Electronic – arduino – Problem powering ESP8266 with two 1.5V AA cells

arduinobatteriesesp8266power supply

I was testing the deep sleep mode featured in the ESP8266.

I have a simple USB battery power supply associated with a 3.3V power regulator (https://www.adafruit.com/product/2165).

Everything is fine, I have a low current in the deep sleep mode.

Then I tried to power the thing with two 1.5V AA cells and eveything got messed up: my ESP keep restarting (led blinking). I both tried the ESP-01 and Huzzah from Adafruit.

I noticed two things:

(1) Input voltage drops at 2.8V when ESP is on.

(2) Input current raises over 130mA (compared to 70mA with the USB battery).

My conclusion would be that the voltage being too low, the chip trie desperately to power up at full throttle, .. and fails then reboots.

Am I right?

Edit: ESP8266 seems to be able to work ender 3.3V : http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?p=23790#p23790

What is the solution?

Thanks to you.

Best Answer

Modules like the ESP8266 which have no on-board regulator but do need a regulated power supply. Indeed, a power supply voltage that is too low will cause the module to reset.

What I would do in your case is get a boost module like this one to convert the voltage from the batteries to 3.3 V. On the module there's a trimmer to set the output to 3.3 V, set this BEFORE connecting the ESP8266 because such an upconverter module can easily generate 12 V which would fry the ESP module !

Related Topic