Hello all!
I want to start off by saying I am brand new to Halow and have limited project experience with embedded projects in general. I am working with a family member to add Halow connectivity to his farm for things like water control and sensing. I have been using the Seeed Studio XIAO esp32 Halow module to start the learning process and have noticed how many of the GPIO pins are used to communicate with the Halow module. I seem to be unable to both read sensors and control relays with the limited pins available.
I also have the Heltec HT-HC33 board, but I wanted to touch base with you guys to see if I should use that (or even something else) for my use case. I am also open to water moisture sensor/solenoid valve suggestions. Thank you for your time!
You are correct on the Xiao ESP32-S3 + HaLow Module for Xiao. It doesn’t leave you with much else to work with.
You have a number of options:
- Use a different board with the HaLow Module for Xiao istead of the Xiao series. Any ESP32-S3, -C6 or -C3 based board with SPI pins and a GPIO available for RESET will generally work. For bench testing you can just wire the pins on a breadboard. For field use, you might want to design a very simple but custom PCB.
- For more GPIOs use an additional MCU for connecting sensors that talks to the Xiao over UART having the Xiao act as the “master” MCU or vice versa.
- The Heltec might be a good alternative but if you’re using the camera, HaLow and an SD card a lot of the pins broken out to the pin header may already be in use. You would want to double-check their docs.
