Best Board for BLE with Battery

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I would like to use a Board to interface with my iPad via BLE and also to power it via a LiPo battery. Which one would you recommend?

I have tried a ESP32 from Heltech in the past and had no end of trouble getting it to work. Wifi was good but no BLE.
I have used Teensy a lot because they are so fast for audio but the application I have in mind is not so speed critical. I will just be sending MIDI sporadically from foot switches.
I prefer to use C rather than python.

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Hey John,

I’d suggest checking out DFRobot’s Bluno range. I’ve never used one myself, but they look promising on paper.

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Thanks Oliver33. Do you think they will work well with a LiPo battery?

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Hi John,

Definitely. A battery shield like this is probably the neatest way to do it:

The old 9V to DC barrel jack can run a micro-controller for a pretty long time too.

Sticking a simple boost converter like this to a LiPo would work fine too:

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Hi John,

You can certainly use an Arduino off a LiPo, you’ll just need to make sure that the voltage that it’s kicking out is in the appropriate range for your board. In this case, it will be the same as a Uno R3, I’ve linked specs for it below from Arduino’s site.

As Oliver suggested, using a Shield or Boost converter to get the appropriate voltage for it off a single-cell is likely easiest. Just remember that you must use an external supply from 6 to 20 volts. If supplied with less than 7V, however, the 5V pin may supply less than 5V and the board may become unstable. If using more than 12V, the voltage regulator may overheat and damage the board. The recommended range is 7 to 12 volts. But obviously you’ll only need 5V over the USB connection, just be sure with your project it can kick out enough current to maintain that:

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Thanks for your thoughts Liam and Bryce. I found this which looks like it does everything I was interested in.

And this:

The cheaper one will be slower and use less energy, but that doesn’t matter. What I am keen on is reliable BLE for say up to 5 hours. Any thoughts would be appreciated?

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As a rule of thumb, I’ve always found Adafruit stuff to be much better documented than Dfrobot’s stuff. If cost is not an object, I’d go the Adafruit one.

If you’re happy to do a little more head scratching tip save a few dollars, go the DFRobot one.

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Thanks. I was hoping to hear something along those lines. I have also found Adafruit to be well documented. Thanks for your help.

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