ESP32 Support to enable the powerful ESP32 + RFM95/Lora + LiPo battery boards

[heinzv]

@scalz I agree with your statements. I like both the ESP8266/8285 as you get super-tiny and very cheap boards (like the ESP12-F) if you need only WiFi.
For many cases, it is sufficient. What I like with the ESP32 boards is that you get battery support + charging and also RFM chips on board. So a single board with all I need for battery powered devices.
For Gateways it's also ideal because much more powerfull dual core CPU (if that is really required) and BLE + 868MHz all on a small single board.

I'm fine with the Aliexpress boards for home usage. Even the RF design might be not high quality it is more than sufficient within a flat/house even with 10mW. dis a couple of distance testing in my flat. And the RFM95 can be SW configured up to 100mW (I rather use 10 to max 20mW).

I also like the e-paper (1.54" with 200x200 resolution for 10€). Works fine and need almost no power. For the Gateway, The onboard OLED for control/diagnostic/config infos is also usable.

Looking forward to see more cool stuff.

[scalz]

@heinzv that's what I said! I prefer esp32 too :) I have a some esp8266 that I'll never use because I didn't like it, it was limited imho..

nowadays, why using oled,epaper etc on a gw when you have a mobile! web/native mobile app are a lot more "waf" and interactive, display is less limited too ;)

[heinzv]

@scalz Mobile comes of course on top, but having wall mounted sensors without any display is not really convinient. And for the gateway OLED could be used just showing the state, IP address etc. not more.

[gohan]

@heinzv for smart wifi socket, look at Tasmota or other similar sw for those esp8266 based sockets, maybe they added support for them.

[scalz]

@heinzv said in ESP32 Support to enable the powerful ESP32 + RFM95/Lora + LiPo battery boards:

@scalz Mobile comes of course on top, but having wall mounted sensors without any display is not really convinient. And for the gateway OLED could be used just showing the state, IP address etc. not more.

on my side, I bet on voice control to retrieve infos, so no need of wall mounted sensor displays. for more detailed infos, mobile etc for example. Simple, like this I can have very discrete sensor without exhibiting them on walls, especially with "unpolished display enclosure", I mean it's easier to make a simple 3d printed discrete enclosure than having to polish it a lot because of the display to have a neat result if wall mounted.
One of my goal is the house smart/simple/no maintenance(optimized battery lifetime) enough so i don't need any displays except for data visualization but that's not the purpose of these simple room displays..visualization can be done on TV, smart mirrors etc, only the basic we already use for home, without any addition.

I understand your point, matter of taste I guess :)

[heinzv]

@gohan I have some Sonoff Smart Plugs (S20) with Tasmota SW and it works with OpenHAB, but has no energy monitor. They (Sonoff, ITEAD) have currently no EU version with Energy Monitor (only the S31 Plug = US version).
The Gosund/Homecube/* SP1 has both and has en ESP8266X and I have dumped the Flash (soldering the RX/TX pins) but I have not found a custom firmware which can be used with the Energy Monitor chip. I have not even found out data for the Chip named (3 lines): HJL-01 J1749 CYH D797480E.
I know that one of the experts has connected a logical analyzer to another comerical product and has sniffed/found out the protocol of that chip and write a driver. I was hoping that somebody has the motivation/skill/instruments to also hack one of that attractive plugs.

[heinzv]

if somebody is interested how the small ESP8266EX smart plug (SP1) looks inside.
The second picture shows the energy monitor chip. I think that is the challenge to find a driver for that and read the values (voltage, amps etc.). If somebody (with a logical analyzer?) wants to be a hero :-)
I don't like the original firmware as it only works with Chinese Clouds. I need LAN and OpenHAB support.

[NeverDie]

I thought ESP32 was too power hungry to run for long off a battery. So, maybe for a gateway, but I suspect that's it. Right? I think this largely answers the OP.

