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ESP32-C6, a Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 (LE) SoC
- rjeli 6y agoStill no 5ghz wifi :(
- pranaysharma 6y agoWiFi 6 supports 5ghz
- raminf 6y agoRealtek RTL8720DN and RTL8721DM claim 5GHz wifi as well as 2.4GHz and BLE 5. Finding a decent dev-board for them is not easy. Seeedstudio's Wio Terminal is one of the few. The ESP32 ecosystem, though, is much larger.
- tomjuggler 6y agoYeah also waiting on that. They did mention 40mhz support, maybe that will help? In wifi congested spaces at the moment the AP mode is unusable..
- bestham 6y agoWhy would 40 MHz wide channels be /better/ if the spectrum is congested? Smaller channels would be beneficial. Let’s say 5 MHz, and with OFDMA that is what you get. This is why Wifi6 is crucial for the long term viability of 2.4 GHz WiFi.
- snovv_crash 6y agoAny idea if the BT5 stack now supports long range mode?
- simcop2387 6y agoThe linked article says that it does
- snovv_crash 6y agoAh thanks, missed that somehow. The old ones had BT5 support, but somehow got the certification without LR support...
- stevenhuang 6y agoJust checked and seems not available on the usual suspects yet (AliExpress, etc). Would be fun to experiment on the RISC-V stack.
- conradludgate 6y agoI was recently looking into using some ESP32s to use on a BLE hardware project I am working on at the moment. Although I do wonder whether wifi would be a better technology to use sometimes. The only thing I remember seeing is that wifi technology uses much more power. From TFA it looks like WiFi 6 uses less power, is this true? Anyone experienced have any suggestions whether BLE or WiFi would be better for streaming serial data from a device onto many platforms? (I currently have a BLE demo working, but working with Bluetooth stacks on mobile and desktop are a royal pain, network requests are very straightforward at this point)
- ducktective 6y agoFor equal target transfer rate and range, I don't think there would be a mode that any WiFi tech beats BLE in terms of using less power. If power is your concern, have you considered nRF5 devices? Nordic has a proprietary profile for sending serial data over BLE (NUART) but AFAIK, you could only connect to one device at a time (not many).
- conradludgate 6y agoPower isn't a huge concern, although it's a battery powered device, so having a longer battery life is a plus without needing to include a larger capacity battery. I'll look into the nRF5. I've been using some of Nordic's code to test and build my prototypes already, although I feel like adding a proprietary profile on top will just make it harder to interface. Once I make the connection currently, all I need to do is enable notify on the specific characteristic which isn't too complicated (just a lot of code to actually get the characteristic)
- coupdejarnac 6y agoThis nrf52 demo might be salient: https://youtu.be/tbl6Dui-_w4 https://youtu.be/tbl6Dui-_w4 https://github.com/NordicPlayground/nrf52-ble-multi-link-multi-role https://github.com/NordicPlayground/nrf52-ble-multi-link-mul...
- chabes 6y ago
- tasty_freeze 6y agoDoes the packet processing for WiFi and bluetooth take cycles from the CPU, or is the CPU 100% available to the application code? I read the blurb but it didn't address this question.
- notum 6y agoIt looks like it does take cycles from the CPU but the expensive cryptographic processing is still offloaded to a dedicated chip. Old ESP32 has a dedicated protocol CPU: https://www.exploreembedded.com/wiki/Overview_of_ESP32_features._What_do_they_practically_mean%3F https://www.exploreembedded.com/wiki/Overview_of_ESP32_featu...
- Tepix 6y agoWhen i looked at previous Espressif chips, their mesh networking implementation for Bluetooth was proprietary. The Bluetooth standard contains a mesh networking standard. Is there any affordable SoC that lets me build a standard Bluetooth mesh application without having to start from scratch?
- eaurouge 6y agoMesh networks are relatively new to the Standard. True LE 5 SoCs should have what you need to get started.
