Please help me validate my theory that issue is that ESP8266 is not booting up properly under this lower amperage situation, and when more amps are available, it is too late as system is in inconsistent state.
I am contemplating following solutions, but am not sure which will yield best results:
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[*] pull GPIO2 high (based on other article I read, right now it is floating)
[*]introduce capacitance or inductance?
[*] come up with way to perform reset via reset pin
[*] put the lipo ahead of the buck converter (see diagram), and use 2 (or 3) lipos in series (I would prefer not to change anything upstream of the buck converter.
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