Hi, by now I've searched through several forums on whether it is possible to reduce the power consumption of the ESP32 while it is connected to WiFi but it seems like only very few people need that.
Why do I want that, you might ask? I'm trying to make my LED strips smart by creating my own controller (and app) for it so I can control it from my phone. The ESP32 always gets so hot that I don't want to touch it anymore (or close to that) after 15-30 minutes, no matter whether it currently produces any PWM for the strips (yup, they're not addressable) or not, no matter whether it currently receives anything via WiFi or not.
I don't want to use Bluetooth since it's a hassle to connect to the ESP every time. Plus, I consider implementing Alexa compatibility into it. I'm thinking about switching to the ESP8266 but the 32 was the first of them I had at hand so I used it until now.
I use the Arduino IDE so something that works with it would be greatly appreciated. I have no experience in ESP-IDF but as long as I don't need to use it for coding or whatever I'll probably be fine with using it to change some ESP settings.
One idea I had is to decrease the WiFi connection speed but I don't even know if that's possible. I don't need the ESP to use μA but lowering it from ~150mA to 10-20 would be nice.
Another (somewhat related) question: Is it possible to decrease the clock speed to create some less heat? I'd also like to switch off the second core because I just don't need it. Is that possible to do on a device-basis or using the Arduino IDE or do I need ESP-IDF?
UPDATE: If you have a similar problem, try the ESP32 for Arduino IDE version from the board manager. I was using an older git version (although I don't know why this had such a great impact).