9 ms·

ESP32-C5: Espressif’s First Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6 MCU

129 points by extesy 4y ago

antoniuschan99 4y ago
Yay for 5ghz and Risc-v. Only other thing is ble with actual ble power consumption from Espressif. Speaking of which, Nordic bought out that WiFi startup late 2020 but have been silent on their WiFi mcu since https://youtu.be/PLdpg-YXhv0 https://youtu.be/PLdpg-YXhv0
- jabl 4y ago
  It's still a single core CPU, though, whereas the Xtensa-based ESP32 has a dual core CPU. Not sure people are actually using that second core in practice though.. And yes, this is probably an excellent case where RISC-V can win; wouldn't surprise me if RISC-V already has better toolchain support than Xtensa despite being a much younger ISA. Some benchmarks on the earlier ESP32-C3 at https://hackaday.com/2021/02/08/hands-on-the-risc-v-esp32-c3-will-be-your-new-esp8266/ https://hackaday.com/2021/02/08/hands-on-the-risc-v-esp32-c3... ; it seems it has the same core as the new ESP32-C5 except it's clocked at 160 MHz instead of 240 MHz. Extrapolating those ESP32-C3 benchmark results out to 240 MHz would suggest it's a bit spiffier than a single core Xtensa ESP32 but not enough to catch the dual core xtensa.
  - jareklupinski 4y ago
    I make displays out of discrete lights and panels, when I use dual-core chips I usually use one core for driving pixels and scanning continuously while the other core does network stuff and actual framebuffer content updates. Makes for a very glitch-free and seamless experience :)
  - nerpderp82 4y ago
    Once RVV implementations start working their way down into MCUs, there will be little to no reason for Xtensa, this probably a 3-5 year time frame. The ESP32 is going a bunch of SDR with Xtensa VLIW/DSP core afaik. You would have to measure cpu cycle jitter under adverse wifi conditions to see if the single core is an issue. I would assume that the wifi stack is hardware scheduled on that core with dedicated scratch ram, and that the rest of the cache and cpu cycles are granted to the user visible core only while not needed. I think a whole lot of applications didn't use the second xtensa core on the earlier parts.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - bri3d 4y ago
    It's extremely common to use both cores on the dual core Xtensa because you can bind ESP tasks (WiFi/Bluetooth) to one core and schedule your application code on the second core, reducing jitter visible to the application code. The cores were even named Core0 - PROtocol and Core1 - APPlication in the initial ESP-IDF design, where the core affinity model was going to be more strongly enforced (thankfully they backed off on this idea and now it is fully configurable SMP).
  - cwt137 4y ago
    I think developers using the Arduino platform on the ESP32 are mostly just using one core. Developers using the Espressif's SDK are more likely to use both cores.
  - Taniwha 4y ago
    They've indicated that there's multi-core risc-vs in their future ....
  - qalmakka 4y ago
    RISC-V is a way more supported architecture than Xtensa for the single fact it has upstream support from LLVM. After years Espressif still hasn't managed to get its LLVM backend upstreamed, which means using Rust or everything depending on LLVM is a hassle.
- rasz 4y ago
  >Yay for ... and Risc-v why? You as a user get 2x less computing power and celebrate it because vendor saved on licensing?
darthcloud 4y ago
I really wish Espressif would release a new chip with Dual BT (BR/EDR + LE) again beside the original one (which lack a USB phy). BT classic is still around for many application.
qwertox 4y ago
All these new models have been single core chips. I do I²S mp3 + FFT encoding on an ESP32 and stream that over UDP, but am only able to do so because they are dual core. It would be sad to see that Espressif abandons this.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > All these new models have been single core chips. The new models have all been RISC-V-based. I wonder if the multi-core situation for RISC-V is somehow more difficult or more expensive, and Espressif is having trouble justifying doing it?
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    I suspect the RISC-V cores are quite a lot larger in silicon area. Remember that the ESP series needs to integrate analogue circuitry for the wifi stuff, so the silicon process isn't optimal for logic, which in turn makes silicon area even more valuable.
- dontknowmuch 4y ago
  The recently released ESP32-S3 is a dual core, so it doesn't look like they are abandoning multi-core chips anytime soon.
- snvzz 4y ago
  AIUI S models are dual-core, C models are single-core. And S models still use tensilica CPUs, but that will change over time.
