I’m writing a program where I want to receive signals from an IR remote, using the IRremote library. Inside the task responsible for detecting any signals from the remote I use IrReceiver.decode() in an if statement. The problem I face is that this if statement seemingly prevents all the tasks from ever running. If the if statement were to be, for example, if(5 < 10), all tasks will run perfectly fine, but for whatever reason IrReceiver.decode() completely prevents anything from running.

Here is the code:

#include <Arduino_FreeRTOS.h>
#include <queue.h>
#include <IRremote.h>

int outputPins[] = {11, 10, 2, 3, 4, 5, 12};
int numOfPins = sizeof(outputPins) / sizeof(outputPins[0]);
QueueHandle_t speedQueue, dirQueue;


void taskIR(){
  String hexString;
  BaseType_t queueStatus;

  for(;;)
  {
    Serial.println("Entering taskIR");

    if(IrReceiver.decode())
    {
      Serial.println("IR signal received");
      queueStatus = xQueueSendToBack(speedQueue, &hexString, 0);
    }
    
    vTaskDelay(pdMS_TO_TICKS(50));
  }
}

void setSpeed(){
  BaseType_t queueStatus;
  String command;

  for(;;)
  {
    Serial.println("Entering setSpeed");
    queueStatus = xQueueReceive(speedQueue, &command, portMAX_DELAY);

    if(queueStatus == pdPASS){
      Serial.println("Read from speedQueue");
      if(command == "44"){  // 30% speed
        analogWrite(11, 255*0.1);
        analogWrite(10, 255*0.1);
      }
      else if(command == "40"){ // 60% speed
        analogWrite(11, 255*0.6);
        analogWrite(10, 255*0.6);
      }
      else if(command == "43"){ // 100% speed
        analogWrite(11, 255);
        analogWrite(10, 255);
      }
      else if(command == "18"){ // stop
        analogWrite(11, 0);
        analogWrite(10, 0);
      }   
    }
    vTaskDelay(pdMS_TO_TICKS(50)); 
  }
}

void setDirection()
{
  BaseType_t queueStatus;
  
  for(;;)
  {
    Serial.println("Read from setDirection");
    vTaskDelay(pdMS_TO_TICKS(50));
  }
}


void setup()
{
  // put your setup code here, to run once:
  Serial.begin(9600);
  IrReceiver.begin(7, 0);
  for(int i = 0; i < numOfPins; i++)
  {
    pinMode(outputPins[i], OUTPUT);
  }

  speedQueue = xQueueCreate(5, sizeof(String));
  dirQueue = xQueueCreate(5, sizeof(String));

  xTaskCreate(taskIR, "IR", 128, NULL, 1, NULL);
  xTaskCreate(setSpeed, "setSpeed", 128, NULL, 5, NULL);
  xTaskCreate(setDirection, "setDirection", 128, NULL, 5, NULL);
  Serial.println("setup done");
}

void loop() {
  // put your main code here, to run repeatedly:

}

In its current state, the code doesn’t really achieve anything meaningful since any further development of the program has haulted due to this issue.

When writing the code I first started off with the first task (taskIR) together with the IR remote and everything worked fine. However, as soon as I included any other task, none of the tasks would run.
With all the tasks included, everything works fine whenever I remove IrReceiver.decode() from the if condition.

I feel like there’s something fundamental I’m missing but I can’t for the life of me figure it out.