depending on RA0 and RB0 values).
I wrote a program which gives software interrupts with TC3 which is working fine. i.e. I am able to load new values into RA0 and RB0 automatically for every new sampled value( every 3 cycles new values comes else same values will be loaded).
Now I also used TC0 (i used Olavi Kamppari's library) for stopping, loading new values and starting the timer.
when i checked PIO_PB25B_TIOA0 and PIO_PB27B_TIOB0 in the serial monitor i am getting 33554432,134217728 .
I am really confused.I expected a 1 and 0 output. I just want two pulses from TC0 without interrupt.I set the ACPA value to 3 (Toggle) and I enabled the clock to the timer as well.Still I am not getting the output.
So if possible please provide me a sample program that can output pulses from PB25 and PB27 (TIOA0 and TIOB0). Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading my question.
Thank you.
The following sketch outputs a 3 MHz signal on TIOA6 (Pin 5 from memory)
I am about to post a question regarding the same code - I want to get to 8 (and a little bit) MHz but have hit a conceptual brick wall!
Note that this is under development - the IRQ handler is not used - and the PMC_Enable_Periph should be referring to ID_TC6 (I believe) - then the IRQ handler can be placed in the dust bin of history!
void TC6_Handler()
{
TC_GetStatus(TC2, 0);
}
void startTimer(Tc *tc, uint32_t channel, IRQn_Type irq) {
pmc_set_writeprotect(false);
pmc_enable_periph_clk((uint32_t)irq);
TC_Configure(tc, channel,
TC_CMR_WAVE |
TC_CMR_WAVSEL_UP_RC |
TC_CMR_TCCLKS_TIMER_CLOCK1|
TC_CMR_ACPA_TOGGLE ); // RC compare TOGGLES TIOA)smiley-wink;
TC_SetRA(tc, channel, 1); //50% high, 50% low
TC_SetRC(tc, channel, 1);
PIO_Configure(PIOC,
PIO_PERIPH_B,
PIO_PC25B_TIOA6,
PIO_DEFAULT);
TC_Start(tc, channel);
}
void setup(){
startTimer(TC2, 0, TC6_IRQn);
}
void loop(){
}

How to measure the amount of memory or RAM consumed by a code on Arduino Mega or Due

Can anybody tell me how to measure the consumed RAM for a particular code running on Arduino Mega or Due.
There is two kinds of numbers to this question:
Global static usage and current run time.
The static estimated usage can be determined by adding the following line to (if it does not already exist)
.\arduino-1.5.5\hardware\arduino\avr\boards.txt
uno.upload.maximum_ram_size=2048
This then allows the compiler to output the additional 2nd line in the following example in the IDE's result window
Binary sketch size: 25,880 bytes (of a 32,256 byte maximum)
Estimated used SRAM memory: 990 bytes (of a 2048 byte maximum)
To see the amount of memory used at any given point. Including memory space currently in use, that exists while only in functions and members. This includes the HEAP and such. I use the following MemoryFree library at specific points in the code to reveal the high-water. The readme explains how to save unnecessarily/unintentionally used RAM by prints.
Note: That while the original Arduino IDE 1.0.5's boards.txt files does contain these ram_sizes, it does not actually use display usage. Where the original Arduino IDE 1.5.5 does, along with Arduino ERW 1.0.5 does (an non-supported fork).
In my Arduino IDE 2.1.0
I edit the file: /usr/share/arduino/hardware/arduino/boards.txt
but the second line don't appear
After read:
check-ram-memory-usage-arduino-optimization
measuring-free-memory
I tried:
Show vervose output during compilation
and use avr-size /tmp/build4042914391435450796.tmp/XXXXXXX.cpp.elf
then i get my memory used
Best Regards!
int freeRam () {
extern int __heap_start, *__brkval;
int v;
int fr = (int) &v - (__brkval == 0 ? (int) &__heap_start : (int) __brkval);
Serial.print("Free ram: ");
Serial.println(fr);
}

Qt QSharedMemory Segmentation Faults after Several Successful Writes

I'm using QSharedMemory to store some data and want to subsequently append data to what is contained there. So I call the following code several times with new data. The "audioBuffer" is new data given to this function. I can call this function about 4-7 times ( and it varies ) before it seg faults on the memcpy operation. The size of the QSharedMemory location is huge so in the few calls that I do before seg faulting, there is no issue of memcpy copying data beyond it's boundaries. Also, m_SharedAudioBuffer.errorString() gives no errors up to the memcpy operation. Currently, I only have one process using this QSharedMemory segment. I also tried to write continually without appending each time and that works fine, so something is happening when I try to append more data to the shared memory segment. Any ideas? Thanks!
// Get the buffer size for the current audio buffer in shared memory
int bufferAudioDataSizeBytes = readFromSharedAudioBufferSizeMemory(); // This in number of bytes
// Create a bytearray with our data currently in the shared buffer
char* bufferAudioData = readFromSharedAudioBufferMemory();
QByteArray currentAudioStream = QByteArray::fromRawData(bufferAudioData,bufferAudioDataSizeBytes);
QByteArray currentAudioStreamDeepCopy(currentAudioStream);
currentAudioStreamDeepCopy.append(audioBuffer);
dataSize = currentAudioStreamDeepCopy.size();
//#if DEBUG
qDebug() << "Inserting audio buffer, new size is: " << dataSize;
//#endif
writeToSharedAudioBufferSizeMemory( dataSize ); // Just the size of what we received
// Write into the shared memory
m_SharedAudioBuffer.lock();
// Clear the buffer and define the copy locations
memset(m_SharedAudioBuffer.data(), '\0', m_SharedAudioBuffer.size());
char *to = (char*)m_SharedAudioBuffer.data();
char *from = (char*)audioBuffer.data();
// Now perform the actual copy operation to store the buffer
memcpy( to, from, dataSize );
// Release the lock
m_SharedAudioBuffer.unlock();
EDIT: Perhaps, this is due to my target embedded device which is very small. The available RAM is large when I am trying to write to shared memory, but I notice that in the /tmp directory ( which is only given 4Mb ) I have the following entries - the size is not nearly consumed in /tmp though so I'm not sure why I couldn't allocate more memory, also the QSharedMemory::create method never fails for my maximum size of 960000:
# cd /tmp/
# ls
QtSettings
lib
qipc_sharedmemory_AudioBufferData2a7d5f1a29e3d27dac65b4f350d76a0dfd442222
qipc_sharedmemory_AudioBufferSizeData6b7acc119f94322a6794cbca37ed63df07b733ab
qipc_systemsem_AudioBufferData2a7d5f1a29e3d27dac65b4f350d76a0dfd442222
qipc_systemsem_AudioBufferSizeData6b7acc119f94322a6794cbca37ed63df07b733ab
qtembedded-0
run
The problem seemed to be that I was using QByteArray's ::fromRawData on the pointer returned by the shared memory segment. When I copied that data explicitly using memcpy on this pointer, and then constructed my QByteArray using the copied data, then the seg faults stopped.

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