In a previous video I looked at how to improve the WIFI performance of cheap ESP32 C3 mini development boards from Ali Express and the results were really impressive, easily tripling the WIFI range with minimal effort. But what was even more impressive was the response to that video from my viewers, with some really excellent feedback, insight and questions! I really appreciate this and this video is my attempt to answer some of those questions (because there were too many to answer directly)…
In this video I’ve gathered together several popular ESP32 development boards, some are ‘official’ products while others are ‘clones’ from Ali Express. I first test the signal strength and directionality of each board over a 5 m distance to give a more representative dataset. I also wanted to understand how distance affects the signal strength, so I took the boards to the beach and tested the RSSI over 300 m. Finally, there were a number of questions about how Bluetooth might be affected, so I also tested that!!
I hope you find the video useful and below I’ve included links to some of the boards featured in the video (the ones that worked well!):
Tenstar ‘Cheap Yellow Display’, 5*, 490 sold:
https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_ol9gcUXSeeed studio, ESP32 C3, 4.8*, 500+ sold.
https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_oC5jrBZSeeed studio, ESP32 C6 (new version with Zigbee), 4.9*, 1000+ sold:
https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_oDJKBORPick up cheap ESP32 C3 Mini’s from AliExpress and add your own antenna:
https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_oo2C2Sl Here’s the link to the ESP32 Zero that has a well-designed antenna:
https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_ooeF6m9 If you need more compute power, here’s a link to the dual core ESP32 S3 {which also has solid WiFi}:
https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_oC7RuU1Check out my blog for a full write up and copies of the Arduino IDE code for both the Access Point and the client with display to measure the RSSI:
https://circuithelper.comDon't forget to check out Peter’s blog for more details on the C3 antenna modification:
https://peterneufeld.wordpress.com/2025/03/04/esp32-c3-supermini-antenna-modification/#aliexpress #arduino #esp32 #microcontroller #wifi #diy