SEEED XIAO ESP32 + PowerSave enabled - after about an hour or two of LS cycles and BT off/on, IOS won't reconnect

[lagunacomputer]

SEEED XIAO ESP32 + PowerSave enabled + Light Sleep = 240 sec. - after about an hour or two, IOS won't reconnect to the node.
2.7.3

Anybody else notice this? After about an hour, maybe two or three, IOS app will not reconnect automatically.
The node doesn't even show up in the bluetooth section on the IOS app anymore.
There is often a IOS app warning "Failed to encrypt the connection, the connection has timed out unexpectedly.
Pressing the user button that normally wakes up the node, does nothing to resolve.

HOWEVER, when in this no connect/not found state, a separate Andriod phone with app will find the node and connect to the node's bluetooth.
So I suspect this is more of an IOS issue in nature.

[garthvh]

Power save turns off Bluetooth.

[lagunacomputer]

Thank you for taking the time to close the discussion without discussing the actual problem I was attempting to discuss, in the discussion section. Perhaps I was not clear enough of my description. I will kindly try again with more detail. If this is not the proper forum or place to do this, please simply let me know and I will kindly take it elsewhere.

Yes, powersave on an ESP32 shuts off bluetooth. And therefore because of this, IOS app notes that the radio is sleeping, and the connection is severed while in LightSleep. Light sleep = BT radio off, got that.

This discussion is about what happens after the powersave period is over, and the node turns back on.
After the node turns back on, and bluetooth radio is again enabled, IOS will reconnect. Everything great so far.

The issue I was trying to discuss is that after several hours of this cycle (on, connect to IOS, light sleep, BT off, IOS disconnected, on, BT radio back on, reconnect to IOS, repeat....), the IOS app appears to stop trying to connect to the node in total.

In this later state, an Andriod phone will happily pick up and reconnect to the node. IOS app does not appear to want to relist the node again in the BT section, or attempt reconnection. The issue on IOS does not seem to happen if PowerSave is disabled.

Hoping to kindly have a discussion of what may be happening here. Perhaps its an unavoidable issue due to IOS and bluetooth connections. Having coded IOS apps before, I understand the Apple stuff can be constrained and 'weird' sometimes under the hood. Again, discussion sought.

Thank you.

[lagunacomputer]

...well for anyone who actually DOES care, I may have found the issue that I was experiencing.
My node had 100 nodes in its DB.
After some testing, I witnessed that immediatly after a hard power cycle and BT connect, all 100 nodes info would load from node to app.
However after several LightSleep cycles on/off/on/off etc, the 'loading nodes' upon BT reconnection would hang around #50 or #60.
Since upon BT reconnect, loading the nodes info from node to app takes about a minute or so, I SUSPECT that this is interfering with the next lightsleep initiation. IE too many nodes in NodeDB, takes too long to upload/update app, next LS cycle starts, BT never fully reconnects to app.

I have cleared Nodedb to reduce the number of nodes (time it takes) that need to be sent from the node to the app upon every BT reconnect, and so far have not had the issue. Will update results in the morning.

[garthvh]

If you have power save on there is no expectation that the phone app will automatically reconnect as the Bluetooth is turned off.

[lagunacomputer]

Thanks for responding. For the sake of discussion, I do not mean when powersave or lightsleep is enabled as the BT radio is off.
I am referring to after that cycle is over, and the BT radio enable has resumed.

[garthvh]

Bluetooth is not intended to be used with power save mode, you may also be running into the text message throttling.

[lagunacomputer]

ok thanks, I didn't know that BT was not intended to be used with power save. I will avoid using power save when using BT then.