The Invisible Wear: Why Always-On Devices Fail Silently

This article exposes critical failure modes in long-running embedded systems that never appear during typical development cycles. Memory fragmentation, WiFi instability, and accumulated state can cause subtle malfunctions that only emerge after weeks of continuous operation, challenging the assumption that deployed IoT devices can remain stable indefinitely. Understanding these degradation patterns is essential for engineers designing systems meant to run 24/7 without human intervention.