ESP32 Arduino : Base Board, Battery and Battery Charger

Here is Ideas Around Base Board, Battery and Battery Charger for ESP32 Arduino for Prototyping. It is not easy to place ESP32 on breadboard and use all the pins. The form factor of WROOM ESP32 board we are using is pathetic.

Adafruit Huzzah32 is beautifully designed but not easily available in all the countries. Huzzah32 is not good investment unless the boards/wings are easily available. Products from Arduino, Adafruit costs higher but build quality is excellent.

Generic ESP32 is really powerful and far better than Arduino UNO. I performed huge websearch with for a base board for ESP32 so that it can sit nicely. Then I realized that whoever understood the problem developed own baseboard for ESP32 – it may be for commercial purpose or as personal project. The reason is nothing but these Made in China clones has no proper standard of design, placements of available GPIO pins. A wron one can invite short circuit.
The easiest way to use all pins of ESP31 is placing two breadboards side by side and putting the ESP32 over the power rails (the power rails will work like gap for IC on single breadboard). Build quality of China boards are just bad. I am betwen a medium term IoT project and it is appearing to me that all pins need checking by running LED blink like kids. Building a baseboard for it does not worth simply because things can change – using two breadboards is practical. There are breadboard for larger projects with more than 1000 tie points. I am not fan of thosse as placing multiple breadboards on well built wooden board is more portable an practical option. There are few proto boards for ESP32 which are not available in India without paying ransom like postage fees. Luc Volders shown using one breadboad for ESP32 “properly” :

Next is powering the unit for longer period. I tested Samsung battery pack with ESP32. It works nicely. Samsung battery packs can not hold charge for long period like 3-4 months. Battery does the job nicely and neat. But smartphone’s battery pack designed for faster charging. At end you will need 3.7V Polymer Lithium Ion battery, lipo charger, Perfboard, female header to get the thing done for a particular project. ESP32 supports deep sleep. Your code should be adjusted to suck minimum power.

Again, generic ESP32 actually good thing. At $8 buying price not much to expect from a physical product.