- 0des 4y ago
  > I²S mp3 + FFT encoding on an ESP32 and stream that over UDP what does this mean, if you dont mind me asking?
  - qwertox 4y ago
    You hook up a MEMS microphone and read the data (via I²S), encode it to mp3 and also to FFT data and stream the mp3 audio stream via UDP to a server, which can then be connected to via VLC player to play back that stream. The FFT data can also be streamed in a custom binary format, in order to have an real-time visual representation of the streamed mp3 audio.
tpmx 4y ago
The main reason these chips are so widely used is the low cost (well, and getting everything in one package including Wi-Fi). Wouldn't Wi-Fi 6 require relatively expensive IP licensing? (Assumption.)
- londons_explore 4y ago
  I think expressif just ignores licenses.
  - tpmx 4y ago
    (I think so too.) Then it becomes a problem for those that use Espressif chips. I'm pretty sure there is a large volume of cheap/crap wifi controlled things being sold in EU/US by at least somewhat reputable retailers with Espressif chips inside.
xchip 4y ago
I have yet to see a real use case for these IOT chips (other than adding wifi to your toaster or other innecesary things)
- xchip 4y ago
  Can't mention any good use cases, downvoter?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - generj 4y ago
    I didn’t downvote, but there are lots of useful things hobbyists do with this chips. WiFi enabling homebrew CNC machines for example. To which you may say, just buy a cheaper USB cable. That’s fair, but a homebrew CNC maker could have just bought one of the shelf as well. Part of the fun is making something exactly as you want it, the only trade offs personally imposed. Adding WiFi to all the things is somewhat of a gimmick, but gimmicks are fun. ESP chips are fast, cheap, and easier to program than alternatives. In many cases for hobbyist use the competitor is a Raspberry Pi which is nearly always overkill.
- gruturo 4y ago
  I have quite a few running at home: Irrigation system driving valves through H-bridges Relays driving ceiling fans IR blasters (actually an additional feature of the previous relay drivers) PIR sensors Expansion of a smoke detector to send a push notification to my mobile Garage door opener Security cameras (Quite a few are ESP8266 rather than 32's, depending on power and i/o lines required)
throwaway81523 4y ago
These chips (ESP32-S2,S3,C3,C5) all support Bluetooth LE but it looks like the original ESP32 is the only one that supports Bluetooth Classic. Does anyone know what is going on with that? Classic is what most Bluetooth devices actually use, right? Phones, earpieces, all that kind of stuff. Amirite? (Correction: ESP32-S2 has no bluetooth at all, see dontknowmuch's response).
- dontknowmuch 4y ago
  FYI, ESP32-S2 does not have bluetooth at all.
- rasz 4y ago
  Classic BT is cancer by committee. Imagine complexity of IP networking stack, add Wifi - its still smaller, lighter and less complicated than BT stack. Nobody wants this headache.
  - throwaway81523 4y ago
    Sure, no doubt, but there is a bunch of stuff that uses it that doesn't have BLE. So if you want to interoperate with that stuff there's no way around it.
    - rasz 4y ago
      You know how you could probably sustain yourself by eating only butter? You are going to puke a lot and hate yourself, but will technically be alive. This is how I see BT, especially used for Audio (latency, "quality", breaking connection, pairing). Might as well not try at all. By the way in my earlier post I forgot USB. Everyone thinks USB is bad, BT is worse than IP stack + wifi + USB combined.
      - throwaway81523 4y ago
        I can sympathize with that, but BT devices and software stacks are already out there in huge numbers. It's not even clear to me what BLE is good for, if it can't communicate with existing BT devices. USB3 at least didn't make you throw out your USB2 stuff. Is it even possible to buy a BLE keyboard, headphones, etc.? I guess some newer phones support BLE. My old one doesn't, I'm pretty sure.
ei8ths 4y ago
ABOUT TIME!
LeafItAlone 4y ago
Espressif has been releasing a lot of chips recently (past few years) and covering a lot of bases. I am looking forward to their ESP32-H2 in order to get Zigbee functionality. Between these chips and Micropython (and other easy-to-use-on-microcontrollers languages), they are making home developed IOT devices easy to create.
- SEJeff 4y ago
  Check this out: https://esphome.io https://esphome.io It was originally created for https://www.home-assistant.io https://www.home-assistant.io, but has morphed into its own thing entirely.
