14 ms·

The ESP32 has been released

• dude8604 10y ago
  First ESP3212 breakout board immediately available (ESP3212 not included yet) https://www.tindie.com/products/dude8604/esp3212-breakout-board-alpha/ https://www.tindie.com/products/dude8604/esp3212-breakout-bo...
• TimGremalm 10y ago
  "As far as any new information regarding the ESP32 is concerned, don’t expect much. It’s released, though, and in a month or so the work of documenting this supposed wonderchip will begin."
  • sickbeard 10y ago
    If there's one thing they needed to work on it was documentation and they failed at it.
    • mrb 10y ago
      They are really serious about providing good doc. Here is what sprite_tm (one of their engineers) said: "Also, keep in mind that documentation is very much a work-in-progress! The techdoc as it is is basically the state of the art with regards to what we’ve finished writing, editing etc. There’s still way more coming up, and the basic idea is to document everything very well this time; apart from some sensitive stuff (mostly the WiFi and BT RF interface) we’re trying to not have any secrets." Source: http://hackaday.com/2016/09/05/new-part-day-the-esp32-has-been-released/#comment-3183107 http://hackaday.com/2016/09/05/new-part-day-the-esp32-has-be...
• semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  CAN-bus? Iiinteresting. Maybe we'll see a wave of wifi-controlled car hacks (not as in malicious, as in HN) in the coming years?
  • evck 10y ago
    Yes, there will be :)
    • danellis 10y ago
      Like what? I've tried to do CAN stuff with cars before, and outside of a few standard measurements it's almost impossible to find any documentation on what commands do what.
  • PinguTS 10y ago
    But it is totally missing from the Espressif website and from the technical documentation (except some interrupts that hint to it).
• dan1234 10y ago
  There’s a Technical Reference Manual[0], and a pinout[1] which show some of the features (multiple analogue inputs, huzzah!) [0]https://espressif.com/sites/default/files/documentation/esp32_technical_reference_manual_en.pdf https://espressif.com/sites/default/files/documentation/esp3... [1]http://www.pighixxx.com/test/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/ESP32_Pinout_a1_3.png http://www.pighixxx.com/test/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/ESP3...
  • faragon 10y ago
    Wow, so ESP32 has much more ROM/Flash and RAM memory than previous ESP8266 chip: "Embedded Memory – 448 KB Internal ROM – 520 KB Internal SRAM – 8 KB RTC FAST Memory – 8 KB RTC SLOW Memory"
    • StavrosK 10y ago
      Yeah, ten times more, which is great, but I didn't practically run into limitations of the ESP8266 either. Then again, I'm not representative, but I'm saying that even 40K is plenty for most things.
      • hyperbovine 10y ago
        40kb is ok if you are just loading compiled byte code, however the Lua / MicroPython runtimes consume nearly all of that leaving little space for your project.
      • michaelt 10y ago
        It turns out 40K isn't much if you want a TLS stack that supports modern standards and keysizes, and interoperates with most servers out there [1]. Once you have 16K transmit and receive buffers (the default fragment length) and enough space to do the math needed for a 4096-bit RSA key, you're pretty much out of RAM. And that's just the system library for a single TLS connection - the programmer will probably want to use some memory too :) [1] https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/issues/1375#issuecomment-169519587 https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/issues/1375#issuecomment-... https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/issues/43#issuecomment-163535888 https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/issues/43#issuecomment-16...
• poseid 10y ago
  getting started with the esp8266 was mainly for ppl with some background in soldering. also, flashing the esp8266 was not too easy (python script, some system libs needed to be present iirc). for beginners, i found arduino, tessel or espruino to be easier. also, espruino now runs on esp8266 - the ecosystem that will evolve around the esp32 will be interesting to see
  • glenndebacker 10y ago
    You could also buy an NodeMCU (http://nodemcu.com/index_en.html http://nodemcu.com/index_en.html) if you don't like soldering. Personally without a formal electronics background or great soldering skills, I had not a lot of problems with setting up the ESP8266. But I do agree that out of the box it's less "plug and play" as an Arduino.