- yarcob 6y agoWhen I played around with ESP32 when it just came out, the problem was that the toolchains and software just weren't done yet. There were a lot of features that existed on hardware, but without toolchain support, docs, or sample code it was close to impossible to use them. I'm not sure how it works now, but especially for newer stuff I wouldn't rely on the fact that the hardware claims to support something -- if the software isn't there, it just doesn't really mean much.
- dls2016 6y agoI'm not familiar with other microcontrollers, but ESP-IDF seems to be very actively developed. I bought a wESP32 a few months ago and initially couldn't figure out how to enable ethernet... came back after some ESP-IDF updates and had it working in 10 minutes. But you are probably correct about the latest chips.
- gh02t 6y agoESP-IDF is super friendly, I was amazed how easy it was to get it set up and configured compared to my experience with some other embedded toolchains I've used before.
- SwaraLink 6y agoThe Bluetooth Mesh standard actually is based on a Bluetooth 4.0 feature set (basic advertising and scanning), so really any BLE device can support it. The problem is that the software is complicated, so typically only newer devices have software support. Many chip vendors have BT mesh implementations, including Nordic, TI, SiLabs, Cypress, Dialog, and ST.
- vk6flab 6y agoFor a new project we've been looking at the ESP32 range - great functionality - but we're more than a little concerned about being reliant on a single company (Expressif) and manufacturer (TSMC). Are there other SoC solutions with multiple companies and manufacturers with similar functionality?
- eaurouge 6y agoCortex-M. Lots of Bluetooth LE solutions. WiFi getting there - Nordic is working on a solution here as well.
- topbanana 6y agoI had a look a Nordic nrf5340 recently and second the recommendation, it's an impressive platform with Zephyr OS
- ksec 6y agoAre the tools and software from Nordic better?
- audunw 6y agoNordics tools and documentation are generally considered relatively high quality. Not perfect, but the competition is usually worse. That's one of the main reasons they are dominating the Bluetooth LE peripheral market.
- floatboth 6y agoThey're good, but you don't have to use them at all. You can use Rust instead! :)
- robert_foss 6y agoThe Nordic SDKs are my favorite embedded ones by far. It's so good relative to the competition, that I will go out of my way to use their chips.
- monkendrunky 6y ago
- ilaksh 6y agoWould like to see a Wifi benchmark with latency and bandwidth.
- seanahrens 6y agoAgreed
- qalmakka 6y agoWhy didn't they pack more ram on this? 400K is a bit tight, we often hit the ceiling with the ESP32's 512K of internal RAM. Does anyone know if they support SPI-connected external RAM on this? It has been a lifesaver on the ESP32, especially since WROVER-E fixed most of the long standing bugs that were plaguing the earlier revisions. It is slow as hell, but having 4MB (+4MB high memory) of connected RAM on a microcontroller has been a real game changer.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoEspecially since the multi-thread OS means wasting space for multiple stacks. 400k is a lot for an MCU, but for the ESP32 its really not that much. A 1MB Sram version would be great, with two cores.
- pjmlp 6y agoWhy use the OS then? Just do bare metal runtime like we used to do on MS-DOS days.
- meltedcapacitor 6y agoWhat about botnet operators? This would give them a hard time if they have to hack each device specifically instead of recycling old linux vulnerabilities wholesale. The whole IoT industry is strongly committed to make devices available to botnet operators, indeed this looks like the main function, the function on the packaging usually works poorly and is likely just there to convince punters to install the botnet relays and pay for the hardware and power. :-)
- dls2016 6y agoThe ESP-IDF environment is based off of FreeRTOS, not Linux. It's essentially a threading library, not so much an OS.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoWell the ESP-IDF is freeRTOS based, so: threads. But have fun re-inventing the SDK I guess?
- ece 6y agoSuper great to see new designs with RISC-V keeping up with tech, the BL602 and ESP32-C3 are currently available though, and I've been working with the Pinenut for a side project. I hope more RPi-like BL702 boards become more widely available for RISC-V too.
