ESP32 Forum

I realize that there are similar topics on the forum but not any real solutions that I've discovered - was really hoping the folks at espressif would chime in with guidance/direction/future capability...

My goal is straightfoward: power on, grab some data, log to cloud, go to sleep, repeat. Powered by battery that lasts awhile.

Ideally I would like to be able to interact with the esp when desired through ble or network but I am focusing on step 1 first.

Right now I'm running the loop then going into deep sleep. The loop is taking 4-6 seconds (wifi connection time seems to vary a bit) with 99% of it consumed with startup and wifi connection. The wifi code is pretty generic so I don't think it is causing the issue

Due to this extended time and the power consumption of the chip, my battery is not lasting very long. I realize that I could probably play with my AP, lower chip speed, etc and save a bit but if I can't take a significant chunk of time out of the wifi connect process, a battery powered iot device using the esp32 is going to be very difficult. Are there any areas I can focus on where I might be able to connect and get ip much faster? Is there anything in near term development that addresses this?

Are you using static IP? Are you saving AP's BSSID and channel?

I cannot use static IP. I am saving BSSID but haven't tried the channel. Thought I would try that tomorrow but reading other responses on the impact of (or lack of) saving the channel I wasn't holding out much for significant impact.

Why no static IP? Too difficult for customers? How about dns caching? UDP?

this is a common problem with ESP-IDF. I have opened an issue here:
https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/issues/799

The problem is that the DHCP ip info is not saved in NVS, and has to be re-retrieved after reset.

yep, can't expect customers to mess with their wifi. I am far from a network expert but don't understand how dns caching or udp would effect this issue...

hassan789, read your posts and realize that I am not the only one being impacted.

that's why I was hoping that one of the espressif folks would provide some input on any other methods or potential modifications

i think modem sleep is coming soon ... which might be a solution for what you are trying to do ...

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4204&p=18990&hilit= ... eep#p18990

Wifi is not a technology designed to run on batteries because of its energy consumption, I guess you know that, although optimizing will have problems.

To operate with batteries without solar charger: BLE, LPWAN... etc.

Greetings,