    • maffydub 10y ago
      Agreed, although I prefer the D1 mini (http://www.wemos.cc/Products/d1_mini.html http://www.wemos.cc/Products/d1_mini.html) - it's just a bit smaller (and cheaper?) than the NodeMCU. The ESP-01 (which I started with) is quite painful to program, though - it uses a bizarre baud rate (78k?) and shares its GPIO with its programming pins.
      • poseid 10y ago
        exactly, this is what i meant, for simple projects, the cheap costs vs time to invest to get it running was not worth it
        • antocv 10y ago
          I dunno, I managed to get it running within a day or two, and had zero experience in this kind of electronics before. Used a raspberry pi to control it, with a button to switch it into programming mode. No soldering, just wires and breadboard. But now I use a d1 mini since its more comfortable/less breakage from accidentally removing wires when cleaning.
• teraflop 10y ago
  TIL that Espressif (the manufacturer of the ESP8266 and ESP32) hired the guy behind http://spritesmods.com/ http://spritesmods.com/. That's a very promising sign that they plan to keep their hobbyist/hacker user base in mind.
• kfihihc 10y ago
  You can preorder an ESP32 module(with 4MB flash) from SeeedStudio[1] right now. [1]: http://www.seeedstudio.com/ESP3212-Wifi-Bluetooth-Combo-Module-p-2706.html http://www.seeedstudio.com/ESP3212-Wifi-Bluetooth-Combo-Modu...
  • StavrosK 10y ago
    Does this have flash? I only see it mentioned ambiguously.
    • kfihihc 10y ago
      There are a Windbond flash onboard, pic is here: https://statics3.seeedstudio.com/product/2016-09/7.png https://statics3.seeedstudio.com/product/2016-09/7.png Some description above the pic: • The size of ESP-3212 Wifi module is 16mm x 24mm x 3m. • The ESP-3212 deploys 4MB SPI Flash with WSOP－8 package. It also uses 3DBi PCB antenna on board. ESP3212 is an module, ESP32 is the chip.
      • StavrosK 10y ago
        Ah, okay, that agrees with what I understood, but I wanted to be sure (I didn't know if WSOP-8 is that footprint).
• tostitos1979 10y ago
  I spent 30 mins reading about this chip and I still don't get it. I get why the ESP8266 was awesome ... MCU + wifi for super cheap. Why is this chip so exciting? Is it because it is supposed to be wifi+ARM (an ARM good enough to emulate a sega mastersystem game as per a youtube video)+other goodies? I saw rumors of other goodies being BLE. Is that confirmed or was that hot air :)
  • tostitos1979 10y ago
    I missed a key link ... this explains it: https://www.seeedstudio.com/ESP3212-Wifi-Bluetooth-Combo-Module-p-2706.html https://www.seeedstudio.com/ESP3212-Wifi-Bluetooth-Combo-Mod...
  • ivoras 10y ago
    It's not an ARM - it's still a pretty weird Xtensa CPU. Apparently the toolchain for the CPU is nowhere near as good as those for the ARM.
    • antocv 10y ago
      The toolchain is as good as for ARM, it is gcc no more no less. You perhaps mean the original SDK which was based on proprietary blobs and sucked. See it here, the good one, https://github.com/pfalcon/esp-open-sdk https://github.com/pfalcon/esp-open-sdk
      • makomk 10y ago
        It's an unofficial fork of an old version of gcc developed by the community. ARM toolchain support is a lot more mature and widespread.
        • antocv 10y ago
          me@yourlaptop $ xtensa-lx106-elf-gcc -v ... gcc version 4.8.5 What is old about this, the 4.8.5 version of GCC was was released June 2015.
• lukashed 10y ago
  It looks like it still only has 2.4GHz wifi. Is there a reason?
  • jrockway 10y ago
    Only needs one antenna to also do Bluetooth. Compatible with all routers except ones owned by techies that wish 2.4GHz would finally die.
  • pjc50 10y ago
    Cost is the usual one. Presumably 5GHz requires another antenna, matching network, patent licenses, etc.
