Hi guys! Just saw the discussion here, while fighting with one these ESP’s. I have no connection issues, but what I’m experiencing is high temperature on the “upper” half of the board (between pin 0 and 21) - more than 44°C.
What’s your experience, if I may ask?
Thanks!
I wouldn’t consider that anyhow high.
If Esp board draws 200mA powered from 5V, it produces around 1W of heat…
That’s true, but I tried with other similar boards, and the results showed 10°C less under the same conditions.
(In the photo, the left one is much cooler than the group on the right. All three on the right gain temperatures over 42°C)
It means it’s drawing less current, maybe because of different antenna setup or other differences on circuit. It doesn’t mean it’s better or worst.
I would be concerned if one of those identic ones have different temp (with same code).
That’s the reason I tested all of them. The ones on the right are within a few degrees difference, but well over 40. The one on the left, obv. with different antenna and a male IPEX stays cool.
All share same code.
I wouldn’t worry about it. If some components heat up little bit more on different boards, it’s not a sign of problem. If the esp chip itself stays around ambient temp plus 20’C (~45’C), I see normal behavior. All of the components are rated at least 85’C.
I have a similar issue. Actually the exact same symptoms: The board refuse to connect to wifi. However, I have found that this problem arises if I have anything at all connected to GPIO20 or GPIO21 (RX/TX). If anything at all touches these connectors, wifi refuse to connect. Even if I have just solder a pin to it.
However if I remove what is touching these connectors or if I touch the red chip by the antenna with my finger, it connects just fine.
If I have nothing connected or touching the board it connects to wifi just fine. Also, I can connect to any of the other GPIOs without problem.
Anyone seeing the same effect? Is there anything to do with this or is my board ready for the trashcan?
You already mentioned what works, don’t connect anything to gpio20/21. Not even pin header.
The problem is well known.
Another option is finger… 
I have 3 ESP32-C3 SuperMini chips (HW-466AB) that would randomly connect or not. I tried all the suggestions but the only thing that worked for me was to change the framework from Arduino to esp-idf. Now they connect every time.
esp32:
board: esp32-c3-devkitm-1
framework:
type: esp-idf
Yes, that is recommended for esp32c3.
I have this same module (labelled HW-466AB) and found that the connection reliability dropped substantially as soon as I started connecting up the GPIO pins to my project.
I can get it to connect to my WiFi only sometimes, if I put my finger on the antenna while it’s trying to communicate.
I think that round contact by the “0” mark is for an external antenna, and perhaps I could use it, but I can’t find details about what modifications are needed to enable it. I suspect it might be as simple as moving that jumper that is right above the integrated antenna “C3” to the pads beside it.
If anyone has a definitive guide, please let me know. Thanks.
I bought several batches ESP32 C3 Super mini from Aliexpress. Some of them clearly have bad Wifi antenna design. Their Wifi signal strength is significantly worse than the “good” ones, as tested below in a controlled environment.
I have a similar C3 super mini board (Tenstar branded) working with sensors connected (a display and an I2C sensor).
Very reliable, no boot / wifi issues under this configuration.
I switched from the expansion board to a mini-breadboard and could no longer connect to wifi. Boot was successful every time (my display was working) but wifi would not connect. Swapped back to the expansion board and everything works again.
Perhaps the expansion board is providing better power regulation? Has anyone else experiencing problems tried using an expansion board?
