[BUG] ESP32C3 BLE shuts CDC down (and kills USB until next power cycle)

[0x0fe]

Board

ESP32-C3 dev module

Device Description

ESP32C3 Dev module

Hardware Configuration

no

Version

latest master

IDE Name

arduino IDE

Operating System

windows 10

Flash frequency

80M

PSRAM enabled

no

Upload speed

CDC

Description

As soon as the BLE is initialized, the CDC port is shut down, and it cannot be revived by CDC reset (aka opening and closing the serial monitor), in fact to revive USB the esp32c3 has to be power cycled and booted with GPIO9 to force bootlader then reprogrammed with a working firmware.
The windows descriptor error, and CDC parameters errors after flashing a firmware with BLE enable lead me to think the CDC state machine and/or the whole USB stack is not served anymore after the BLE is initialized.

I tested on two different designs to make sure the problem was not hardware related, also i used a fresh download of the master branch from few hours ago (with wifi CDC fix).

Sketch

#include "BLEDevice.h"

uint32_t chipId = 0;

void setup() {

  //BLEDevice::init("");// tried to init here, same issue
  
  Serial.begin(115200);
  while(!Serial)delay(10);
  Serial.println("\nSystem ready\n");
  for(int i=0;i<17;i=i+8){chipId|=((ESP.getEfuseMac()>>(40-i))&0xff)<<i;}
   
  BLEDevice::init("");
}

void loop() {
  
  Serial.printf("id:%d\n",chipId);
  delay(3000);
}

Debug Message

when we try to open serial console after programming we got nothing shown, if we unplug and replug USB then try to open the serial console we get "port parameters definition error" from the CDC (since it doesnt reply to the host). We also get error message from windows most of time since the USB is no longer recognized.

Other Steps to Reproduce

just flash the firmware as is, it shoudl reproduce the issue right away, after testing comment BLEDevice::init(""); and power cycle with GPIO9 to GND then flash, the USB CDC will then behave normally and the esp32c3 can be reflashed without unpluging USB or forcing bootloader.

I have checked existing issues, online documentation and the Troubleshooting Guide

• I confirm I have checked existing issues, online documentation and Troubleshooting guide.

[me-no-dev]

known issue in ESP-IDF

[0x0fe]

I noticed that on the old release 2.0 the BLE works along with the CDC.

[me-no-dev]

this is because things in IDF changed that caused this situation. Hopefully will be "fixed" when 2.0.3 is ready

[0x0fe]

ok, is there any branch where some fixes are already in place? Some of our designs have zero GPIO free, so CDC is the only debug option.

[0x0fe]

N.B when i run on 2.0 the BLE works, the CDC works too (with unstable boot), however, everything freezes after few minutes and the watchdog does not reset, i still need to confirm wether this issue is actually related to the CDC or BLE.

[0x0fe]

i ran on 2.0 for a while now, it is stable, wifi, BLE and CDC, ran for few days

[VojtechBartoska]

it was already fixed in ESP-IDF, take a look on espressif/esp-idf#8046. Issue is supposed to be solved in Arduino ESP32 core 2.0.3 release, where ESP-IDF v4.4.1 will be used.