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

ESPHome
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FWIW I’m new to ESP32 land - so I don’t have a favourite board I’ve been using for years - and have noticed on my local (Australia) reseller that the newest boards are ridiculously cheap compared to older established models - and I’m not talking the cheap Chinese rip-offs.

It starts with Waveshare’s ESP32-C3 Mini Dev Board for AU$6.30, ESP32-C6 Mini for AU$8.65 and ESP32-S3 Mini for AU$8.70
DFRobot’s FireBeetle 2 ESP32 C6 IoT Development Board caught my eye with hardware support for Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, Zigbee, Matter, Thread, direct connection of Li-Po battery and Solar Panel … and for only for AU$10.50 !
Pity the ESP32-C6 is not “officially” supported by ESPHome :frowning: despite seeing quite a few forum posts about the C6

So what am I trying to say here ?

  1. Seems a no-brainer to use the newer boards with better specs and lower prices.
  2. From the specs I think the Firebeetle 2 C6 will be perfect for off-grid IoT projects, and everything else, and I would love to see it supported asap.

I understand that much of what makes the C6 different and desirable is the hardware support for new and advanced communications; and that they take time to be ported, tested, documented, and tested some more before they become official components. Fair enough.

So … would it be feasible to phase in support for ESP32-C6 boards ? To say that the C6 is supported now for basic functionality (established technologies) like wi-fi v4 - but that support for zigbee, matter and thread will be added later as each becomes mature enough. That way we can purchase and use the hardware now, in the knowledge that it won’t get left behind as the newer technologies become mainstream.

For example I don’t use Wi-Fi 6 so support for that feature is not an issue for me. I appreciate that Firebeetle uses additional chips for the power management, and I assume that the power management hardware will work now - but the power monitoring probably won’t report the battery status to ESPHome until the additional chips are supported. I can probably work with that for now.

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In the MCU world you don’t want to be early adopter but generally prefer good/superior hardware support in soft/firmware which often is just reached years after the initial launch.

That said you might (still) even find the ‘classic’ esp32 to be better supported then some newer supported esp32 -S or -C versions.

This the usual U$2 Supermini you get on aliexpress.

AFAIK Espressif only manufactures in China, be aware of cheap austrialian knock-offs :joy:

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185

Some thoughts…

You don’t want to be mucking around with boards that don’t have good ESPHome support if you are newish to ESPHome.

C3 and S* support is probably mature enough now for broad use.

I now quite like the C3 super minis for “basic” projects (as like a d1 mini alternative) but you need to be careful with what you buy (which is also true for d1 mini’s). Wifi range can be problematic.

S3 support is now probably mature enough for general use and not a bad option. Maybe something like this.

I just found this on AliExpress:
AU$11.59 | S3 Mini V1.0.0 - LOLIN
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mLeJxMj

Forget about c6 for now I reckon.

I still just go for classic esp32’s for many cases. They are cheap, well supported, and more than capable.

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186

Current faves because how cute small yet functional they are - Mini ESP-CAM Dev Board for Edge AI - XIAO ESP32S3 Sense - same form factor for S3, C3, C6, RP2040, nRF, etc…

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You don’t want to be mucking around with boards that don’t have good ESPHome support if you are newish to ESPHome.

Just wanted to share that ESP32-S3 PowerFeather is getting an official external component! It exposes power management and monitoring features of the SDK API (almost all - there is still some work to be done):

Screenshot from 2025-01-28 21-25-11
Screenshot from 2025-01-28 21-25-111863×1044 71.4 KB

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188

Congrats on that! I’m very keen to hear how the community go with these, especially for low power/ solar projects.

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I’ve had a problem with XAIO - SEEED ESP32-C3 module used as a pid controller for wine brewing.

One pid controller with two BMP280 modules and a SSR relay on one output. Only one BMP is actually used in the control, the other is just monitoring. Originally, the ‘wine temperature controller’ unit had a ‘standard’ ESP32 Devkit V1 module fitted working for a couple of years.

During 2024, I bought a -C3 module to try it - it was low cost, small and had a separate antenna. I swapped it out on the wine controller, hoping for a better wifi signal with the separate antenna. The original was ok, but lost connection on rare occasions.

I noticed recently, the pid randomly resets and restarts. I’m not sure when it started, the history shows on average a dropout every 1.5 days, ranging from 3 times a day to once in 5 days, going back to late December 2024. It looks as if the whole unit shuts down (goes offline) for between 15 to 30 minutes.

I thought, maybe to rule out the power supply being a factor, I could add a Lipo battery (-C3 module is configured for these and has charge facility built-in) so it should ride through any short term power losses. Also, add a digital to monitor the 5V supply if it goes off.

However, with the usual HA and ESPHome updates getting in the way, the router being changed a month ago and nothing associated with HA seems consistant between attempts to do anything, (at least for me), the OTA program upload predictably failed. Can’t connect for one reason or another. Or connects then doesn’t get a handshake and fails. Numerous attempts at recovering all failed miserably.

Ok.

Ditched the C3 and changed it for an unused FireBeetle 2 module I have. (It also has lipo connection facilities and can log battery volts).

That was a struggle. Something always seems to change in the procedure to add devices. And I don’t remember when the ESP Home tab in the sidebar became ESP Home Builder? Eventually succeeded in adding it and gave it a test job keeping the dog warm, under his bag in the kitchen.

True to form, as I am writing this, the new FireBeetle Wine pid ESP is showing Offline now, in ESP Home Builder. It still seems to be working and controlling as shown on the dashboard. The other ESPs are still shown as connected.
So. Tried - ‘LOGS, - connect wirelessly’. OK.
Oh, good? Now it’s showing ‘Online’ again and still working.

Continuing…
So, the battery has not been added yet.
I’ll monitor it for a few days to see if the resets still happen, in which case, maybe the power supply is at fault… Then add the battery and monitor again.
Let’s see what happens…

I’ll probably never know if the C3 is not well suited to the application or the module was just failing intermittantly.

But I like these modules as they are so small. Maybe stick to S3 version.

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Further to this, we have slightly changed the identity of ESPHome as an add-on in Home Assistant. It is now called ESPHome Device Compiler, because that is what it does, and most people do not need it if they are not going to actually compile anything.

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Thanks for the info.
As far as I can make out, the new router I mentioned in the earlier post, (an Icotera i4882) does not have any settings relating to mDNS. So I have no idea if it ‘supports’ it or not? It’s not mentioned in the data sheet info.

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For further support, please start a dedicated thread. Cheers.