TooSmugToFail 4y ago
I’m wondering how flexible the WiFi driver stack is? Is it possible to implement a custom MAC layer protocol?
- baybal2 4y ago
rektide 4y ago
Strong resemblance to the ESP32-C6[1], which was announced a year ago & never shipped (from what I can see). RISC-V, Wifi6+BT5.0. 5GHz support is new & great to see; let's hope this one materializes!! [1] https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32_C6 https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32_C6 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758050 (179 points, 110 comments)
- Gys 4y ago
  The article says: 'The ESP32-C5 enriches Espressif’s Wi-Fi 6 solutions as a follow-up to the ESP32-C6 SoC, which was announced last year'
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    Odd naming scheme, aren't the version numbers supposed to increase?
    - azdle 4y ago
      They're not version numbers, they're model numbers. And the C5 seems to have fewer features/peripherals than the C6.
myself248 4y ago
Okay so I assume microcontrollers don't need the bandwidth, is this just about spectrum crowding on 2.4 and allowing people to run 5GHz-only networks?
- themerone 4y ago
  I've experienced pains using mobile apps to configuring 2.4ghz IOT devices on dual band home networks. This is more of a shitty router problem, but if everything is dual band this problem will go away.
vardump 4y ago
I'd like a version with ~1 MB of on-chip SRAM. 400 kB can be tight, because the wifi stack etc. is consuming a sizable portion of it. And yes, I know about SPI PSRAM, but it has quite a bit of downsides.
- antoniuschan99 4y ago
  That has a limit of 8mb as well?
- mmoskal 4y ago
  It seems the main thing eating RAM is TLS. It's kind of funny we have these protocols like MQTT that are designed to be simple with MCUs in mind, but then use them over TLS which is way more overhead than say HTTP. It would be interesting to have a secure communication channel that is simpler than TLS. OTOH I guess we can just wait and the RAM will get cheaper.
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    Encryption kind of sucks for these tiny IoT gadgets. I'd much rather have everything completely open and local only, and just not give out access to my network to people I don't trust. It's always possible that another device hacks its firmware update, and leave a payload that then hacks a NAS or something, but that's a fair tradeoff to have devices that don't phone home to some server that could vanish at any time, considering that it's pretty unlikely unless you buy really bad no name stuff. Plus, it can be very easily prevented by just not having a firmware update that can be accessed without a physical connection or button. A lot of this stuff doesn't need updates regularly. It's just a light bulb. It doesn't have to be secure against people on the same network. The cloud stuff is the stuff that gets obsolete or gets hacked, so it should go through a separate hub.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      I've been working on little temp/humidity/air qual sensors on ESP32, and I've been feeling the MQTT+TLS pain as well. I was thinking I might create a separate wifi network just for these devices, with a rule on the router that only allows MQTT from the sensor network to the main network, and ssh from the main network to the sensor network. Then I can just get rid of TLS. Sure, the MQTT will flow in cleartext from the AP, through the switch, and to the MQTT broker machine, but I think that's fine.
matthewfelgate 4y ago
Take my money. I have been waiting for chip that can do 5Ghz.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  What is the use case? I’ve got a fair few and can’t think what I’d want 5ghz for, but every time I ask why people want a particular feature I’m impressed with that people are doing.
  - myself248 4y ago
    I think it's for environments where 2.4 is just trash and you'd rather not run any of it all, and your iot crap is the only reason you're force to still stand up a 2.4 AP in the first place. This lets you go 5-only, and that's big for some settings.
    - pathartl 4y ago
      I noticed yesterday how much traffic was on my 2.4GHz IoT network last night because my phone connected to it. TBH I have no problem with everything being on 2.4, I just wish it was common to have two 2.4 radios so you could have a true IoT-only network.
      - randyrand 4y ago
        You can do that with two wifi modems.
  - wolrah 4y ago
    > What is the use case? I live in an apartment. Not even a super dense tower or anything, just a townhome style complex where everyone has their own garage and front door. From where I sit right now my phone can see nine networks on 2.4G channel 1 alone. 6 and 11 are around the same. I want everything I can get running on the 5 GHz band and in the future the 6 GHz band. I've been holding off on new APs to upgrade from 802.11ac until I can get ones that support 6 GHz.
MarkovChain242 4y ago
5GHz support on an ESP32 is something everyone has been waiting for for a loooong time. So, that would be good I guess? But in general, 802.11ax is orthogonal to 'non-stop battery-based connectivity', so we'll have to wait and see how well that works out. (Assuming they ship this one, and assuming anyone will be able to buy one in the next 2 years or so.)
