lua - ESP8266 NodeMCU Running Out of Heap Memory

Question

I am trying to toggle an LED using ESP8266-01 by sending POST from my laptop (using node.js)

I now have a memory issue because whenever I send POST request, the memory used in the ESP increases, and heap memory decreases, and it crashes (restart) when theres no memory left.

any thoughts?

Here is my code on the ESP side (main.lua):

gpio.mode(3, gpio.OUTPUT)
srv=net.createServer(net.TCP,28800)
print("Server created... 
")
local pinState=0
srv:listen(80,function(conn)
    conn:on("receive", function(conn,request)
        local _, _, method, path, vars = string.find(request, "([A-Z]+) (.+)?(.+) HTTP");
        if(method == nil)then
            _, _, method, path = string.find(request, "([A-Z]+) (.+) HTTP");
        end
        local message={}
        print("Method:"..method);
        if(method == "POST")then
          if(pinState==0)then
              gpio.write(3,gpio.HIGH)
              pinState=1
              print("LED ON")
              message[#message + 1] = "HTTP/1.1 200 OK
"
              message[#message + 1] = "Content-Type: text/html

"
              message[#message + 1] = "POST request successfully received
"
           elseif(pinState==1)then
              gpio.write(3,gpio.LOW)
              pinState=0
              print("LED OFF")
              message[#message + 1] = "HTTP/1.1 200 OK
"
              message[#message + 1] = "Content-Type: text/html

"
              message[#message + 1] = "POST request successfully received
"
           end 
        elseif(method == "GET")then
           message[#message + 1] = "HTTP/1.1 200 OK
"
           message[#message + 1] = "Content-Type: text/html

"
           message[#message + 1] = "LED STATE="..tostring(pinState).."
"
        end
        local function send()
          if #message > 0 then 
             conn:send(table.remove(message, 1))
          else
             conn:close()
          end
        end
        conn:on("sent", send)
        send()
        local message={}
        local _, _, method, path, vars= {}
        local heapSize=node.heap()
        if heapSize<1000 then
           node.restart()
        end
        collectgarbage()
        print("Memory Used:"..collectgarbage("count"))
        print("Heap Available:"..heapSize)
    end)
end)

On the node.js:

var request = require('request');
// Configure request
var options = {
    url: 'http://192.168.1.91',//ESP's IP address
    method: 'POST'
}
// Start the request
request(options, function (error, response, body) 
{
    if(!error) 
    {
        return console.log('Server responded with:',body);
    }
    if(error)
    {
        return console.error('ERROR:', error);
    }
})

my init.lua is just connecting to Wifi.

Thanks for your help!

Rey

Answer 1

There was a problem in the NodeMCU docs with the socket:send example you seem to have based your implementation on. We discussed it and I fixed it.

An improved version of your code is this:

gpio.mode(3, gpio.OUTPUT)
srv = net.createServer(net.TCP, 28800)
print("Server created... 
")
local pinState = 0
srv:listen(80, function(conn)
    conn:on("receive", function(sck, request)
        local _, _, method, path, vars = string.find(request, "([A-Z]+) (.+)?(.+) HTTP");
        if (method == nil) then
            _, _, method, path = string.find(request, "([A-Z]+) (.+) HTTP");
        end
        local message = {}
        message[#message + 1] = "HTTP/1.1 200 OK
"
        message[#message + 1] = "Content-Type: text/html

"
        print("Method:" .. method);
        if (method == "POST") then
            message[#message + 1] = "POST request successfully received
"
            if (pinState == 0) then
                gpio.write(3, gpio.HIGH)
                pinState = 1
                print("LED ON")
            elseif (pinState == 1) then
                gpio.write(3, gpio.LOW)
                pinState = 0
                print("LED OFF")
            end
        elseif (method == "GET") then
            message[#message + 1] = "LED STATE=" .. tostring(pinState) .. "
"
        end
        local function send(sk)
            if #message > 0 then
                sk:send(table.remove(message, 1))
            else
                sk:close()
                message = nil
                print("Heap Available:" .. node.heap())
            end
        end
        sck:on("sent", send)
        send(sck)
    end)
end)

I removed some duplicated code wrt populating message and I also remove the "resetting" and GC code at the end (no longer relevant). The real issue though was with closed upvalues in the callback functions.

Each of your callback functions should use its own copy of the passed socket instance rather referencing the one of a wrapping callback function.

• On line 5 srv:listen(80, function(conn) the socket variable in the callback is conn.
• On line 6 there's another callback function which receives a socket, this time called sck. It should be referenced within that function as sck (sck:on() and send(sck)).
• The socket:on("sent") callback itself receives a/the socket instance. Your original send() function didn't not use that though and used conn instead. So, I added sk and use this one exclusively within send().