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The Internet of Things is eating everything alive, and the world wants to know: how do you make a small, battery-powered, WiFi-enabled microcontroller device? This is a surprisingly difficult problem. WiFi is not optimized for low-power operations. It’s power-hungry, and there’s a lot of overhead. That said, there are microcontrollers out there with WiFi capability, but how do they hold up to running off of a battery for days, or weeks? That’s what [TvE] is exploring in a fantastic multi-part series of posts delving into low-power WiFi microcontrollers.
The idea for these experiments is set up in the first post in the series. Basically, the goal is to measure how long the ESP8266 and ESP32 will run on a battery, using various sleep modes. Both the ESP8266 and ESP32 have deep-sleep modes, a ‘sleep’ mode where the state is preserved, a ‘CPU only’ mode that turns the RF off, and various measures for sending and receiving a packet.
The takeaway from these experiments is that a battery-powered ESP8266 can’t be used for more than a week without a seriously beefy battery or a solar panel.
Power consumption and battery life remain limitations for IoT applications. How can they be overcome?
(Score: 4, Informative) by isj on Monday December 17 2018, @10:13PM
"sleepy" Zigbee sensors can be very energy-efficient. One brand we work with (Nyce ( http://nycesensors.com/ [nycesensors.com] )) has a door sensor running on a CR2032 that lasts for about 4.5 years.
I saw Eurpy ( https://www.eupry.com/products/ [eupry.com] ) giving a talk a few years back about how they optimized the wifi usage in their temperature sensors. It seems they can run 2 years on two AA batteries.