ESPHome lets ESP32 devices sleep between ordinary work

ESPHome adds power management for ESP32 devices using ESP-IDF, allowing the processor to slow down and optionally enter light sleep when its main loop is idle. Supported chips can also power down peripherals and flash during sleep.

In a measured ESP32-C6 Fire Beetle setup acting as a sleepy OpenThread end device, polling every 180 seconds and waking its main loop every 30 seconds, average current was about 105 microamps over an hour. That result describes the tested configuration, rather than every ESPHome device.

Automatic light sleep starts disabled and must be selected by the maker. The configuration checks which power-down options the chip supports; powering down flash is unavailable when external PSRAM is configured.