I am designing a custom breakout board for my esp32 devkit-C used as a CNC controller. The esp is powered from a mean well 5V PSU (with a schottkey diode and some capacitance to ground). In this circuit I’ve got a variety of peripherals (relays, opto isolated inputs, 3.3v to 5v shifting with 74AHCT125s, RS485 and etc), as well as pull-ups on pins that don’t have internal ones and are used as inputs.

In my setup, my enclosure contains 4 PSUs - 3.3v, 5v, 12v and 24v. The 5v powers the esp, and the other ones used for the peripherals (for example inductive proximity switching at 12v connected with an optoisolator to the esp, 24v used for led strips driven by the relay outputs and etc.).
In other breakout boards i’ve seen, it seems a common, higher voltage input is used (9-12v etc) which is then regulated down to 5v with the appropriate circuitry to supply 5v to esp.
Given that I’ve got all the PSUs mentioned above, is there an advantage to still include some form of regulation circuitry from a higher voltage over using 5v form the PSU directly (keep in mind there are other, light load consumers on the 5v psu)?

Further, in cases where 3.3v is needed for the peripherals - are there advantages / disadvantages to using the 3.3v pin on the esp vs. using the output of the 3.3v psu?
Thanks!

 

In CNC or control machinery applications, it is usually best to use 24vdc for I/O means and peripherals.
Generally the I/O is kept isolated from the main 5vdc processor board or unit.
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