ESP8266 - Webserver not working in loop

Question

I have simple example, where in loop is called webServer to handle clients and also text drawing on display. The thing is that webServer is not responding, but when I remove second part of loop - drawing text to display then web server starts to work normally.

Server does not respond:

 void loop() {
      server.handleClient();
      unsigned long timeNow = millis();
      if ((timeNow > screenChangeTime))  {
          display.clear();
          display.setFont(ArialMT_Plain_16);
          display.setTextAlignment(TEXT_ALIGN_CENTER);
           display.drawString(12, 20,"Loaded: "+String(particles));
           screenChangeTime= timeNow + delay;
           display.display();
      }
    }

Server responds:

void loop() {
      server.handleClient();
}

Answer 1

My guess is, that you're wasting too much time within the drawing-part.

What is the value for delay? I guess you have a number too low chosen here. And you should really set this new time after you have updated the display by display.display();.

Your webserver doesn't respond because he's not called often enough inside this code.