SX1278 OOK + Continuous Modes seems to become "stuck"

[jpmv27]

I am using an SX1278 connected to an ESP32 in OOK and Continuous modes. Everything seems to work fine until, out of the blue, the RSSI reported by RadioLib becomes stuck at -56 until I restart the ESP32. Then everything is OK again for hours or days. Any suggestions how to debug this further?

Full disclosure: the SX1278 is in an Ra-02 module from Ai-Thinker bought on AliExpress, so can't discount the possibility that the Ra-02 and/or the SX1278 are counterfeit or at least "shady".

[jgromes]

Usually I would start by running in debug mode, SPI debug in this case to see the SPI bus trafffic. It's going to report a lot of data, but I guess only the stuff before the RSSI gets stuck is going to be interesting. And of course, I assume this is a minimum example - seeing the code would be helpful.

[jpmv27]

Unfortunately this is anything but a minimal reproducible case: RadioLib used by rtl_433_ESP used in OpenMQTTGateway.
Didn't happen when tested with rtl_433_ESP alone, but it's an intermittent problem so it might just have been a fluke.

Thank you for the suggestion to enable debugging. I looked in the source for such a thing and didn't see any, but your
suggestion made me realize that the version of RadioLib in use is 5.x, which is quite old.

[jgromes]

5.x is ancient, so step 0 is indeed to update. Though there will be quite a few breaking chagnes, jumping two major versions ... If that doesn't help, then the usual stuff, trying to build a minimal example (e.g. one that only sets the OOK and direct mode and reads RSSI in loop).