We succeeded in getting the GMU board to drive a motor and to control a servo. However, when it came to testing its Wi-Fi capabilities, we ran into a problem.

After turning on the onboard ESP32's Wi-Fi, an error message was displayed as below

After some research, we determined that the error was caused by insufficient power supply. Since ESP32's Wi-Fi requires a large current to operate, around 500mA (ESP32 datasheet), and that the onboard regulator only supplies 200mA (LTC3531-3.3 datasheet), the board setup cannot support ESP32's Wi-Fi operation.

Some possible workarounds are

  • solder additional capacitors between VCC and GND Github
  • add a standalone regulator that supplies power to the ESP32
  • use the onboard XBee chip for communication, instead of ESP32's Wi-Fi

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