What is it?

ePulse, the low power ESP32 development board, is optimized for applications where a low sleep current and a wide range of input voltage are required. The VIN pin accepts voltages between 3V3 and 12V. When the ePulse board is in deep sleep it only consumes between 25uA (at 3V3) and 35uA (at 12V). Most ESP32 and ESP8266 board consume around 4-5x more.

This low sleep consumption is perfect for applications where the device sleeps most of the time and only wakes up from time to time to complete a task. For instance, a WiFi remote control for home automation can sleep until the user presses one of the buttons. The device wakes up, connects to WiFi, sends the command over MQTT and goes back to sleep until the next time a button is pressed.

We also made sure that the integrated serial-2-usb chip is only consuming power when the device is powered through the USB port. Please note that to reduce standby power consumption this module comes without any status LEDs.

Ideal Form Factor for Prototyping

The size of the ePulse dev board is perfect to fit into a breadboard and leave one row of pins free for prototyping your circuit. We also took care that the dev board’s PCB doesn’t block the antenna of the ESP32 module. This leads to better signal strength for transmission and reception.

Easy Programming

The onboard UART CP2014 by Silicon Labs lets you easily program the ESP32 from your Windows, Mac or Linux computer. In our tests, we could use the highest transmission rates of 921600 bauds to re-program the chip within seconds. Regular ESP32 upload programs can automatically set the module into flashing mode.

Powerful ESP32 Module

This board takes advantage of the ESP32-WROVER-B module which breaks out many of the ESP32’s pins. It also comes with 8MB PSRAM which enables you to implement memory-hungry applications like embedded machine learning or using a graphics driver with a frame buffer. Please note that current software stacks might limit the PSRAM usage to 4MB. The WROVER-B module has passed several certification programs like FCC and CE.

The ePulse development board gives you access to no less than 30 GPIO pins.

Why did you make it?

This module has been designed with the needs of makers in mind. We love to build a prototype first on a breadboard before creating a PCB for it. And we love to share our creations with the community. Fritzing is a beautiful app to document breadboard circuits and we want to support you in doing so. That’s why we created a Fritzing part file for the ePulse module.

What makes it special?

The low power consumption of 25uA in deep sleep makes this the perfect board for your battery driven projects. Its form factor makes it easy to use it on a bread board.