ESP32 S3, on button press, wake from deep sleep, then do something

[donburch888 (Don Burch)]

@neel-m

This is a company I have been watching for a long time: About Low Power Lab | LowPowerLab
They are doing some very interesting things in low power and RF communication.

And I have just got an Unexpected Maker FeatherS3 and am very impressed with it. There are definitely Development Boards which are designed for low quiescent current, and I assume that the ones with a LiPo battery connector also fall into that category.

@Karosm

If Xiao -S3 draws 15uA in deep sleep and …

Are you talking about the ESP32 chip, or a board that was designed for low quiescent power ? Are you comparing apples and oranges ?

@neel-m

Battery powered is very hard to do well. You really have to make each coulomb count (or have a much bigger battery or charge it more frequently).

Agreed. Maximising battery life really needs to be designed in, including low power components. For example the UM FeatherS3 disconnects power to the 2nd built-in i2c STEMMA QT connector when the ESP goes to deep sleep.
Until recently the advice was to custom design your PCB for low quiescent current.

And yet the argument seems to be that all ESP32 are crap because the older/cheaper Devkit boards expect USB power, and so would never achieve low power.

Unfortunately ESPHome was developed for those older boards and USB power … and it feels like deep_sleep was an afterthought. I am hoping we can change this.

I have created a ESPHome Feature Request Can ESPHome support the low quiescent power feature of newer ESP32 Development Boards ? hoping others will support a move to optimise ESPHome for low power usage.

[neel-m (Neel Malik)]

@donburch888

hoping others will support a move to optimise ESPHome for low power usage.

I don’t think anyone would oppose optimizing for low power. I also don’t believe it will be possible without significant changes. There appear to be many design decisions made (likely in the past) that are fine for something that is always on, but not so good for things that are sleeping most of the time.

I suspect deep sleep is used by much less than even 1% of devices or even users so it probably won’t get much development until someone decides they need it for what they are doing.

I have several battery powered devices. They are commercial ones that use either BT or Zigbee. They have good enough battery life for me (many months to a year). I believe this lifespan would be very hard to achieve with esp32 and esphome without a big battery.

I have a (car) battery monitoring project on the back burner. It will use the FireBeetle, which I heard about here:

Bot Challenge

For true low power you have to do everything right and that is not easy.

[Karosm]

@donburch888

Are you talking about the ESP32 chip, or a board that was designed for low quiescent power ? Are you comparing apples and oranges ?

Why would I specify board from Xiao family id I was talking about bare chip…
15uA is what Seed Studio claims, I have mot tested it. It’s just one example of a devboard optimized for battery power and I used that because Xiao boards are common, inexpensive and readily available on major distribution channels.

@neel-m

it probably won’t get much development until someone decides they need it for what they are doing

Including NRF52 on supported boards might push towards that direction and/or reflect open interest for low power esphome.
It’s ten years old, costs more than Esp and module/devboard availability isn’t so good. I’m pretty sure it’s mainly used for battery powered projects.