[heinzv]

@neverdie not really, if you read the data sheets from ESP32 and do some google reseach, you'll find that the ESP32 has a compareable average power consumtion than the ESP8266, between 30-240mA when radio is on and <6uA in deep sleep. THe ESP32 has an ultra low power co-processor (ULP). So perfect for battery usage for sensor nodes. It can just provide more CPU power if you need it.

http://technostuff.blogspot.co.at/2017/10/specifications-esp8266-esp32-mcu-xtensa.html.

http://bbs.esp32.com/viewtopic.php?t=4073
statement from a user: "Look at Esp32 technical reference manual chapter 29.3.9.
There are also many references to power consumption in this forum and elsewhere. Try to "investigate" more thoroughly. I'm using esp32 with battery and I can get <6 uA consumption in deep sleep mode."

https://blog.adafruit.com/2018/02/20/deep-sleep-tutorial-for-esp32-using-the-rtc-ulp-co-processor-and-two-lines-of-code/

[scalz]

@NeverDie you're right. and for home use+coincell, regarding internal resistance vs RF TX etc, nrf52 is still a better bet I think ;)

but as usual, power consumption is not about numbers only.. it depends on a lot of factors (sdk, hw design etc).

@heinzv
I'm also a esp32 forum reader, etc. and don't get me wrong, esp32 is nice as it's my favorite for a gw.
I already designed a few boards for esp32, some very old with lora when esp32 was just released.., and I like a lot looking at hw designs.
And what I can tell, is the boards you linked will never reach the uA range, they may stay in mA range!
Have you measured power consumption of yours?

• the ulp functions are not integrated in arduino yet. yes, more than a year that esp32 is there, but I think they are very busy with esp-idf. there a few posts about ULP in the arduino section, soon or later, this should be available.
• the esp32 user you mentioned on the esp32 forum, is well known, agreed, and I don't think he reached 6uA with the boards you linked. I think he got this with custom board or standalone mcu. Not sure, if he used arduino too, maybe esp-idf only. Sure it's possible to import arduino as a component in esp-idf, I don't think most of people go this way..
• the boards you linked will also never reach these low power consumption because of their circuit design, they are not optimized!
  https://github.com/Heltec-Aaron-Lee/WiFi_Kit_series/issues/6
  And if you take a look at TTN forums, you'll see same feedbacks..
  That's the same for lolin boards..

Like I said, if you're searching for uA range, a board looking cheap doesn't make it a good deal..
I feel this more a battle about who sells more than who sells good quality, and they have cheaper fab cost, sourcing cost, tax, free shipping etc so that's easier. And then buyers see great price and buy, and stores sell, sell volume, because unfortunately not all buyers have insightful eyes!
Good for stores, the cheap price trick will always work, sort of societal problem!
I noticed also same kind of problems on some tindie stores, so that's not ali only. Maybe good for devboard (and that's depends on the feature you want to test), but then in production it's another story.
And for example, I wouldn't like to have neighboors with bad rf designs polluting my frequencies (hopefully I live in country side).

I'm sure you'll find some good use for your boards, unfortunately not with a great battery lifetime. Here, I'm always after n years of operation than 6months-a year, I prefer less maintenance on nodes.

about your wallplug device, I don't have this device so I can't tell on my side. The ic reference you mentioned may be not related to the ic part but just an id. did you say that someone hacked a similar ic? if you have a link we maybe could help, software then should be a piece of cake :)

[gohan]

I agree, if you want a low sleeping current device, you have to go the barebone way: what is not on a board it doesn't draw any current. :)

[NeverDie]

All that said, I like LoRa a lot. Practically speaking, in a home environment the packets get to their destination virtually every time on the first try. That's big! I just don't see the "need" on a battery operated LoRa for an ESP32, that's all. But maybe that's just me, as I'm doing fairly simple stuff. Perhaps for the OP, the mere existence of off-the-shelf integrated boards makes them more convenient to acquire and use. At least I could imagine that being true for some people. That may be a not insubstantial market segment.

[gohan]

maybe he just needs some extra computing power. Isn't LoRa transmission time slower than regular radio modules?

[NeverDie]

@gohan said in ESP32 Support to enable the powerful ESP32 + RFM95/Lora + LiPo battery boards:

Isn't LoRa transmission time slower than regular radio modules?

Definitely yes. It's not without downsides.

