Mesh Power Management (low power mode)

[orlov127]

Good day! Are there any plans to support any type of power saving modes within ESP-MDF? I've been playing around with it for a little bit now on the ESP-EYE and its very cool stuff. I'm trying to create a mesh network that can capture images when triggered with a PIR sensor and move the image through the mesh to a central server. I ideally want the mesh nodes to be battery powered by batteries so they can be placed anywhere. The reason I'm using MDF instead of ESP-NOW is that I need the throughput to transmit the image through the mesh in a reasonable amount of time.

I'm thinking of syncing all nodes and simultaneously entering sleep mode for a specified amount of time while starting a wakeup timer. When this timer reaches a certain threshold, all the nodes will resync, transmit any data if applicable, and go back to sleep.

I think a feature like this could add a ton of value to my project and some other IoT projects.

[ESP_LBB]

Hi orlov127,

Yes we are implementing light sleep+DFS+modem sleep, we are still testing its stability and functions, will release once it passes all the test.

But how long you wish the device can work with which kind of battery(2000 mAh ?) ?

[orlov127]

Do you think 1 month is unreasonable with a 18650 battery (2500mAh)? We don't need to check very often if there is data to be transmitted (about every 15 minutes). Also, is there a timeline on when we can expect the power saving to be released?

I'm willing to add more batteries to my project if I need to...I'd rather have some power saving mode over none.

[ESP_LBB]

Hi orlov127,

We estimate that 2500mAh can't support for 1 month with ESP-MESH function enabled. We would suggest that you can build the mesh network with some devices that has permanent power supply, these devices can be used to expande the network and allow them to forward the data from your camera devices. Then in this way the camera can be put in deep sleep mode when idle, and use ESP-NOW to send the data to the mesh device and forward to your server. With this solution the 2500mAh should sevive after 1 month.

[thoraz]

Hi orlov127,

Yes we are implementing light sleep+DFS+modem sleep, we are still testing its stability and functions, will release once it passes all the test.

But how long you wish the device can work with which kind of battery(2000 mAh ?) ?

Did you implement this feature in the end? I've started a project to develop a mesh connected to WiFi and I need a power-save mode like enter in deep sleep. I read about the esp_mesh_enable_ps function but I haven't found any documentation about it.

[ThunderBark]

Hi orlov127,

Yes we are implementing light sleep+DFS+modem sleep, we are still testing its stability and functions, will release once it passes all the test.

But how long you wish the device can work with which kind of battery(2000 mAh ?) ?

Did you implement this feature in the end? I've started a project to develop a mesh connected to WiFi and I need a power-save mode like enter in deep sleep. I read about the esp_mesh_enable_ps function but I haven't found any documentation about it.

There is still no documentation about ESP-WIFI-MESH power saving and duty cycles. I don't understand how we supposed to know how to use this features.