ESP8266 Community Forum

- Tue Sep 15, 2015 2:54 am #29066 I have playing with ESP modules for a while, they are extremely fun to work with, and perfectly suited for most of my projects.

However, not being able to power them from batteries for extended periods of time is a big drawback on some other projects. Digi's XBee modules (http://www.digi.com/lp/xbee/) seem quite interesting, but they are quite expensive. There are Ciseco's RFu - 328/SRF modules (https://www.wirelessthings.net/rf-328-a ... er-rfu-328) too, but even those are not cheap enough for what I have in mind.

On the other hand, I have also being toying with the idea of pairing Arduino Nano boards with some random 433MHz module, but I am not very confident on the reliability of that setup.

Does anybody have more ideas? Many thanks!

- Tue Sep 15, 2015 5:07 am #29072 You may go with NRF51822-based modules (like this one). Works nicely from a CR2032 battery for extended periods of time.
These may be programmed with Mbed and there is also an Arduino core available. If you use Nordic's IOT SDK you can also make your modules join an IPv6 network over BLE transport.

- Tue Sep 15, 2015 7:32 am #29076

You may go with NRF51822-based modules (like this one). Works nicely from a CR2032 battery for extended periods of time.
These may be programmed with Mbed and there is also an Arduino core available. If you use Nordic's IOT SDK you can also make your modules join an IPv6 network over BLE transport.

On first look it seems interesting... I will have a deeper look later.

Many thanks!

- Tue Sep 15, 2015 7:48 am #29077 ... working extended time on battery ...

needs more detail on what "work" has to be done during this time.
"running extended time on a CR2032" means to me it is either running on 32kHz clock crystal and therefor can't do anything really meaningfull at all or is sleeping most of the time.
As for sleeping, ESP in light sleep (no WiFi) has ~0.5mA, deep sleep has ~10µA consumption and sub µA in power down mode (ref: http://bbs.espressif.com/viewtopic.php?t=133).
The last two won't be beaten by much on other LP µCs, but overall performance (incl. WiFi) is unmatched up to now.
Granted, to gain most from the low power modes it needs a little brain grease compared to other (unfortunately general) low power solutions.