For few days, I am trying to figure out, why my sensors do not work on external power. I bought NodeMCU along with couple different sensors etc. I was happily working with them, connecting them one by one to the 3.3v pin in the NodeMCU board, programming each of them. Everything was working as expected. After I have finished, I decided it's time to use them all at once, but I knew, that for that to work, I need to provide them with enough power, as USB probably won't be enough (plus, when I'm done, I don't plan to use USB to power the system anyway). I have a module that converts 230v AC into 5v DC, and then I am stepping it down to 3.3v in order to power the sensors. After checking with multimeter, the voltages are ok, and so is the current.
My problem is, that the sensors give completely random data (most of the time they don't give any information, but once in a while they send something like 1000 times the normal value). Below you can see the schematic that I use. Can you please help me figure this out?
Edit: I would just like to add - I did try to run NodeMCU solely on the Ext. Power - the circuit looked exactly as below, I just connected positive output of 3.3v power source, to the 3.3v connector on NodeMCU. The board was working (I was able to control the onboard LED via WiFI), but the sensor did not. I then reconnected the sensor from external power, to NodeMcu 3.3v, and it (the sensor) worked... I have no idea why.
simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab