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

ESPHome
15

If you have a good 5V supply (1A or more) you can ignore any peripheral loads (within reason) on the 5v supply rail. These are powered pretty much directly.

However if you are attaching 3.3v devices, that power has to be converted from 5v to 3.3v by the voltage regulator.

The ESP CPU and wifi use this 3.3v power too.

The ESP chip itself draws 160-260mA when transmitting according to the data sheet. However there can be spikes much higher than this that are smoothed out by the power supply capacitors.

So if you have a bottom dollar clone with a 300mA 3.3v regulator and poor power supply filtering capacitors it may just run ok as long as you don’t attach anything else to the 3.3v rail. Start attaching a few sensors and there is no longer enough 3.3v power during packet transmission and the rail voltage sags causing the cpu to reset.

4 Likes
16

Thanks. This is clear and makes sense.

17

ESP32 dev boards off eBay. Never had any issues with them

18

Would you mind adding a pic or link of examples to your post when you get a sec please @DavidFW1960 ?

19

would have been one of these or similar

1 Like
20

Yeah I used to go for similar ones too and historically generally had pretty good luck with them.

Probably my preferred/recommended cheapy.

I don’t know how much the quality varies between similar ones…

21

Yeah I’d be happy to buy one of those ones if I was looking for one. I keep hearing people talking about being scammed with clones of say BME280’s but I never had any issue with ebay cheapies. Same with ESP8266…

1 Like
22

I looked at the old DEVKIT-V1 ones I have and if I’m interpreting the component and value right they seem to have a AMS1117 voltage regulator with >=1A !?

image
image710×1080 97 KB

image

1 Like
23

Yeah I never had any issues with modules in that larger form factor.

I’ve used a few of these (same AMS1117 regulator): NodeMCU-32S Module ESP32 WiFi Bluetooth USB ESP-32S, 38 Pins, SYDNEY | eBay

It was only ever the “mini” versions that I had to be careful with.

2 Likes
24

They appear to be back in stock.

I bought a few to try.

1 Like
25

I love and use the following board, LCD screen, Bluetooth, Wifi, and 2 onboard buttons

1 Like
26

i use several waveshare esp one with raspberry-format DACs as speakers

and the m5stamp pico is a great mini-esp32 to integrate into something like the IKEA vindriktning

1 Like
27

Do you have a project write up on this?

I’m looking for something to replace a Chomecast Audio and USB speakers I use for announcements.

28

sure, here you got

i send my announcements via a universal media player and mqtt to my nodes
topic espaudio/announce with an url payload
topic espaudio/url for webstreams and the like

1 Like
29

I was interested in esp32’s with onboard screens for a bit but then I decided adding them seperately generally suited me more as it enables more flexible screen placement for the projects I wanted to do.

30

Oh that looks interesting.

31

If you are really short on space here is tiny board that has positive comments on the ESPHome Discord:

And another:

1 Like
32

This is an interesting ESP32 board that I have been experimenting with. USD 9 with shipping. Fits into a USA single gang wall box. I am still debating my trust in putting it in the wall, but it seems as well made as many of the devices we think nothing of using in our homes. You can do development with it powered by a TTL Serial to USB converter with it off the mains and then move it to mains when it is to your liking.

AC Powered ESP32 WiFi Single Relay Module ESP32 Development Board

AC Powered ESP32
AC Powered ESP321592×2366 371 KB

2 Likes
33

Reading threads like this Songle Relay board safety concerns with 240V make me worry about those relays.

Having said that, I ordered a couple to play with (thanks for the pointer). Don’t know that I’ll be putting them in my wall though.

1 Like
34

The creepage distances on the back of that aliexpress board look good. Nice little cutout in the board isolating the relay coil pins from the common relay contact pin.

Untitled

Though if the relay is flush against the other side of the board it’s kind of useless.