How to power nodeMCU 8266?

Hello, we are working on a threshold-based fall monitoring system. our main board is nodeMCU 8266 and our accelerometer/gyroscope is mpu6050. we are planning to use a lithium battery to power the 8266 board, and it will be put in 186050 battery shield board. However, an 8266 interfaced with the mpu6050 only handles 3.3V input. Should we consider other power supply to power the board?

General Question

Added 1 week, 5 days ago.

JamesLem29

4 Answers

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. We have consulted the CAD team and said that: Depending on the 18650 shield board you use you may need to consider a voltage regulator. Some battery shields already include 3.3v and 5v regulated outputs. If this is the case then you should be able to power both boards from the battery shield with no issue.

You should pay attention to the kind of breakout board you are using for the MPU6050 as some of them are 3.3v exclusively. If it supports 5v you can also supply 3.3v without a problem as these boards include a voltage regulator and the MPU6050 IC itself is 3.3v.

If your MPU6050 supports 5v and you still decide to use 5v (not recommended) instead of 3.3v you should pay attention to the I2C level as some boards level the I2C bus with the supply voltage so you may need an I2C bus level shifter to interface properly with the nodeMCU. It never hurts to use a voltage meter to check this when unsure.

The 18650 is a good idea overall as your boards consume from ~150mA to ~200mA worst case scenario which gives you around 15hrs full throttle with a 2000mAh battery

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

Thanks,

This response has been marked as correct.

Answered 1 week, 5 days ago.