ESP8266 Community Forum

rudy wrote:

AdamMiltonBarker wrote:

rudy wrote:The problem is ....

Well thank you that was not hard was it

I went in early to work in order to work on my own project but instead I ended up spending that half hour on answering your issue. I would rather have got my own stuff done.

Yes that was a bit sarcastic of me sorry, I did thank you for the input though.

I am using 12F's in commercial products. Zero issues at 3.3v, but then again I am using the proper circuitry. You DO need good power. All of the ESP based devices are very sensitive to voltage. They don't work at all at 3.0v, so it would not come as a shock if you had problems at 3.24v. I have 3.29v-3.31v coming out of a very robust LDO. Keep in mind that many of the cheap LDO regulators have a very poor drop out voltage (some exceeding a volt). You need the proper input and output caps for your regulator. I am using a MIC5219-3.3v regulator with ceramic .1uf/1uf-16v caps on the input side, and a 220uf-4v low ESR tantalum cap on the output. I have decoupling (.1uf) at the VCC/GND at the ESP itself as well.

The 12F modules need at least 250mA of current capability to drive them correctly. So, don't think that a 100mA regulator is going to somehow work - it won't. You will get severe dropouts and the unit will stumble trying work.

I had used a very good Microchip regulator that was listed at 250mA continuous and the short circuit current limited at about half an amp. This was very marginal. I had to test out some different 500mA regulators and I looked at scope traces to see which had less drop during the higher current spikes. On the Expressif faq they state the peak digital current is 200mA and the peak analog current is 350mA. While the typical average peak current is less the power path should be designed for the short term worst case current with little drop of the 3.3 volt supply at the module.