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Power Management

A project log for ESP8266 Plant Watering

Prevents plants death by controling water levels.

mcenderdragonMCenderdragon 02/12/2019 at 14:180 Comments

I have come to the point where the system failes due to power loss. THis happens approxiemntly once a week. It is also winter so it is also colder in the room decresing the battery output a little.

That is why I hocked a Ampmeter between the battery and the ESP to test how much it realy needs. 6.4mA. According to alot of papers and websites deep sleep shoud need ~20µA so 0.02 mA. WHile testing it jumped around a little, so it neeeds about 20mA +/- 6mA for basic operation (reading the sensors) and 150mA when WIFI is active and its sending something. since sensor reading and wifi is only active of some seconds, the "off" power draw is may to high.

I will dig into this, I am currently using a USB power bank as an energy source so maybe th 5V to 3.3V converter uses the 6mA. Also I have to unwire everything to check if any external circuit is causing this.

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