[heinzv]

@neverdie I have not yet measured the power consumption in deep sleep, but I will certainly verify it (I have ordered a multimeter with a 0-60uA rage). I 'll let you know.
The battery powered wall mounted devices with e-paper is something I'll build. If the ESP32 Lora board is not what I expect, I need, what other choises do I have? Buying a nrf52 board (some have a battery management) with a RFM95? Do you think that is the better choice? The nrf52 board are not cheap.
What combination would you recommend?
I also have STM32F1 with 128kb flash, but the look also not so convient to me.
I have gone through many articles and watched many videos and did not get the impression, that the ESP32 is wrong for efficient battery usage.
Here is one video with an ESP32 board a guy measured with a Fluke 5.x uA in RTC timer deep sleep and 6.5uA in GPIO deep sleep. So in principal the ESP32 is the right choice but I believe you, that some the boards I have chosen are not the most energy efficient ones without tweaking. I have a couple of other ESP32 boards, maby I have to combine them with my RFM95 modules I also own to get down in the uA range.
Here is the 5 to 6 uA measured ESP32 board
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NDq6hC9KJo

[scalz]

@heinzv said in ESP32 Support to enable the powerful ESP32 + RFM95/Lora + LiPo battery boards:

Here is one video with an ESP32 board a guy measured with a Fluke 5.x uA in RTC timer deep sleep and 6.5uA in GPIO deep sleep. So in principal the ESP32 is the right choice but I believe you, that some the boards I have chosen are not the most energy efficient ones without tweaking. I have a couple of other ESP32 boards, maby I have to combine them with my RFM95 modules I also own to get down in the uA range.

That's exactly what I meant, I was just talking about the other boards.
then, regarding the right choice, it all depends on the usecase I think, not so evident. but for your project sure it's a nice mcu, actually having fun with it too ;)

[NeverDie]

@heinzv You haven't really said what your requirements are. I'd say give it a try. It's not an expensive experiment. Then you'll know for sure. For all I know, maybe it's just what you're looking for. If not, there's always more and bigger batteries to make it last longer.

As to alternatives, probably using a 3.3v Arduino Pro Mini, or equivalent, is what most would recommend. Here's one I posted:
https://www.openhardware.io/view/395/LoRa-Ra-01-ATmega328P-Node
If you go looking, I'm sure you can find lots of similar things. For instance: https://www.openhardware.io/view/534/Extremely-Simple-Arduino-Pro-Mini-LoRa-Water-Leak-Detector

[heinzv]

@neverdie Thanks for the good hints. I also have a couple of 3.3v/8Mhz Arduino or a comparable ATmega32u4 pro mini boards, but not found the Lora RA-01 modules with 868MHz / SX1276 only the SX1278 with 433MHz, in Europe 868MHz is the better choice and my ESP32 have SX1276 with 868MHz. However I have 10 RFM95 modules with 868MHz I could use but I need to connect then two devices at the SPI bus, the RFM95 and the E-Paper.
In addition, I also have 3,7 LiPo with 2200mAh batteries but they have 4,2V charged, so I would need a voltage regulator + charger or othe other batteries below 3,6V charged.
I see, you making very nice HW projects and boards. I'm impressed :-)

BTW: as you're also a HW expert, I have purchased a couple of the SP1 smart sockets from Gosund, Homecube and Coosa, they all have the same HW with an ESP8266EX and 1MB flash. They all need the Smart Life App and use a Chionese Cloud. I want to flash them with either Mysensors, Tasmota, ESPEasy or whatever, but then I loose the energy monitor.
They have a chip which I don't find thus what driver/code should be used? I have posted a support request already in two projects (here and at Tasmota) not sure if anybody is smart enough to find a solution. Above I have posted two pictures of the inside of the Plug. Any idea what we can do?

[NeverDie]

@heinzv Sorry, but I don't understand your question.

Also, generally speaking, multimeters alone are the wrong tool for measuring microamp currents. As Scalz already mentioned, something like a uCurrent Gold would be a better choice.

Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

[mfalkvidd]

Buying a nrf52 board (some have a battery management) with a RFM95? Do you think that is the better choice? The nrf52 board are not cheap.

Not sure if you noticed, but nrf5x comes with a nrf24-compatible radio on the same chip. So it is similar to the esp32+lora board you linked to.