Very nice, I have some questions tho - did esp got better than it used to be? I mean - all esp devices i've used had MTBF between 1-2 weeks. And what about zigbee 3.0 - how does it compare to this (from all points of view)?
That definitely doesn't line up with what I've seen, failurewise. One of my ESP-32s has been running pretty much continuously for 3 years without any trouble. And in the past I've had no trouble running multiple for months at a time. The only failures I've had, across maybe 4 different manufacturers, happened when I did something dumb and unintentionally fried a board.
The only flaky ESP hardware I know of is the ESP-01, which was one of the first boards carrying the ESP8266. It's still available for about $1.50 shipped from AliExpress.
They're hard to program because each one seems to have a different opinion whether this or that GPIO needs to be grounded to start programming mode.
They also can be poorly manufactured. Either the antenna is so bad it works on your desk but not in the next room, or it's just DOA. Fortunately, these are neonatal problems; if it works for 5 minutes, it'll work forever. And when you can get 10 for $15 and toss the three that don't work, it's still a great deal.
Are you maybe overvolting your ESPs? I've had an ESP8266 outdoors (shielded from rain, poorly) for 4 years with no apparent issue.
Running one WLED device is much simpler than Zigbee. If you run more than one, they use UDP to sync over your Wi-Fi. If you have decent Wi-Fi, this will be much easier to set up than Zigbee; if we are talking a more industrial installation, it may not be a good fit.
I dunno if it was overvolted, all were done by someone else.
And just realized it was eps8266, not esp32. Also timeline-wise it was about 5 years ago.
ad zigbee - I already have some devices and I strictly wanted to have a complete different network for these. wifi is not an option (for me, at this moment). Just looked up their website, they make an esp32-c6 (risc-v core, wifi+bt+zb), and esp32-h2 (the same but has no wifi).
I think there’s some common-mode failure source in your particular application.
I’ve had several dozen of them running some in vehicles, outside lightly shielded, in a basement, and on my desk. Some are running right off an 18650 with no boost/buck converter. No failures in several years , across low-end cheapest 8266 breakouts and 32s.
