[Solved] ESP8266 simultaneous NTP client and UDP server - how to avoid interference?

Hi, I have a problem because I am trying to write a program on the ESP8266. I need such a program in which I simultaneously handle the downloading of time from an NTP server and at the same time I also want to communicate with another device via UDP protocol. Everything would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that when downloading time, we first send data to the NTP server and then parse the packet (working as a client), while communication with the other device starts with parsing the packet first and only then a reply is sent (working as a server). This seems to work somehow, but the two modes often interfere with each other.

Here is a code snippet with both functions (both work separately without problems):
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misiekhardcore wrote:

It seems to work somehow but often both modes interfere.

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What specifically is this interference?

I would not put any Serial.print() between udp.beginPacket() and udp.endPacket().
I would also check what value udp.beginPacket() and udp.endPacket() return, in order to detect a possible error, according to:
https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/esp8266wifi/udp-class.html

The interference is that both methods parse the package so it happens that one parses the package that is intended for the other and vice versa. I don't know how to separate this so that both methods work independently so that the parsing can't get mixed up

misiekhardcore wrote:

I don't know how to separate this so that both methods work independently so that the parsing can't get mixed up

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If you are using the same local UDP port for both functions, this will be quite a difficult task.

Can you be more specific? I'm not that familiar with the subject yet

You probably have Udp.begin(localPort) in setup(), so there are packets coming into one local port on the ESP from two different "remote" ports, so they are allowed to "mix".
You should only do packet parsing in one place. Check which remote port it came from and only call the function used (NTP or other UDP) to read the packet based on that.

So should I do a separate udp.begin() with a separate port each time?

misiekhardcore wrote:

Is that I should do a separate udp.begin() with a separate port each time?

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You mean e.g. udp1 and udp2, two WiFiUDP class objects for two different local ports? You could try it like that, from the code of this class it seems that it could work, but I haven't done such tests .

I honestly didn't come across it, but it has a chance of working. When I do the tests I'll be sure to let you know how it went. I'll create two objects with different ports and see how it goes.

@khoam everything worked as you wrote. Creating two separate UDP class objects and assigning separate ports helped. Everything is running smoothly.
I consider the topic closed