ESP32-S3 PowerFeather is a low-power, solar-capable, Li-Ion/LiPo-powered IoT development board in a Feather-compatible format. It is perfect for building portable/mobile devices requiring battery power, or devices deployed in remote areas relying on a combination of battery power and off-grid power sources such as solar panels.
Here are a few reasons why you should use ESP32-S3 PowerFeather for your next project:
Powerful Brains & Connectivity: The board features an Espressif ESP32-S3 module at its core. This module has a speedy dual core processor, tons of flash and RAM, a rich set of peripherals and built-in 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi + Bluetooth LE.
Low Power: The board’s circuitry has been thoughtfully designed and components carefully chosen to minimize quiescent current. As a result, current consumption when the ESP32-S3 is in deep-sleep can be as low as or under 20 µA.
Flexible Power Management & Monitoring: The board has a firmware-controllable charger IC, a battery fuel gauge and other hardware/circuitry to give users utmost flexibility in power management and monitoring. The application firmware can enable or disable charging on-demand, set maximum battery charging current, get an estimate of the battery’s charge and health, turn off a 3.3 V output rail, and much more!
Direct Solar Connection: The board accepts an external DC source up to 18 V, which can either be your typical wall wart adapter or a solar panel. If using a solar panel, the maximum power point (MPP) voltage can be set to extract power at near-MPPT effectiveness.
Extensive Hardware & Software Support: There is an accompanying Arduino and ESP-IDF SDK to give users easy access to the board’s power management and monitoring features. On the hardware side, the board is compatible with hundreds of existing FeatherWing and STEMMA QT modules for faster prototyping.
Features and Specifications
Physical
Board Dimensions: 65 mm L x 23 mm W x 7 mm H
Feather-compatible format, FeatherWing support
Board Features
USB-C connector
Two 2.5 mm mounting holes
Two 1x16 2.54 mm header pin holes
Thermistor pin hole
2-pin JST PH Li-ion/LiPo battery connector
4-pin JST SH STEMMA QT connector
Green user LED
Red charger status LED
User button
Reset button
On-board PCB antenna
Capabilities
Compute Resources
240 Mhz Dual-Core Xtensa LX7 Processor
RISC-V / FSM Ultra Low Power Coprocessor
8 MB Quad-SPI Flash
2 MB Quad-SPI PSRAM
512 KB SRAM
16 KB RTC SRAM
Power Management & Monitoring
Supply Monitoring
Current measurement
Voltage measurement
Good supply detection
Supply Management
Set maintained supply voltage (can be used to set MPP voltage)
Battery Monitoring
Voltage measurement
Temperature measurement
Current measurement (charge/discharge)
Charge estimation
Health & cycle count estimation
Time-to-empty and time-to-full estimation
Low charge, high/low voltage alarm
Battery Management
Enable/disable charging
Set max charging current
Others
3V3 enable/disable
VSQT enable/disable
FeatherWing enable/disable via EN pin
Power States
Ship mode
Shutdown mode
Power cycle
Battery Protections
Undervoltage Detect @2.2 V, Release @2.4 V
Overvoltage Detect @4.37 V, Release @4.28 V
Discharge overcurrent @1.5 A
Trickle charging safety timer @1 hr
Temperature-based charging current reduction based on JEITA, cutoff at 0 °C and 60 °C.
Interfaces
Radio
2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n on PCB antenna
Bluetooth 5 LE + Mesh on PCB antenna
Connectors
USB 1.1 Full-Speed OTG on USB-C connector
I2C on STEMMA QT connector
Pin Holes
23 I/O on the two 1x16 2.54 mm pitch header pin holes
4.2 V max, 2 A max on BATP and BATN JST PH Li-ion/LiPo battery connector
Output
3.3 V, 1 A max shared between board, 3V3 header pin and VSQT STEMMA QT connector
3.3 V - 4.2 V, 3 A max shared between board and VBAT header pin
5 V - 18 V, 2 A max shared between board and VS header pin
Current Consumption
Deep-Sleep, Fuel Gauge Enabled (Initial)
26 μA
Deep-Sleep, Fuel Gauge Enabled (Settled)
18.5 μA
Deep-Sleep, Fuel Gauge Disabled
18 μA
Ship Mode, Fuel Gauge Disabled
1.5 μA
Shutdown Mode, Fuel Gauge Disabled
1.4 μA
Package List
(1) ESP32-S3 PowerFeather
(2) 16-pin 2.54 mm pitch male headers
(2) 16-pin 2.54 mm pitch female stacking headers
Optional Items
Semitec 103AT-4 Thermistor: The specific thermistor to use if you plan to measure the battery temperature or make use of the temperature-based charging current reduction/cutoff.