Disable wifi for low power operation

[tmk854]

Is it possible to disable the wifi radios for lora-only operation?

I guess I could try to put the Lopy into WLAN.STA mode and not connect to anything:

wlan = network.WLAN(mode=WLAN.STA)

but I'm not sure that would be equivalent to disabled hardware.

[livius]

from ESP documentation

3.3 System Clocks
3.3.1 CPU Clock
Upon reset, an external crystal clock source (2 MHz ~ 60 MHz), is selected as the default CPU clock. The external
crystal clock source also connects to a PLL to generate a high frequency clock (typically 160 MHz).

In addition to this, ESP32 has an internal 8 MHz oscillator, of which the accuracy is guaranteed by design and
is stable over temperature (within 1% accuracy). Hence, the application can then select from the external crystal
clock source, the PLL clock or the internal 8 MHz oscillator. The selected clock source drives the CPU clock,
directly or after division, depending on the application.

[bmarkus]

In a typical LoRaWAN scenario there are 'A-Class' devices, sending sensor data in every 10 minutes, hour or less. These are in deep sleep between two measurement/transmission period. This way you can save battery. Just disabling WiFi without going to sleep doesn't help too much. Also reduction of clock can help but as far as I see it is not yet supported and do not know what ESP32 supports itself as a minimum clock frequency.

[madsdk]

Are there any news about this feature? I'm deploying some LoRa prototypes in a couple of days, and I'd like them to be able to run for a long time out in the wild ;)

[abilio]

@tmk854, this option is currently not available, but it will be added in a future firmware release. I invite you to stay tuned to upcoming news.