MediaTek and RDA WiFi Microcontrollers
Unisoc’s RDA5981 and MediaTek’s MT7697 microcontrollers (as well as variants of these two) also incorporate a WiFi radio on the chip and target low-power embeded IoT applications.
Wifi
RTL8710 Deep-Sleep with Periodic Wake-up
Is the RTL8710 faster at waking up and connecting to a Wifi network than the Espressif microcontrollers?
Open Network The sketch used for this test is very simple: connect to the open Wifi network, connect to a local server using TCP and send a short message, then go back to sleep.
RTL8710 First Impressions
The RealTek RTL8710 is pitched directly at the esp8266 and it even comes in an RTL-00 module that has the same pinout as an esp-12f module. How does it fare at low-power Wifi?
Experimental set-up RTLDuino with an RTL-00 Module which houses the RTL8710AF ARM Cortex-M3 Microcontroller.
ESP8266 vs. ESP32 on Battery Power
Having examined the esp8266 and esp32 power consumption in detail it is time to compare the two.
ESP32 Pushing the Envelope
With a few more hacks the esp32 light-sleep power consumption can be pushed to the limit. This post explores the limit and calculates light-sleep mode run-times.
ESP32 Dynamic Frequency Scaling
Dynamic frequency scaling allows the esp32 to go into light-sleep mode when it is idle.
ESP32 Maintaining an Association
The esp32 can also maintain an association with an access point while going to sleep on its own when it is idle. Is this a good alternative to periodically waking up from deep-sleep?
Low-Power ESP32 Boards
Updated 2019-08-25 to include EzSBC’s ESP32-01 Breakout and Development Board
In order to test the low-power performance of the esp32 I had to acquire a few boards and I didn’t really like any of them.
ESP32 Deep-Sleep Connecting to MQTT
Periodically waking up from deep sleep and sending a short TCP message is interesting, but how does the esp32 perform in a real scenario where it communicates with an MQTT server?
ESP32 Deep-Sleep with Periodic Wake-up
The long probing for the access point can be optimized away. In addition, it’s not smart to use open access points, so it’s time to measure the cost of security!
Low-Power Wifi with the ESP32
The esp32 is the successor of the esp8266 by Espressif. It is much faster, has two cores, more memory, more I/O, more everything. Does it also have more low-power Wifi mojo?
ESP8266 Maintaining an Association
In automatic light-sleep mode the esp8266 goes to sleep when there is no activity. From there it can wake-up due to a timer or due to Wifi activity.
Low-Power Wifi using Power Save Mode
Instead of disconnecting from the AP before going to sleep and then reassociating it is also possible to maintain the association while going to sleep.
ESP8266 with Optimized Periodic Wake-up
This post dives into optimizing deep-sleep with periodic wakeup on the esp8266 and ends with some calculations about expected run-time on battery.
ESP8266 Deep-Sleep with Periodic Wake-up
The esp8266 can last for years on battery in deep-sleep mode, so that’s a good place to start. The question really is how often can it wake-up?
Running Wifi Microcontrollers on Battery
Operating Wifi at low power is difficult, Wifi is just way more complex and chatty than simple RF links. This project and blog post series explores what is available at the end of 2018.
