ESP32-S3 PowerFeather V2 - Low-Power Solar ESP32 Board with LiFePO4/LFP, Li-ion, and LiPo Support

ESP32-S3 PowerFeather V2 is a low-power, solar-capable, LiFePO4/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 V2 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. Current consumption when the ESP32-S3 is in deep-sleep can be as low as 20 µA, and as low as 1 µA in ship mode and shutdown mode.
• LiFePO4/LFP, Li-ion and LiPo Support: V2 adds support for LiFePO4/LFP batteries alongside Li-ion and LiPo. The Analog Devices MAX17260 fuel gauge provides accurate state-of-charge estimation across all three chemistries, and the TPS631013 buck-boost regulator keeps the 3.3 V rail stable across the full LiFePO4 voltage range.
• 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, health, cycle count, time-to-empty and time-to-full, 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, including chemistry-aware configuration for LiFePO4/LFP, Li-ion and LiPo. 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 battery connector (Li-ion/LiPo/LiFePO4)
  • 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
    • Overcurrent protection @3 A
    • Trickle charging safety timer @1 hr
    • Temperature-based charging current reduction based on JEITA, cutoff at 0 °C and 50 °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
    • All digital input and output capable
    • All UART, I2C, SPI, I2S, SDIO, PWM, CAN, RMT, Camera, LCD capable
    • 6 analog input capable, 5 touch input capable
    • 12 RTC capable (deep sleep pin hold, wake-up source)
  • Semitec 103AT input on thermistor pin hole

Power

Input

• 5 V, 2 A max on VUSB USB-C connector
• 5 V – 18 V, 2 A max on VDC header pin
• 4.2 V max (Li-ion/LiPo) / 3.6 V max (LiFePO4), 2 A max on BATP and BATN JST PH battery connector

Output

• 3.3 V, 1 A max shared between board, 3V3 header pin and VSQT STEMMA QT connector
• Battery output on VBAT (tracks battery voltage; up to 4.2 V for Li-ion/LiPo or 3.6 V for LiFePO4), 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

Package List

• (1) ESP32-S3 PowerFeather V2
• (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.

Other Products

• PowerFeather ProtoWing
• PowerFeather Solar Panel

Useful Links

• See the Documentation for more hardware details and usage guides.
• Visit the Community Forum for announcements, conversations, help/support requests and showcases.