- rektide 6y agoI got some esp32-c3 engineering sample devkits. I'm wondering if there's any point at all in Espressif going to production with these chips- going from wifi4 to wifi6 seems to be the main change, and it should make a huge difference for how well behaved a network citizen the chip is. like you I was elated to see some iot wifi hardware with modern connectivity standards. fantastic to see iot not have to lag by multiple years. very important upgrades, having ofdma, allowing multiple devices to share the ap.
- audunw 6y agoI really wish Thread mesh networking would become standard on new Wi-Fi routers. Google Nest has hardware support for it, but not sure if it's enabled yet. I think Thread is a much better fit for IP connectivity for IoT devices. Nordic Semiconductor nRF SoCs can do Bluetooth LE and Thread on the same radio at the same time, so should be very cost effective. I'd gladly replace all my Zigbee devices with Thread ones if they were available. It'd be really nice with something that's easier to troubleshoot with standard IP tools, and to not have to have a separate hub for that network. Nordic Semiconductor recently bought Imagination Technologies WiFi assets, so there should be some nice SoCs from them in the near future too.
- jdc 6y agoIf Wi-Fi routers implemented 802.15.4 we should be able to run 6LoWPAN + Thread/CHIP etc or Zigbee on the same hardware.
- spacemanmatt 6y agoThe prospect of having a good wifi AP that supports the low-power bands/protocols is really exciting to me!
- fy20 6y agoIs Thread still happening? Last time I checked the only hub available was Nest, although Apple hardware has support but it's not enabled in software. Other than a couple of niche home automation products, nothing supports it. When will I be able to buy smart light bulbs for $10 that use Thread?
- JustFinishedBSG 6y agoYou can buy Nanoleaf Essential LED bulbs right now and they mesh with thread and the Homepod Mini
- kps 6y agoThread is one of the initially supported wireless layers (alongside wifi) for https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip
- Taniwha 6y agoRISC-V (no MMU)
- mahrain 6y agoI wonder what Risc-V would bring them, other than some de-risking vs potential trade blockages for ARM as Huawei experienced. Would not having to pay royalties to ARM give this chip a cost advantage? By how much?
- stickac 6y agoThey were not using ARM, but Tensilica chips with Xtensa instruction set - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensilica#Xtensa_instruction_set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensilica#Xtensa_instruction_s...
- weitzj 6y agoThe -C3, -C6 line is RISC V
- lights0123 6y ago> were
- tym0 6y agoGlad to see Espressif making RISC-V products, I love what they put out but the xtensa architecture made it hard to work with languages that targets LLVM like Rust and Zig.
- wyldfire 6y agoThey're working on an LLVM backend for xtensa [1]. [1] https://groups.google.com/g/llvm-dev/c/sUY_uL_do5M https://groups.google.com/g/llvm-dev/c/sUY_uL_do5M
- exabrial 6y agoNot mentioned in the title: It's a 160mhz RISC-V chip
- tyingq 6y agoKind of interesting that the only thing in the part number that denotes that is the "C6" part. Apparently "C3" is another ESP32 with a RISC-V cpu. I'd have gone with "ESPR" since it fits "EspressIf" but denotes RISC-V clearly.
- skybrian 6y agoSomewhat off-topic, but I wonder what sort of networking would be best to build a wireless game controller, where latency is everything?
- azubinski 6y agoIdeally useless piece of hardware. 100500+ ESP2866 useless designs are the best confirmation of this harsh statement. You can turn on a LED with it. Nobody knows for what, but everybody knows how, because it's simple - just use the MQTT and ... (list of protocols). RISC V will be the beautiful addon to it cause the True Way To True Uselessness should be hard. ^_^
- zeroping 6y agoI have wall switches and a power meter that use the ESP32 internally. Consumer products. How much more "real" would you like?
- londons_explore 6y agoIs this actually new silicon? All the new features seem to be things one could implement in firmware... The things not easily implentable in firmware (new frequency bands) aren't supported.
- seanahrens 6y agoWould wifi 6 require new silicon?
- seanahrens 6y agoWhat real-world wifi upload/download speed in mbps should we expect from this board?