Request for input! Help solve the FED3 freezing issue

[Lex Kravitz]

Hi all,

A few users have posted that their FED3 devices spontaneously freeze up after a few hours of use.  I'd like to find the source of this issue (and fix it!). It would be helpful to get info from FED3 users who are and are not having this issue.  My suspicion is that this is caused by a 3rd party library incompatibility so I hope that by collecting information on which libraries people are using we can identify the source of the incompatibility and fix it.

The problem: FED3 spontaneously freezes up after a few hours of use.  When reset it works again for a few hours and then freezes up again.  The problem was first identified by Hwei Ee Tan in Sept of 2021, and something that sounds similar has been reported by a couple other users since then.

Potential solutions:

1) Disabling sleep fixes this issue for some users, suggesting that the "freezing" may be the FED3 going to sleep but then not waking up correctly.

2) Rolling back the FED3 library to 1.11.0 fixed it for the Zorrilla lab.

How you can help!

I've created a Google Form that will ask some information on whether you have experienced this issue and which versions of the 3rd party libraries you are using. Please respond even if you haven't experienced this issue, I'm hopeful that we can identify a common pattern in library versions that will allow us to get to the bottom of this issue! 

Please fill out form here!

Thanks in advance and also please respond on this thread if you have any other information on this.  Best, -Lex

[Julia Pai]

Hi Lex,

I'm not sure if this is the same issue, but we've been dealing with something possibly related. We have some FED3s that don't  turn back on after being turned off. The only way to turn them back on is to reflash them. Sleep is disabled in our code; but this issue only really happens after turning off the power, not spontaneously while the task is running.

This mainly seems to be a problem with the fully assembled FED3 devices we've ordered from Open Ephys within the past 3 months, so I'm not sure if it is a hardware or software issue. We're discussing with the company now and I'll update if we learn anything new.

In the meantime, I'll note the library versions we are using in case it can be of use:

- Both Mac and Windows Arduino IDE, 1.8.13

- FED3 1.16.3

- Adafruit_BusIO 1.11.1

- Arduino_Low_Power 1.2.2

- RTClib 2.0.2

- RTCZero 1.5.2

- SdFat 2.1.2

- Adafruit_GFX 1.3.6

- Adafruit_SHARP_Memory_Display 1.1.0

- Adafruit_Unified_Sensor 1.1.4

- Adafruit_AHTX0 2.0.1

- Adafruit_SH110X 2.1.5