Send high number of messages from one node to another - Mesh SDK 2.1.1

[Paulo.Zacarias]

Hi,

I'm trying to use the light_switch example in the Mesh SDK 2.1.1 to build a small experiment to count how many messages are received by the server when sending a consecutive number of messages from the client.

My first approach was to use a function on the client side that consecutively sends a message every 100ms up to a maximum number of messages, using the simple_on_off_client_set_unreliable() like this:

static void send_repeated_message()
{
  for(uint8_t i= 0; i <=10; i++)
  {
    simple_on_off_client_set_unreliable(&m_clients[0], 1, 1);
    nrf_delay_ms(100);
    __LOG(LOG_SRC_APP, LOG_LEVEL_INFO, "Number of message sent: %u\n", i);
  }
}

And on the server side, I modified the on_off_server_set_cb() function to simply count the number of messages received:

static bool on_off_server_set_cb(const simple_on_off_server_t * p_server, bool value)
{
    //__LOG(LOG_SRC_APP, LOG_LEVEL_INFO, "Got SET command to %u\n", value);
    //hal_led_pin_set(LED_PIN_NUMBER, value);
    counter += 1;
    __LOG(LOG_SRC_APP, LOG_LEVEL_INFO, "Number of message received: %u\n", counter);
    //return value;
}

And also, I commented the line (void)simple_on_off_server_status_publish(p_server, value); in the handle_set_unreliable_cb(); to avoid sending the server status in reply to the client.

My problem is that in the server side I only see the count of received messages after the client has finished sending ALL the messages and no matter how many messages I send from client, I only receive maximum 5 messages in the server every time!

What could be the reason for this behavior and how to work around this issue?

Thank you in advance!

Regards,
Paulo Zacarias

[Mttrinh]

Hi,

This seems like a strange issue. I haven't seen this before, I'm not sure why you have to wait until all messages are finished sending before seeing the count on the server side. And it shouldn't be a limit on how many messages you can receive on the server. What happens if you send lower than 5 messages?

[Paulo.Zacarias]

Hi,

If I send lower than 5 messages the behavior is the same, I only receive the messages in the server after client has finished sending then all.
It's like messages are store in some kind of buffer before being sent.

In fact, I changed my code having based my send_repeated_message() function in the simple_on_off_client_set_unreliable() itself instead of calling it every time, so that I call directly access_model_publish() instead:

static void send_repeated_message()
{
    uint32_t status = NRF_SUCCESS;
    simple_on_off_client_t * p_client = &m_clients[0];


    simple_on_off_msg_set_unreliable_t set_unreliable;
    set_unreliable.on_off = 1;
    set_unreliable.tid = m_tid++;

    access_message_tx_t message;
    message.opcode.opcode = SIMPLE_ON_OFF_OPCODE_SET_UNRELIABLE;
    message.opcode.company_id = SIMPLE_ON_OFF_COMPANY_ID;
    message.p_buffer = (const uint8_t*) &set_unreliable;
    message.length = sizeof(set_unreliable);
    message.force_segmented = false;
    message.transmic_size = NRF_MESH_TRANSMIC_SIZE_DEFAULT;

  for(uint8_t i= 1; i <10; i++)
  {
    message.access_token = nrf_mesh_unique_token_get();
    status = access_model_publish(p_client->model_handle, &message);
    __LOG(LOG_SRC_APP, LOG_LEVEL_INFO, "Number of message sent: %u\n", i);
      if (status != NRF_SUCCESS)
      {
         ERROR_CHECK(status);
         break;
         return status;
      }
    nrf_delay_ms(100);
    //__LOG(LOG_SRC_APP, LOG_LEVEL_INFO, "Number of message sent: %u\n", i);
  }
}

And I found out that the problem is in the client side. It seems to actually store the messages in some sort of buffer or memory and that such buffer can keep only maximum 5 messages, more than that and I receive a NRF_ERROR_NO_MEM:

<t:     331499>, main.c,  199, Number of message sent: 1
<t:     334787>, main.c,  199, Number of message sent: 2
<t:     338074>, main.c,  199, Number of message sent: 3
<t:     341361>, main.c,  199, Number of message sent: 4
<t:     344648>, main.c,  199, Number of message sent: 5
<t:     347930>, main.c,  199, Number of message sent: 6
<t:     347932>, app_error_weak.c,  105, Mesh error 4 at 0x0002666B (C:\Nordic\nrf5_SDK_for_Mesh_v2.1.1_src_SEND_MESSAGE\examples\light_switch\proxy_client\src\main.c:202)

But how can I figure out were that out of memory comes from?