ESP32-DevKit-Lipo-EA wiht ESPEasy?

[jkgrafoli]

I am looking for an ESP32-Board with an external WIFI antenna and which can be used with a 18650-lion-battery as powersupply. In best case the charging of the 18650-lion-battery should be done via a solar panel.
Important is also a good deep sleep support. The board should be up for 1 minute to measure the waterlevel with an VL53L1X, send the data via MQTT to my smartehome solution and go to deep sleept for 60 minutes.
I did this already with another ESP-Board but only with a powersupply via USB.

Can i run your ESP32-DevKit-Lipo-EA with ESPEasy and the deep sleep and powersupply via the battery is suportet?
Can the charging of the battery be done via a solar panel and deep sleep is still working?

[LubOlimex]

Overall I think the ESP32 board would work for you.

Can't say about the ESPEasy software, we haven't used it. You have to ask them if they have support for ESP32 modules, or even if somebody used Olimex products with it. I see that some people used that software with few of our other ESP32 boards (namely ESP32-EVB and ESP32-POE).

ESP32-DevKit-Lipo-EA works fine in deep sleep when powered from battery. It has the option to track the battery voltage (so if it goes too low you can issue deep sleep or turn off the module by software means or send some signal). It also has option to enable external power detection (so you can leave deep sleep once main supply gets restored).

As long as you have power converter to 5V DC, you can power from the solar panel. The battery gets automatically recharged when external power supply (or USB) is present.

[jkgrafoli]

I bought an ESP32-DevKit-Lipo-EA and installed ESPEasy with ESP_Easy_mega_20240414_collection_B_ESP32_4M316k and it is running fine incl. deep sleep.

To monitor the external-power supply and battery level i have solderd both SMD-pads.
The values what i get using ADC to read the vales are unexpected when using battery:

When i use power via USB only i get 0 for GPIO-35 and >4000 for GPIO-39, that's like expected.

When i provide power only via the battery i get 0 for GPIO-35 and ~320 for GPIO-39.
When i provide power via USB and battery i get 0 for GPIO-35 and ~3620 for GPIO-39.
The voltage of the 18650 LION is 3.75v (measured via Digital Multimeter)

how can i verify whether the soldering was sucessful e.g. with a multimeter.
What values i could expect for GPIO 35+39 like in the above case?

[LubOlimex]

To enable both battery functions - external power sense and battery voltage measurement - you need to close (solder the pads together) three jumpers.

BAT_PWR_E and BAT_SENS_E1 are related to battery measurement and pins responsible for battery measurement is GPI35.

PWR_SENS_E1 is responsible for the external power sense and connected to GPI39.

To check if the soldering is proper - put the multimeter in short circuit detection mode and put one probe on one pad of tested jumper and the other probe on the other pad of the same jumper (those pads were separated before you soldered them together). If there is a beep this means there is connection and soldering was good.

It is recommended to keep an eye on the schematic.

Also check our Arduino IDE demo that might give you idea what can be wrong in the software, it works for your board too:


https://github.com/OLIMEX/ESP32-POE/blob/master/SOFTWARE/ARDUINO/ESP32_PoE_PowerReading/ESP32_PoE_PowerReading.ino

[jkgrafoli]

Thanks for your input.
I missed the BAT_PWR_E to solder, now it's done and i get the values.

for the external power (i assume it is either USB or another external 5V) the measured value is ~68% of the real power provied considering the resistores (220 kohm and 470 kohm).

Based on the BL4054B chip the board provides over-valtage-protection.
I am not sure whether under-valtuage protektion is also implemented.

Checking the schematic i am wondering why you need BAT_SENS_E1? With BAT_PWR_E1 you enable the battery measurement and it can be only linked to GPIO35 via BAT_SENS_E1. Could be also done without this pad.

[LubOlimex]

Well, the resistor divider would influence GPI35 if you decide to use it for other purposes. Hence why there are two jumpers instead of one.

You use GPI39 to detect whether external power is present or missing.

You use GPI35 to measure battery (both resistors of the divider are 470k).