[xchip]

In general this guide is too high level.

For example: what does it mean "Built-in battery support."?

- will it allow you to monitor the battery charge? - can I charge it using the micro-USB - does it have undervoltage protection? - what is its quiescent voltage? - what is its consumption in deep sleep mode?

As for the Esp32-Cam, those little camera modules are flawed, one of the pins act as a 20Mhz antenna and causes interference everywhere including itself, and your board might or might not work.

[analog31]

Good point. Indeed, a closer look is needed in order to make use of any feature of a MCU board that's not built into the MCU itself. I've gotten in the habit of going straight to the schematic, e.g., for the Wemos C3 pico:

https://www.wemos.cc/en/latest/_static/files/sch_c3_pico_v1....

Battery charging is handled by an external chip, so I've looked up its datasheet when I needed (for instance) to reduce the charging current. The schematic shows a voltage divider feeding one of the ADC inputs for battery monitoring.

Also, no schematic, no buy. I've had good results with stuff from Wemos. I've also gotten boards that were definitely copies, worked fine, but caveat emptor.

[russianGuy83829]

yeah, also the wroom wrover confusion