Thank you @rama!rama wrote:NoAffinity:
You have an intermittent connection on the I2C bus. When the LED goes out, an I2C packet error occured and the devices are out of sync.
That's why a restart may fix it, but it often needs a full power cycle.
In any case, check your wiring (grounding, too!).
(The LwIP setting has nothing to do with this.)
I had a lot of variables going on, didn't know what could be a cause - arduino update, board update, seeing new options in the Tools pull-down...
But, you pointed me in the right direction. Turns out it was the debug pin connection. I reflowed that thing at least 3 times throughout the day today. And my best guess is the small jumper that I made by extracting a pin from one of the headers provided with the esp, and soldering that to the debug pin so I'd have a larger solder point, that pin must've been a poor conductor. I ran a fresh wire and soldered the wire directly to the gbs qfp debug pin, and problem solved.