ESP8266 Community Forum

- Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:26 am #82778

Several things have made me rethink using the buck/boost:
- the ESP chip will actually operate at lower than 3.3V. I've heard people using as low as 2.8V to power them successfully. Most of my sensors are already using 1.8V and the ones that aren't can also operate with 3.0V or less

Just to add to that experience. I was recently checking out the battery state on a door sensor which sends out internet notifications. That had been running fine for over 12 months on a 400mA LIPO using a LDO (xc6203). I was surprised to find the battery down to 2.8V, well into final exhaustion state, but it was still operational. With the drop out the ESP would have been on about 2.6V.

Amazing!!!
The regulator (xc6203) was giving way to how much? 3.3v?
With 2.6v at the entrance?
Tell us more how your application works !!
I am impressed with the weather!

- Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:27 am #82779

In this case do you only power the ESP or power other circuits like sensors, LCD, buzzer, leds, etc.?
When you used only one MCP1700 and did not behave well, were you only feeding ESP or had other things together?

I had one sensor, for detecting tilt/orientation. Plus an OLED display.

Ultra Small!!

How long does it work ??
How big is the battery?
Which regulator did you use?

Very beautiful!

- Wed Jun 12, 2019 11:08 am #82780 Regarding using a DC/DC (buck) converter, you could also consider configuring it to 2.8 V or any lower voltage that the ESP8266 still can run on.

- Wed Jun 12, 2019 5:07 pm #82782

Just to add to that experience. I was recently checking out the battery state on a door sensor which sends out internet notifications. That had been running fine for over 12 months on a 400mA LIPO using a LDO (xc6203). I was surprised to find the battery down to 2.8V, well into final exhaustion state, but it was still operational. With the drop out the ESP would have been on about 2.6V.

Amazing!!!
The regulator (xc6203) was giving way to how much? 3.3v?
With 2.6v at the entrance?
Tell us more how your application works !!
I am impressed with the weather!

I was just using a regular xc6203 3.3V regulator so when the battery got down to 2.8V the regulator was just passing the battery voltage minus about 150mV so the esp was running off about 2.65V.

One can get a 2.8V version of the xc6203 and that might be worth considering as the deep sleep current of the esp module decreases quite a bit on lower voltages.

The app hardware description is at https://github.com/roberttidey/SecuritySensor