  • swiley 10y ago
    My guess is it's because 5ghz WiFi is regulatory hell. I honestly can't think of a good way (off the top of my head) to make this easily usable for international users without making it a) easy for them to interfere with primary 5ghz users Or b) making multiple boards with an extra ROM chip ($$) telling people not to export them to other countries. At least with 2.4ghz you can just stick to lower numbered channels.
• jacquesm 10y ago
  270 mW is unfortunately too much to run on harvested energy, even for short bursts but otherwise this is a very interesting chip.
  • antocv 10y ago
    What chip would you recommend to do IoT which can run on harvested energy? What would be the upper limit which harvested energy could deliver? Do you mean solar cells or harvesting microwaves from satellites, I could get about 1.5V or so from about a 60cm in diameter disk, have not measured the current available. It would be really sweet to run something which speaks wifi even for short durations, if it recieves its energy from ephemeral radio.
    • porker 10y ago
      I was trying to find something that could send a small message via Wifi when a toilet door was locked/opened; and could be powered by the lock motion or harvested energy. I failed.
      • IshKebab 10y ago
        For that I wouldn't use WiFi. Use Thread or a custom nRF51 protocol. Both allow very long sleep times (infinite with a custom protocol) and can send millions of packets from a single coin cell.
      • raarts 10y ago
        I've been looking for a very similar thing. Any hardware recommendations?
        • wycx 10y ago
          This may be of interest: http://jeelabs.org/2013/09/08/3-years-on-one-set-of-batteries/index.html http://jeelabs.org/2013/09/08/3-years-on-one-set-of-batterie...
    • jacquesm 10y ago
• Quequau 10y ago
  I know that MicroPython was ported to the ESP8266, so presumably it will eventually come to ESP32. I suppose that's probably going to be easiest way to get things done with it... or at least a really popular way.
  • m_eiman 10y ago
    It's already on the ESP32, kind of. This device: https://www.pycom.io/solutions/py-boards/lopy/ https://www.pycom.io/solutions/py-boards/lopy/ is based on ESP32 and is running Micropython; I don't know if their port will be fully open source, though. They've said that they want to contribute as much as possible back to the micropython project, I think? Edit: here's some info on their contributions to Micropython: https://www.pycom.io/qa-micropython-multi-threading-garbage-collector/ https://www.pycom.io/qa-micropython-multi-threading-garbage-...
• owenversteeg 10y ago
  Do any good competitors to the ESP32 exist at this point? E.x. something small with WiFi and Bluetooth that's usable by hobbyists? Also, anyone know how to pay more to get one of these ASAP? Or is anyone who has one willing to sell theirs?
  • antocv 10y ago
    Ive seen these being mentioned from nordic semiconductors, http://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/2.4GHz-RF http://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/2.4GHz-RF and specifically http://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/2.4GHz-RF/nRF24L01 http://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/2.4GHz-RF/nRF24L01 but they're not quite in the same space as esp8266 or esp32 - they all just do WiFi or Blutooth, with much less power required than esp8266, but do not have any processor left over for doing anything else really, and memory is also very little. These are more like components when you want to build more to your wish. Then you have this Realtek-RTL8710 which is ARM 32bit based, little less flash, more memory, and a bit more pricy, http://www.instructables.com/id/Realtek-RTL8710-Alternative-to-ESP8266/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Realtek-RTL8710-Alternative-... buy here http://www.aliexpress.com/item/RTL8710-serial-WIFI-model-ESP-07-Authenticity-Guaranteed/32671501952.html http://www.aliexpress.com/item/RTL8710-serial-WIFI-model-ESP... but it seems a bit more expensive than esp8266, which for IoT does make a difference. So Id say, no not really, there isnt an alternative still. I think it is due to ARM requiring license costs which are higher than Xtensas so unit cost doenst reach $1.95 yet. Then it is also really difficult to both design a CPU and integrate the radio on it - with good power-management in such a small form-factor.
    • jkestner 10y ago
      The Realtek is a competitor, the Nordics you mention are not. The nRF24L01 uses a proprietary radio. Some of the nRF chips are popular for Bluetooth Low Energy especially given that they do have Cortex M processors that can be used to run applications, but it ain't a competitor without WiFi.
