LILYGO T-Energy-S3 is an ESP32-S3 WiFi and Bluetooth IoT board with an 18650 battery holder, a USB-C port for charging and programming, and plenty of I/Os thanks to two 20-pin GPIO headers and a Qwiic connector.
We’ve already covered a large number of ESP32-S3 boards and products, including some designs for battery operation such as the Tokay Lite AI camera board, LILYGO’s T7-S3 board, and Smart Bee Designs’ Bee S3 board among others. But that usually means providing a 2-pin connector and charging circuitry to connect a LiPo battery, but the T-Energy-S3 ESP32-S3 board works directly with an off-the-shelf 18650 rechargeable Lithium battery.
T-Energy-S3 specifications:
- Wireless Module – ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8
- Espressif Systems ESP32-S3R8 – Dual-core Tensilica LX7 @ up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration, 512KB RAM, 8MB PSRAM
- Storage – 16 MB flash
- Wireless – 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 and Bluetooth
- PCB antenna
- USB – 1x USB Type-C for power, charging, and programming
- Expansion
- 2x 20-pin headers with up to 32x GPIOs, SPI, 2x UART, 13x ADC, touch interface, Reset, 5V, 3V, GND
- 4-pin Qwiic connector for 3V UART
- Misc
- Reset and Boot buttons
- On/Off switch
- Power Supply
- 5V/500mA via USB-C port
- 18650 battery holder with ADC pin (IO03) for battery level
- HX6610S charging chip with power/battery reverse polarity protection using IP3005A
- Dimensions – 91.5 x 32 x 20 mm
LILYGO provides documentation for Arduino and PlatformIO including basic sketches for deep sleep and WiFi station mode, plus a test program for WiFi and GPIOs, as well as datasheets and a PDF schematic on GitHub. That means that as usual with LILYGO hardware you need to bring your own firmware, with the only exception being their Meshtastic-compatible boards and devices for messaging and GPS sharing.
The T-Energy-S3 is available now on Aliexpress for $16.98 including shipping, and should soon be offered on LILYGO’s Amazon store.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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I used the ESP32-C3 version of this… the LilyGo TTGO T-OI PLUS for a big project (~20 units) and it was unfortunately a bit of a disaster. There are frequent/intermittent issues with the power circuit. I haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly the issue, but on some boards there is a voltage drop between battery and the LDO – so the batteries are bled dry.
I think it’s the switch over from V_USB and V_BATT but the provided schematics make it very difficult to pinpoint the issue as it’s unclear where the components are located on the board
I wouldn’t really trust this for anything critical..
That all said, the switch to 18650 is good. Much more common than 16340
I was going to comment that I hope there’s rather more to the BMC than simply “reverse polarity protection” for a Li-Ion battery…
Does this board provide any mechanism for the esp to sense the battery soc or voltage?
As I understand it, the ADC pin is used to measure the battery level.
Do you think we can use it always plugged via USB-C and battery in it, to have a backup in case the usb-c power supply fails?
I’m not sure. I’ve tested systems with a battery and connected to USB in the past and sometimes it does not work as a UPS. The board will sometimes reboot upon a power failure. If a potential reboot is OK, then I think it should work.