3. Board Selection¶
During the weekly assignment for Week 8. Electronics Design, I selected Seeed Xiao ESP32C3 as my microcontroller. As I further proceeded to the following few weeks, however, I have faced a series of errors in compiling and uploading with Arduino IDE, as described in my individual assignment pages for Week 9. Output Devices and Week 11. Input Devices. That made me feel that I should work on the alternative: Raspberry Pi Pico W.
Both controller boards have had Bluetooth/Wifi communication devices embedded. My evaluation criteria for board selection is therefore (i) Operating voltage to make the buzzer as loud as possible; and (ii) Power consumption to save the battery as long as possible.
Seeed Xiao ESP32C3 Pinout Diagram
Raspberry Pi Pico W Pinout Diagram
| Xiao ESP32C3 | Raspberry Pi Pico W | |
|---|---|---|
| Operating Range | 3.3V/200mA | 5V/18.06mA |
| Power Consumption during BLE Usage | < 10mA | 301mA |
| Power Consumption during Deep Sleep | 44uA | 1.3mA |
| Note: I collected these data from different sources and the numbers must have some inconsistencies. |
It looks like it’s up to which I would like to place a higher priority, high voltage (volume of the buzzer) or power consumption. Currently my priority is placed on the volume of the buzzer, I feel I should start with Pico W.
Note: I wrote this sub-section after I wrote 5. Buzzer. Although I currently only post the buzzer test result using Arduino UNO board, I would like to make sure that I would do the similar test with Pico W board later and post the result.