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

[heinzv]

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

nrf24

thanks for all your hints. I'll first continue with my ESP32 Lora board and see how far I come. I also have so many other boards like ESP8266, 8285, 328, 32u4, STM32L1 and a lot of RF modules (RFM69, 95 and CC1101) which I'm testing in parallel. Since I have now an intermediate repository with ESP32 + RFM95 support from tekka007, I continue first on that path and let you know if it fits or not and what results I have.
I hope though, that the tekka007 version makes it in the master branch (maybe in the 3.0 version).

[tekka]

@mfalkvidd No, testing looks good and framework runs stable - I need to sort out some warnings I get with gitler/jenkins before merging.

[ristomatti]

Andreas Spiess just yesterday uploaded a very comprehensive comparison between the different LiPo powered ESP32 modules people on this thread might be interested about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-769_YIeGmI

He has also posted a lot of other excellent ESP32 and LoRa videos. i highly recommend to check them out!

[gohan]

I watched it too and the result is that as usual the barebone solution is the most battery friendly :D

[heinzv]

@gohan at least my saying is confirmed, that the ESP32 is well suited for battery usage (has the ULP co-processor) and the ESP8266 is not better, rather worse. And you get many ESP32 boards with battery management. Of course, what all the analysis show is that if board design is bad, the battery consumption can be bad. But that would be the same for ESP8266.
Conclusion: ESP32 support and also RFM95 support makes sense :-)

[NeverDie]

A relevant question that you won't want to gloss over is how long does it take the ESP32 to re-acquire access to the WiFi router after it wakes from deep sleep? Potentially, a lot of power could vanish into that. More than anything, I think that may be why it so far hasn't proven as popular for battery operation.

[heinzv]

@neverdie Since the ESP32 (with the right board setup) and LoRA are both optimized for low power and battery saving and a sensor node would only wake-up max. every 60 secs and just reports temp, humidity, pressure and battery level, it shuld be fine.
That is only a small message and LoRA optimized for longer range and low power.
ESP8266 and RFM69 is supported and not better (I guess even worse). The important thing ist that the sensor nodes do not send date via WiFI AP, that consumes time to connect and thus energy. I don't use ESP32 WiFi on sensor nodes just the ULP deep sleep the RFM96 (could also use RFM69 non LoRa) but then I need to solder a lot.
But there is already a PR with supports both and my RFM96 gateway works, so I'm satisfied :-)

[gohan]

To report weather data as you said, you can get away with a simple pro mini, without the need to use a powerful esp32. The problem with the esp32 boards you find around are development boards, so are not really optimized for low power operations

[heinzv]

I have now tried to build an indoor sensor with Homematic protocol and an e-paper display using Pa-Pa's AsksinPP and GxEPD libs. Now I'm far beyond the Atmegas328p Flash and RAM and close to the limit of an STM32 maple. So I will go for the little ESP32 barebone boards and a RFM69 (LoRa or ESPNow). I'm very happy, that ESP32 and RFM95 are now supported thanks to tekka!

[heinzv]

@gohan I will use this barebone ESP32S module without LED, USW, Voltage Regulator etc.
https://de.aliexpress.com/item/ESP32-ESP32S-WIFI-Bluetooth-Module-240MHz-Dual-Core-CPU-MCU-Wireless-Network-Board-ESP-WROOM-32/32817688406.html?spm=a2g0x.search0104.3.1.3bc34eb5tSg79z&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_5_10152_10151_10065_10344_10068_5722815_10342_10547_10343_10340_5722915_10548_10341_5722615_10696_10084_10083_10618_10304_10307_10820_10821_10302_5722715_10059_100031_10103_10624_10623_10622_5722515_10621_10620,searchweb201603_2,ppcSwitch_3&algo_expid=499485e8-6df0-40d6-8033-c5497748adb9-0&algo_pvid=499485e8-6df0-40d6-8033-c5497748adb9&transAbTest=ae803_1&priceBeautifyAB=0