#400 The Best Power Source for ESP32/ ESP8266 Projects

Are you interested in my way of powering small projects? After many discussions and evaluations, I created a favorite list with solutions for the five most popular use cases. Why did I choose them, and how can you build them? After the video, you should have a decision tree for your future projects.
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[Joachim_S]

Hello Andreas, welcome back.
I have a little tip for your power supply at 2:37 (Tenstar 230V). A strain relief should be attached for the 230V cable. I use a cable tie in such a case. I push the cable in a little further and tighten a cable tie. In this way I achieve that there is no pull on the soldering points. In Germany, strain relief is mandatory.

[bgable]

Wow, I hadn't seen this one yet. As always, great coverage for the various options with clear and concise reasons for the use case. Thanks !!!

[BerndFelsche]

Power over Ethernet (POE) or the newer PODL are options for LAN connected devices. 10 Mbps at a 1000m for (Single Pair Ethernet) SPE-PODL. PODL is much simpler to implement than POE as the power supply current doesn't have to run through the magnetics.

[JohnTarbox]

Glad to see you are back and making new videos. I hope you had a great vacation.

[teuluPaul]

Welcome back! - hope you had a restful summer break! Thanks for the video

[avejst]

Great video as always 👍
I love your great experience in problem solving!
thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 👍😀

[nkronert]

Hi Andreas, good to have you back in front of the first row! Your current favorite board at 2:18, which one is that?

[ismaelcivera]

Hello Andreas, a very useful video for the maniacs to reduce consum of our projects. You are the best!!!! Thanks from Spain!!!

[slavsterbater]

What a critically useful information. Your videos are super helpful!

[proffirmanable]

Wow, even though i've done my research about this topic, your video always inspiring, especially those summary. Thank you :)

[SomeRandomPerson]

I'd be keen on hearing about your new version of the mailbox notifier. I've been considering building something like this myself since I rarely get mail, and checking it even every few days is often pointless, but I don't want to miss 'important' mail.

[DanielStarnowski]

Great job with putting those usecases in order! :) And I share your love for HT7333! With small correction, that its dropout voltage is 150 mV - both in the datasheet and personally tested :). With battery going down to 3.45 V it keeps giving pure 3.3. Battery going down to 3.44 V - it goes down to 3.29 on the output, and so on - going down in the linear fashion, always 0.15 V below the battery voltage. Which is still great and more than enough for 3xAA batteries. And ESP32 still keeps working even with 3.0 V ;) (which means 3.15 V from 3xAA, which is when they are almost 100% empty :) ).

[Zlmst]

Nice work Andreas, has answered a lot of my questions

[jessiegashler]

I've been designing around single cell lipo batteries for about a year now as i've been developing my invention and i've found that they do wonderfully if the power consumption is managed correctly. Integrating a lipo charger in the form of an MCP73831 is extremely easy and it can charge the batteries I use very very quickly. I just throw in an AMS 3.3V LDO (the same vreg found on the devkit modules) to verify proper regulation.

That aside, the video is fantastic as always

[tim-wise]

Thanks for all you do on your channel. I've learned a lot over the past year in following you. A question about your latch circuit at 11:54 - if you wire a momentary reed switch from 5v to the load in order to wake the MCU up, wouldn't that put 5v onto pin 2 of the NDP6020P in your diagram? Is that ok? I can see how it might be "equivalent" to the gate energized and current flowing.

[WooShell]

I love those ESP32/ESP8266 boards with OLED and an 18650 holder on the back.. sure, they are a bit on the large side, but they've got everything you need to deploy a remote sensor somewhere. Sometimes I just wish they were available in a version with an antenna plug (uFL) instead of the pcb antenna, for situations where I need a bit more wifi range.

[axelhertwig]

Hi Andreas, very good as always!! I am looking forward to your video on LiFePo4.
During the summer I did some test with an ESP, a 700mAh LiFePo4, an 1W/6V Solar panel and a very cheap TP5000 charger.
The battery and the charger output are directly in parallel, thus no need for a power path. All power lines should be kept short and thick enough though.
I am also just keeping the current limit at 1A and it works just fine. The TP5000 has a step-down converter and this is not optimal with respect to maximizing the power, but it seems at least to be self-regulating. Too high currents are anyhow no problem with a 1W panel.
As you have shown in one of your other videos the TP5000 has a very small hysteresis until it starts charging again once the battery is full. However, there is a not used pad that is connected to the chip select. It is possible to solder a thin wire to this and enable/disable charging by yourself. You can check "battery full" via the green LED level, then disable the TP5000 and regularly check the battery voltage to decide yourself when you want to enable charging again.
There are also 2 unused pads parallel to the onboard shunt. I used this just out of curiosity to observe the charging current with an ADS1115.
In a second setup I just connect the solar and TP5000 parallel of the LiFePo4 without any modifications or measures. During the day the battery is floated around 3.55V and during the night it gets some relief... I really wonder how long it takes to kill the battery by this. I find a lot of "opinions" on this matter, but no real hard facts or data sheets. If there are any battery experts around, I am still keen to learn.

[frollard]

I would love to see some talk about supercapacitors (which are now much more affordable in diy class projects), and the affordability of adding a qi coil to a project. Between those two, many ultra low power devices could be topped up in a matter of minutes without having to open a waterproof case.

[McTroyd]

Glad to see you're back making videos! Replaceable batteries seem like a great solution. I'm guessing the average person is too lazy to bother though, which is why we don't see many options on the market. 👍

[ralphj]

The TPL5111 Nano-power system timer may be of interest. I have used this in the past to power up / wake up various boards that would otherwise consume many microamps when in sleep.