WeMos D1 Mini - burned while normal use

[alabama]

Today I had run my test of the soil moisture project
http://www.letscontrolit.com/forum/view ... 005#p33005
Everything works fine for more than 12 hours. Then I changed its place to the plant that it should control and change the USB-device. It runs fine for about one hour. Then it stops working. Nothing seems to help, the blue LED don't lighten. Connect grn with GPIO0 to flash not, connect TX and RX for factory reset not.

But then I feel that the WeMos - exactly the voltage control (what's its english name?) beside the USB plug was very hot. And really: Disconnect the USB, connect the 3.3 V pin and ground with a 3.3 V-battery, and the WeMos works fine.

Is the voltage control so sensible? Perhapa my soil noisture sensor needs to much power? My plan is to use in summertime a small photovoltaik and a battery, so I tought the WeMos is the better device than the NodeMCU? We will se, now WeMos number 2 is running. If it also crashes I get the answer

Anyway, perhaps someone helps this if a WeMos seems to be damaged: Try the way to use the 3.3 voltage.

[Shardan]

Hello Alabama,

the voltage regulator of the WeMos is not sensitive, just it has to be very small due to the smalll WeMos board.
It can deliver just a few miliamperes to additional peripherals until it gets overloaded.
It's enough for a BME280 or a TLS2561, but htese sensors use very low power.

Anyways these regulators should be overload protected so they should not blow - thats the theory.
Daily experience shows that they blow now and then when driven at limit over some time.

Besides all that even a voltage regulator is just some electronic part. Every electronic part can break
or contain a hidden fault that shows after some time.

It's for a reason why i moved away from WeMos and nodeMCU for permanent running devices.
My devices use a naked ESP-07S or ESP12 with an own power supply.

[alabama]

Tank you for info. So I think that I now have something like a "naked" ESP-12. And you are right, for the permanent running device this is enough. For very simple cases (only temperatur and humidity, single flow counter ... ) I use the ESP-01.

It is not the 5 € for one of 6 device (yes, I bought 2 x 3 package), but I fear they will blow one after the other, so I want to know something more. And your info helps me to know: Okay, hope this was a typical "now and then case".