Beginner friendly solution for powering an ESP32 with LiPo

[pekalicious]

Hi,

I've been scouring the forums for quite some time now and from what I can tell (with my beginner knowledge) is that I need an LDO if I am to use a LiPO 3.7v battery. Which is fine. The problem is, I'm not sure which one. My only requirement is that it should be breadboard friendly, but all the solutions I've found from forums so far seem to point to SMD chips or such. I couldn't find an LDO breakout board.

In case it helps, here is my setup and situation: right now it consists of an ESP32 WROOM Dev Board (soon to be replaced by a WROVER), a 2.8'' LCD Touch Screen, and an NFC Module. I will be using WiFi and Bluetooth Classic extensively when powered on.

I don't care how long battery lasts as I will be charging it every day. For this reason I bought a LiPO Charger which gives me exactly what I need: a slot to place a LiPo battery, a USB interface to charge the battery, and a load line that connects the whole thing to my setup. This way I can have the battery constantly connected and charge it without removing it.

Of course, being a LiPo, it's 3.7v, so I need to regulate it. I do not want to give up the charger, so I'm looking for a (breadboard friendly) solution that will work with it.

But here is where I get a little bit more confused. According to the specs on Mouser, the WROVER's operational voltage is 5 V while the WROOM is 3.3 V, and 5 V. Indeed, according to this pinout diagram, there's a 5 V pin at the very bottom on the left. Is that just output? According to the datasheets of both boards, they support powering via either USB, 3V3, or 5V pins.

I happen to also have an Adafruit Power Booster which also has a really convenient setup, and outputs 5 V from a 3.7 V LiPO battery. However, everywhere I read about powering ESP32's, people say that providing it with 5 V will fry it. So I'm a little bit confused on what to do.

So what would be the best course of action for me? Using the charger with an LDO? If so, which one would you recommend for a beginner (size does not matter)? Using the power booster and hooking it up to the 5V pins? If it matters, I will be moving to a WROVER, so the solution should work on that.

Thank you.

[ESP_Sprite]

I'd just use the Power Booster board to feed in 5V to your devboard. The 3.3V/5V thing works as such: the ESP32 itself can only work on 3.3V and will indeed malfunction when fed 5V. The same goes for a module like the ESP-WROOM-32. Your development board, however, is intended to work from 5V USB power, and as such has a circuit on-board that can generate 3.3V from 5V. As long as you feed your 5V into the pins intended to receive 5V, you should be fine.

[pekalicious]

Got it. Makes sense.
Hooked up the power booster to the 5V line and it worked like a charm.
Thank you so much.