  • gol706 10y ago
    You have to choose WiFi, Bluetooth, or GSM, but the Particle line of boards are pretty great, have an included Pub/Sub and event based web service, and are field programable so you can tweak your design after you solder it up and put it in an enclosure. You also get a lot more usable IO than a ESP2866. On the down side, they cost more that an ESP and I have seen occasionally flakey behavior in some boards that requires a manual reboot every few weeks. https://www.particle.io/ https://www.particle.io/
• dynofuz 10y ago
  im starting a company around these devices in boston. if anyone's interested in joining, email me.
  • dude8604 10y ago
    First ESP3212 breakout board immediately available (ESP3212 not included yet) https://www.tindie.com/products/dude8604/esp3212-breakout-board-alpha/ https://www.tindie.com/products/dude8604/esp3212-breakout-bo...
• MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
  I'd love to see LLVM support for this so I can run Rust on it, someone wrote that "it's about a month of a part-time work for a single developer" (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10994577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10994577). Is this realistic? A Kickstarter project might be a way to do this... Update: also see http://hackaday.com/2016/09/05/new-part-day-the-esp32-has-been-released/#comment-3183545 http://hackaday.com/2016/09/05/new-part-day-the-esp32-has-be...
  • adrusi 10y ago
    It doesn't really have much RAM, I don't know how useful Rust would be for anything but prototyping, I don't think there's been much focus on size optimizations.
    • steveklabnik 10y ago
      We actually added a "optimize for size" flag pretty recently.
      • rofrol 10y ago
        Wow. How do you track that someone mentioned Rust. You are a machine Sir. :)
        • steveklabnik 10y ago
          I read a lot of HN. :)
        • MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
          Mentioning Rust on HN inevitably summons Steve Klabnik. Its just the way it works.
    • MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
      You can compile Rust without the stdlib, how much memory you use is then up to you. Code size is not an issue, 4MB of flash are common now.
• Keyframe 10y ago
  As I've been dabbling only with PICs (lower numbers and asm only), I'm looking forward to 'graduate' to something more like this!
• jschwartzi 10y ago
  This thing has I2S, meaning that you can hook up an audio codec to it. I wonder if it could handle stereo audio without underrunning the output stream?
  • antocv 10y ago
    Yes, it has been done with ESP8266, it can produce shitty audio by itself and when the sender is close to the device with no interference - otherwise you need a dedicated DAC and it can be used as a simple webradio with mono audio output device. With this ESP32, my bet is it can handle stereo without any other dedicated components and fluently. Read more here https://github.com/espressif/ESP8266_MP3_DECODER https://github.com/espressif/ESP8266_MP3_DECODER
    • MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
      Yeah I built the ESP8266 version with SRAM and I2S codec, works well. The ESP32 might have enough internal RAM to not need the external SPI RAM, and the hardware pwms might be usable for audio out (or do we have a usable dac now?).
• iN7h33nD 10y ago
  Where is a good place (or what is a good book) to learn what all of the terminology in these comments and in the article mean?
  • steamer25 10y ago
    Do you have particular terminology you're interested in? The general subject is Micro Controller Units (MCUs) (and to a lesser extent System On Chip (SOC)s) which are becoming cheap ($5) and abundant enough to fuel the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) . There are various tangential topics such as: * Computer architecture: e.g., "data bus", "SRAM", "Von Neumann architecture", "SPI flash", "Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC)", ARM, etc. * Electrical engineering: e.g., "pulse trains", "servomotors", "Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) & vice versa (DAC)", "milliwatts (mW)", "milli-amp hours (mAh)", etc. * Software engineering: "address spaces", "multi-threading", "stack", "Rust", "Low-Level Virtual Machine" (LLVM)", "[software build/compiler] toolchain", "Software Development Kit (SDK)", "GNU C Compiler (gcc)", etc. * Network/Communication protocols: WiFi, "Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)", "run-length-encoding", "little-endian", "Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)", "Transport Layer Security (TLS)", etc. Make magazine (especially their electronics and Arduino YouTube channels--see below) might be a good info gateway for you. Given the low prices already mentioned, I'd say that if you're interested in learning more, a good way to go would be to order something like an AdaFruit Trinket (link below) (or a fully-fledged Arduino or one of the ESP8266 or ESP32 boards in this article) and seeing what you can accomplish with it. Sparkfun also has some good tutorials if you're already confident on the coding side. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwhkA66li5vCOKe4Rx50fiW1ghQlpStY1 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwhkA66li5vCOKe4Rx50f... https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwhkA66li5vAmrRwrT8fOxpKE-D9ZsOLK https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwhkA66li5vAmrRwrT8fO... https://www.adafruit.com/products/1501 https://www.adafruit.com/products/1501 https://learn.sparkfun.com/ https://learn.sparkfun.com/
  • poseid 10y ago
    maybe you also like embeddednodejs.com - the book is currently in early release (drop me a note if you like a proof reading version in exchange for a short book review) thanks!
