I’m currently running on 3xAA batteries. I’m also thinking of running 2 3xAA battery packs in parallel to maintain the same Voltage level (otherwise the power regulator will cut it off anyway).
And next time I take Ikea’s : http://www.batteryshowdown.com/results-lo.html
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ESPimatic battery issues
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I think the largest improvements from the video are:
- Take out the LED(s)
- In case of Lithium based cells replace the voltage regulator by a (very) low drop regulator with a very low quiescent current, i.e. the HT7333, to get the most out of your cells.
- In case of 2 AA batteries completely lose the voltage regulator as it is not needed --> no quiescent current from the VReg.
with deep sleep the ESP should then use about 15uA.
Just encountered this. There seems to be some extra magic: “This magic sauce command, lowers the power consumption of the chip by 30% when it wakes up to perform sensor measurement.”
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I assume that without the power regulator it will be much better.
But if you have a development board: How will you flash it after you have removed the power regulator? I assume the 5V USB connection uses the power regulator. And as they are soldered dev boards: how are you going to flash it again?Or you should use one of those esps like in this post from @leader21
I found this “devkit schema” by the way: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-devkit/master/Documents/NODEMCU_DEVKIT_SCH.png
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Dev boards are generally not meant to be power efficient. Use more ‘bare’ ESP variants to achieve that, if you would want a breadboard friendly package there are indeed several adapters and/or hacks available.
Flashing them is also possible with USB<–>Serial converters, a lot of them are 3V3 capable as well. -
In post 54 I described that I was using a special as clean as possible sketch with a nodemcu board.
As mentioned: all leds removed but with the power regulator still on. It lasted 8½ days. For me that is a new record.
However: still way too short.
Perhaps another try with the power regulator removed.