Firmware evolutions and support still alive?

[renaudm]

Hello,

I'm a little surprised to see that the official GitHub repository pycom-micropython-sigfox is containing lots of non resolved issues. Also, there is no activity (commits, etc) since 3 months.

I bought some Lopy4 recently but I'm now wondering if the Pycom products are still really alive..? It's almost the same here in the forum, not so much tickets recieved an answer.

Could you please give us some informations about this @Xykon @catalin?

[catalin]

hi @renaudm,

Let me assure you the firmware development is going at full speed.
We've focused lately on new technologies and products, and though we did some fixes, we have not yet released due to prioritisation.
I will reprioritise tasks towards the firmware stability improvement (bug fixing improvement).
Also, we'll try to catch-up with support.

You, Community could help us with lists of required improvements (and bugs) we need to fix, on this thread.
Thank you,

[renaudm]

Thanks a lot for your answer @catalin.

What would be great from my point of view would be for Pycom to share a kind of global timeline with the major milestones and releases you're planning to deliver on a 6 months-period. And for each of the items, a minimal previsionnal content you've planned to deliver. I think it's important for the community to have a minimum of visibility, and I'm pretty sure it would also improve Pycom's image and sales that way, creating a stronger image for the clients.
What do you think?

I can try in the next few days to collect some of the required improvements / bugs I know from my side.
But I'm also letting the other members who would like to share their experience express their requirements here. The community can answer on this topic, or can also send me through the forum's chat their ideas in order for me to write a synthesis.

Thanks

[crumble]

@catalin

• Flush for I/O, so debugging will be easier
• Mutable floating point objects.

[dgerman]

@catalin I believe you would get a lot of help from the community if the staff used the GitHub issues and pull requests. At least flagging them as an indication that someone at Pycom has seen and considered them.

For example my
pycom-documentation pull request #254 which is a trivial correction but without implementing it the impression is that "the documentation is generally incorrect" and the "staff at Pycom is not concerned about the quality of they products"

[renaudm]

Hello @catalin,
Is there any plan to reduce the Lopy4 power consumption in deep sleep mode from almost 25ua to 10ua according to the ES32 specs or do you have any technical constraint about it?

[robert-hh]

@renaudm Given that the LoPy4 consists of more than a bare ESP32, a current consumption of almost 25µA seems ok for me. Additional devices are for instance the power regulator, the SX1276, PSRAM, SPI flash and some required passive components.

[jcaron]

@robert-hh In deep sleep most of that should be powered off. Wasn't it much lower than 25 µA earlier? Something like 12 µA IIRC? Or maybe that was only on the LoPy and not the LoPy4, I don't quite remember.

[robert-hh]

@jcaron As far as I understand, the regulator of the LoPy4 cannot be switched off. The others could, if it is done well.If the expansion boards with PIC are used, then the power to the xxPy boards is cut completely, and then the supply current can drop to 10 µA.
But 15µA is not much. At 3.3V, it is the current through a 220k resistor. And a 200mA battery can supply 25µA for about a year. So I rate 25µA for a complete board as pretty good.
The big problem on power consumption with these devices is not the sleep current, but the long boot times with high current.

[rcolistete]

@jcaron My minimum current in deep sleep (without Expansion Board) was 19 uA with a LoPy4.

[d.alvrzx]

@catalin regarding firmware improvements, there's been some discussions on changing the way the lora.nvram_restore() function behaves. Mainly, on making it not delete the lora context immediately upon restore. A more in-detail explanation in this thread with @robert-hh: https://forum.pycom.io/topic/6010/don-t-erase-lora-context-on-nvram_restore?_=1590636018374