Uh yes, pin to base.

I still couldn’t come up with a way to make it work using a resistor-capacitor circuit, but I did learn a lot (that particular rabbit hole led to me an article discussing capacitance in potato tubers…!).

There is probably a better way of solving it, but at least I got it working with another transistor to “decouple” that sensitive pin from the base. I’m not exactly sure why there’s a negative voltage across base and emitter, but it was preventing boot.

I’d be very interested in hearing any criticism you would be willing to share. I have hopes of moving this from my breadboard and solder it to a PCB so I can put it into a paper-cut lightbox that will be controllable from HomeAssistant, but I wouldn’t want to risk setting anything on fire…

One thing that concerns me is that 7333A. I only have it in a TO-92 package, and while it’s only powering the ESP-01S, which doesn’t really draw that much current, it still gets uncomfortably hot to touch (I can hold it for a few seconds, but not much longer). Is there a better alternative, or is it supposed to get hot?

Thank you!

[edit: updated the circuit, I had misplace a resistor]

Im sorry, noob here. I don’t know what the voltage at the reset pin would be when the capacitor is discharged, my first guess would be 0v but the answers there say it’s the reverse - VCC at power on, then goes to gnd as it charges.

If that’s the case, I think it’s exactly what I need.

I’ll test it out later today (and I’ll go read more about how this capacitor+resistance circuit works…).