What's your favourite ESP32 board? (# Best, good, cheap, quality, reliable)

I’d love to hear people’s recommendations on ESP32s for low power deep sleep battery projects too.

Like along the lines of “I’ve been using board x and it wakes y times per day to do blah and it lasts z days off of a 1mah battery, and it doesn’t even play weird silly-buggers, it has just been rock solid since dinosaurs :t_rex::t_rex:”.

Edit: Andreas Spiess’ awesome spreadsheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1Mu-bNwpnkiNUiM7f2dx8-gPnIAFMibsC2hMlWhIHbPQ/htmlview?pli=1

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Just found an ESP-01 variant I have not seen before on Ali Ex.

The T-01C3 uses the ESP32-C3 and has the same form factor and pinout as the original and could be a good replacement where bluetooth is needed.

More info here: https://github.com/Xinyuan-LilyGO/T-01C3

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Makes sense. I believe the C3 has been positioned as somewhat of a “ESP8266 but with Bluetooth”

It can be just bad luck, but my LilyGo / TTGO ESP32 POE failed on me after about 1,5 years of usage. The chip and ethernet still work, but PoE fails. Funny since PoE was chosen for reliability reasons :roll_eyes:

I just switched off PoE in my switch and power it over USB now. Easy in this case and still connected to my UPS. I was planning to add one at a more remote location, but I’m in doubt about that now.

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They look good. I’ve been looking to get one for glow project but need to figure out how to power it up as meter has no gpo.

Got me thinking, something like this, not sure though.

I love the Quinleds but wouldn’t recommend them for low power projects (tested).

I like and can recommend the LILYGO® TTGO T7 V1.5 Mini32 if you remove the led (as per vid in link above)

I also can recommend the sunflower solar power manager.

I’m not sure if you need it to be on 24/7 but that could be challenging. Mine sleeps a lot.

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Deep Sleep: Firebeetle 32-E
(“Experimental”?)

I’m trying to build up more deep sleep esp32 recommendations so adding this here.

Feel free to add more details @johnBoy.

did you find any good store?

They are available now.

in a EU shop or a shop which is declairing VAT?

You could ask/search on the QuinLED Discord server.

If there’s not something existing they may think about a new distribution channel to reduce costs to EU?

There’s even a “Dutch chat” channel on the server, so they might know…

Isn’t that all a bit weird? Both QuinLED (in the Netherlands) and the mother company of Allnet China (in Germany) are EU based. Shouldn’t they have thought about a EU distribution channel already, without requiring our external input?

I guess so. Yeah fair enough. I didn’t know that context.

Anyway, doesn’t hurt to ask the same question over there - probably more EU QuinLED users over there.

Hey @JetSerge and others. I wanted to give a quick update.

My go-to ESP32 is the M5Stamp C3U now.

It is small, convenient, and pretty. Perfect for most simple use cases (your typical sensor/actor node).
ESPHome:

esphome:
  name: testing-esp
  friendly_name: Testing ESP

esp32:
  board: esp32dev
  framework:
    type: arduino

The company behind this series is fast. There is once again a newer product listed on their webpage: M5Stamp ESP32S3 Module | m5stack-store

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Lolin/Wemos ESP32S3 mini - lots of IO, S3 - psram, fast like sanic, onboard RGB led. My go-to.

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Does anyone have experience with the Bee S3? It is open hardware, which is always nice to see, and looks pretty interesting. The same developer also has a version with a PIR sensor already on it and a “data logger” version, though these other two are significantly more expensive, maybe party due to the support for LiPo charging. Anyway, I wonder how well they would work in esphome - I assume it would be easy enough since it has a library for Arduino.

Does anyone have recommendations for a good module with an ESP32-C6 or H2? I’m curious to try out the Zigbee capabilities.

I guess the first step for you would be then to add ZigBee support for esphome.

Ah, of course - I guess these are new enough that ESPHome doesn’t support it yet anyway…

If you want to use the zigbee capabilities you probably need to go C++.