MicroROS spin_some() blocks the functionality of the Adafruit bno08x library about micro_ros_platformio

[pablogs9]

Hello @snelson-durrant, I'm not sure about the usage of your sensor and library.

How is the library communicating with the sensor? Is it possible that it is interfering with the UART port that the micro-ROS Client is using to communicate with the micro-ROS Agent?

In the case you need to call imu_pub.imu_update() at a specific rate, you need to be careful with the micro-ROS part.
Is the timing of imu_pub.imu_update() critical for the correct behavior of the sensor library?

Is it possible that microROS or the agent is "blocking" the IMU library from executing the internal callbacks that put data in the queue?

If the library is based on interrupts, micro-ROS shall not be blocking. In other cases, there are no guarantees of the correct timing.

If so, what would be the best approach to making them work together?

IMO, if you have two time-critical tasks that are independent and have different priorities, the way to go is an RTOS. FreeRTOS can be an option.

[snelsondurrant]

We're using I2C and tested some varying delays in main() to try and replicate the issue with no success, but it may be an timing issue internal to the library. For now, we've hacked together a couple custom library functions that modify it a bit to get around the parts that don't work when microROS is running, but we'll look into using an RTOS in the future. Thanks for your help!