Hi, i need to to power un an Animca NodeMCU v2 trough battery and i can't figure out the best solution (which type of battery (1.5*3-4, 4.5, 6), which power pin to use (3.3, 5) and which stepdown). Several people asked similar questions for the esp/amica board but all the one i found were for low consumption project.
In my situation whenever the board is on it 's almost costantly sending data (it's something similar to a controller) so the power requirement is to be able to last a decent amount of time at high consumption (if possible 8-12h, if not a few hours should be fine i guess...). There are no requirements in terms of space or weight and as a parameter to optimize i'd say price since i need to build several of those...
I was also curious if there is any difference in efficency if i power it up with the 5v or the 3.3v since no one ever talked about it....
There are lots of possibilities for this. What else is connected to it. The Arduino can pull about 80mA when transmitting. Round that up to 100mA (0.1A), If you use a buck or SEPIC converter, it should be better then 90% on the efficiency side but you should check to be sure of that in your calculations. Add all the currents up, include the loss for the converter then multiply that times the battery life you want or divide the capacity of some convenient battery you have access. Please not you do not get all of the available energy from a battery, FLA typically are good to about 50%. I would use the 5V input if possible you get a bit more noise filtering on the power side. As far as the 5V vs the 3.3V you may get a bit more life with 3.3V as there is some loss in the onboard regulator. But what do you lose in your conversion to 3.3V?