Bluetooth high Power mode

ESPHome
1

Hi,

I’m looking to use ESPHome to connect to my HQ Lawn mower. However, at the current state it only has a few meters of range using a XIAO ESP32-S3.

I’m looking at buying a board with a bluetooth power amplifier to increase the range.

However, it does not look like ESPHome has built in support for this. Would it be possible to load this setting via a custom component, or does ESPHome have support just that I have missed it?

2

Support for what exactly?
Few meters range sounds low, do you have antenna connected?

4

Yes, was also very disappointed.
The support I’m asking for is that some ESP32 boards requires the software to activate the power amplifier but I’m quite new to this so I might be completely off and might have misunderstood it. From what I understood, the “bluetooth high power mode” requires a power amplifier.
I got my information from this thread: Bot Challenge

The antenna is connected properly and I also bought their external antenna: 2.4GHz 2.81dBi Antenna for XIAO ESP32C3 - Seeed Studio

Also tried with another 2.4GHz antenna but no difference.

I will try to make more tests when I get home and use an RSSI-app to scan the signal strength.

I will also see if chaning the TX power gives any positive performance.

5

Seems like this thread might become me thinking out loud while learning new things about the board.

The ESP32-S3 is supposedly having “Bluetooth High Power Mode”, which indicates that it actually has a PA already though it doesn’t say that in the data sheets.

However, the data sheet does say it does have “bluetooth high power mode”:

6

There is only external antenna. The board doesn’t have any internal antenna. And it has to be plugged well.
If you only get few meters range (in undisturbed place), you should return the board and get another.

7

I bought two of them so I will try to flash the other one and see if that makes any difference.

However - the question still remains. As far as I understood, the High Power BLE is not activated by default, so I would need to activate it some how in order to get the best range out of it.

8

Adjusting BLE transmit power to max doesn’t help you anyhow to receive.
Seed studio advertise: “Outstanding RF performance”, so if you don’t get reasonable performance, there is probably something else wrong.

9

I don’t think receiving is the problem, I think the transmission from the ESP32 is the problem.

The High Power Mode is not enabled by default as far as I can understand.