With the 15 sec interval, is the interpreter itself still responsive if you're connected to it via USB (were there any error messages beforehand?), and are you using up to date firmware?
Have you got a capacitor soldered across the ESP8266? Especially with the older rev 1.3 Pico boards, the diode supplying the power from USB really struggled to provide the peaks of power needed for the ESP8266, and a 10uF capacitor could really help.
Espruino is a JavaScript interpreter for low-power Microcontrollers. This site is both a support community for Espruino and a place to share what you are working on.
Yes, I'd say there might be 2 issues then.
With the 15 sec interval, is the interpreter itself still responsive if you're connected to it via USB (were there any error messages beforehand?), and are you using up to date firmware?
Have you got a capacitor soldered across the ESP8266? Especially with the older rev 1.3 Pico boards, the diode supplying the power from USB really struggled to provide the peaks of power needed for the ESP8266, and a 10uF capacitor could really help.