Firmware speeds
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I'm running a battery powered gpy so looking for the quickest possible wakeup-upload-download-deepsleep cycle. Releases 1.18.1.r4 to 1.18.1.r7 work well, with a cycle time of 27s-30s. But if I push into the 1.18.2.xx & above range the cycle time increases into the 47-53s. The problem seems to be related to the lte modem, although changing modem firmware doesn't seem to impact the cycle time.
Just wondering if anyone who frequents this forum is privy to what happened between 1.18.1r7 and 1.18.2? It's a bit of a dilemma. It would be nice to run the latest gpy firmware but not at the expense of nearly double the battery consumption.
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I never worked with Gpy, but with LoPys the speed of the firmware is nearly the same. What changed are the windows when the i2c module is ready to communicate. So you can start some i2c stuff before the whole system was completly initialized. But these windows/frames moved between firmware versions and became larger or smaler. So it was not reliable to use them. Maybe pycom moved some of their internal i2c stuff into more reliable regions.
I do not recommend to stay on older firmware versions and optimise the timings for them. The ESP32 and the IDF cause too many problems. IMHO pycom is on the development branch too far behind the actual IDF version.
If you have huge scripts, you can save some time by using precompiled or frozen modules. If you have some complicated stuff to do, you can do this before the Modem is ready.
Yes, fast boot times will be fine, but I preferre signals, callback or variables which tell me, if the hardware is ready to use. I wasted too many time to find windows inbetween init states :)
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@kjm you should probably describe what you do with the modem in terms of keeping it attached during deep sleep or not, etc.