• dmritard96 10y ago
  Anyone have any idea on bulk costs. If buying 5-10K of the esp8266 modules, its chhheeeapp. Would love to consider switching over but curious on costs.
  • azdle 10y ago
    Seems like these chips are unbelievably cheap too. The shop link[0] seems to say that the bare chips are $0.19 (USD)[1] even in small quantities. [0] https://world.taobao.com/item/537912657387.htm https://world.taobao.com/item/537912657387.htm [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%C2%A519.00 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%C2%A519.00
    • jimmies 10y ago
      I am not 100% sure about this, as I can't read Chinese, but this is likely not 19 Japanese Yen. > ¥ is a currency sign used by the Chinese yuan (CNY) and the Japanese yen (JPY) currencies. This monetary symbol resembles a Latin letter Y with a double stroke. It is much more likely that it is 19 Yuan, which is ~$3.
      • Nadya 10y ago
        Japanese yen would not have the decimal, so you are correct. Japanese currency does not have fractions of ￥1. It would be listed as ￥19 or 19円. It also wouldn't make much sense to list a Japanese price on a Chinese website.
      • azdle 10y ago
        Heh, I guess I shouldn't have believed the unbelievable price after all. Still, $3 for a chip that does 'everything' isn't bad. From what I've seen everyone else wants 3x-10x more than that for chips (or, admittedly, sometimes modules) that do less.
• fludlight 10y ago
  Love the Chrome autotranslation of the linked Taobao store: "Sorry, this baby has the shelf temporarily, you can browse other baby"
• gnyman 10y ago
  Anyone have a good idea on how it compared to for example the CHIP? (https://getchip.com/pages/chip https://getchip.com/pages/chip). I saw the announcement for ESP32 a few days ago but it looks like it's around $7 for one which to me seemed expensive compared to $9 for the CHIP. From my quick scanning, power peaks seems to be lower but if somebody with better knowledge of these things can chip in that would be appreciated. Mainly wondering if I should add these ESP32 to my collection or not (as I already have 2 CHIP:s and a few ESP8266) :-)
• david-given 10y ago
  Does it still have the built-in operating system? If so, is this required, or can I replace it and run my own bare-metal firmware?
  • gh02t 10y ago
    It still has a built in RTOS like the 8266 and no I don't think you can replace it. Not easily anyway, Espressif could probably do it but I don't think users really are able to. Your stuff is running bare metal though - your code is linked directly into the same binary payload as the RTOS. One of the major selling points of the ESP32 though was that it is dual core, so that you can have one core dedicated to servicing your code and the other to dealing with keeping the radio stack alive and such.
• 1024core 10y ago
  From the 'Applications' list on Seeed Studio: • Video streaming from camera Can anyone tell me how you'd hook up a camera to this device?
  • TD-Linux 10y ago
    You wouldn't. That application makes no sense.
  • danellis 10y ago
    You could plug in an IP camera.
  • gh02t 10y ago
    I assume they mean directly integrated into the camera hardware basically as a wifi modem. So some main processor would be passing it frames over SPI and it'd transmit them, not someone plugging in a webcam and streaming it.