ESP32 Module Running Rather Hot

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xbr
 
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ESP32 Module Running Rather Hot

Post by xbr »

I'm running a 110 individually-addressable 5V LED strip using the ESP32 board in question. But even when the LEDs are off (ie when no one is using it and it's just "waiting" to receive an ON command) it runs rather hot. It doesn't always run hot, which is strange; it often does, but I can't link this behaviour to any one thing.

Also, this one board sometimes has connectivity issues, which I'm guessing have something to do with this.

Is this in any way normal? It seems to me to be a faulty board, honestly. But as it's a real pain to swap it out I'm trying to find another possible solution.

I'm only running WiFi in the code (so I'm not sure if the BT is also constantly on... still trying to figure that out) and I'm trying to figure out how I can get it to "sleep" when not in use to save energy and and its life.

As I mentioned, it will get hot even when it's not driving a single LED, so the issue has to be the board itself. There are no shorts in my connections. I've connected the LED strip to 5V and GND on the board and am using the IO22 pin out to drive the animations on the strip.

(I'm not sure if this is the most appropriate category to post this question but it seemed to contain most threads that had to do with the ESP32.)

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brubell
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Re: ESP32 Module Running Rather Hot

Post by brubell »

I've moved the post.

As I mentioned, it will get hot even when it's not driving a single LED, so the issue has to be the board itself. There are no shorts in my connections. I've connected the LED strip to 5V and GND on the board
How are you powering the LEDs? How are you powering the ESP32? You'll want a 5V power supply. The ESP32 is powered by USB (5V) but uses 3.3v on its pins. You'd want to consider powering the LED strip separately from the ESP32.

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neo ... -neopixels

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