Power wise the ESP8266 takes around 150mA when transmitting and in the 50mA region when receiving. These numbers are from memory on another ESP project a few years back, there were some other parts involved but 95+% of the power was taken by the WiFi.
Putting it inside an M100 would severely reduce the range with all the nice EMI shielding and plastic case itself. I had thought an ESP with the external antenna option might work best, repurpose the Modem connector hole and stick on a 2.4GHz stubby. The fact the Wimodem has the ESP-01 antenna over the board already reduces the effectiveness of the printed antenna, putting a case around it would reduce it more unless it was retuned to take the case into account. As to holes in the board probably trying to save on the cost of the PCB :) I have seen some good looking 3D printed cases that use the D-connector as the mount point and then clip around the board. Printed in yellow-beige it might match the case quite well :) From: M100 <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of "John R. Hogerhuis" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Reply-To: <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Friday, January 19, 2018 at 9:23 AM To: <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [M100] wimodem232 On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 4:34 AM Stephen Adolph <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I have managed to do this using bluetooth and a smartphone as well. very cool. Yeah we’ve had all of this stuff working for a while in one form or another. It’s nice to see a direct WiFi connection now though. At least in theory, even more portable than a cell phone. But in practice I have it connected to a gigantic cell phone juice pack (more of a forty than a juice pack) And it doesn’t seem the creators of the device have thought much about the ability to mount it in a case with a battery. It has no mounting holes other than the screw holes on the rs233 connector. It uses 5v usb connector for power. But this thing is so small it raises the possibility of an internal mounting. Has anyone measured the current draw? — John.