- ihattendorf 4y ago
  Target Wake Time (TWT) in 802.11ax could actually substantially increase battery life for devices that need to remain connected and can't modem/deep sleep.
  - MarkovChain242 4y ago
    Yes, could, assuming that the AP supports it -- and nobody seems to be in a big hurry to implement that. After all, 802.11h has been standardized since, like, 2018 or so, with exactly zero mass-market support so far. Absent a proper 'how to join the local Wi-Fi network' story, IoT connectivity is converging around LoRaWAN anyway. As I said, I like the 5GHz support, but spinning it as 'power efficient' is a reach.
    - R0b0t1 4y ago
      I see lots of LoRaWAN for sale, but nothing really using it. There's 802 series standards for WiFi-compatible-ish packet switched radio on the ISM bands, I suspect that will get more traction once it's finally in real products.
    - Havoc 4y ago
      >nobody seems to be in a big hurry to implement that. Just checked & my 2 year+ old APs do support it according to Asus website (Asus RT-AX92U)...so can't be that uncommon
      - londons_explore 4y ago
        The problem is, until nearly all networks support it, nobody can release a product that relies on it. If you buy a battery powered IoT doorbell and it's box claims a battery life of 1 year, but then the battery is dead in a week because your router doesn't support the right 802.11 extensions, are you going to blame the router maker or the doorbell?

129 points by extesy 4y ago

Yay for 5ghz and Risc-v. Only other thing is ble with actual ble power consumption from Espressif. Speaking of which, Nordic bought out that WiFi startup late 2020 but have been silent on their WiFi mcu since https://youtu.be/PLdpg-YXhv0 https://youtu.be/PLdpg-YXhv0

jabl 4y ago
It's still a single core CPU, though, whereas the Xtensa-based ESP32 has a dual core CPU. Not sure people are actually using that second core in practice though.. And yes, this is probably an excellent case where RISC-V can win; wouldn't surprise me if RISC-V already has better toolchain support than Xtensa despite being a much younger ISA. Some benchmarks on the earlier ESP32-C3 at https://hackaday.com/2021/02/08/hands-on-the-risc-v-esp32-c3-will-be-your-new-esp8266/ https://hackaday.com/2021/02/08/hands-on-the-risc-v-esp32-c3... ; it seems it has the same core as the new ESP32-C5 except it's clocked at 160 MHz instead of 240 MHz. Extrapolating those ESP32-C3 benchmark results out to 240 MHz would suggest it's a bit spiffier than a single core Xtensa ESP32 but not enough to catch the dual core xtensa.
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  I make displays out of discrete lights and panels, when I use dual-core chips I usually use one core for driving pixels and scanning continuously while the other core does network stuff and actual framebuffer content updates. Makes for a very glitch-free and seamless experience :)
- nerpderp82 4y ago
  Once RVV implementations start working their way down into MCUs, there will be little to no reason for Xtensa, this probably a 3-5 year time frame. The ESP32 is going a bunch of SDR with Xtensa VLIW/DSP core afaik. You would have to measure cpu cycle jitter under adverse wifi conditions to see if the single core is an issue. I would assume that the wifi stack is hardware scheduled on that core with dedicated scratch ram, and that the rest of the cache and cpu cycles are granted to the user visible core only while not needed. I think a whole lot of applications didn't use the second xtensa core on the earlier parts.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bri3d 4y ago
  It's extremely common to use both cores on the dual core Xtensa because you can bind ESP tasks (WiFi/Bluetooth) to one core and schedule your application code on the second core, reducing jitter visible to the application code. The cores were even named Core0 - PROtocol and Core1 - APPlication in the initial ESP-IDF design, where the core affinity model was going to be more strongly enforced (thankfully they backed off on this idea and now it is fully configurable SMP).
- cwt137 4y ago
  I think developers using the Arduino platform on the ESP32 are mostly just using one core. Developers using the Espressif's SDK are more likely to use both cores.
- Taniwha 4y ago
  They've indicated that there's multi-core risc-vs in their future ....
- qalmakka 4y ago
  RISC-V is a way more supported architecture than Xtensa for the single fact it has upstream support from LLVM. After years Espressif still hasn't managed to get its LLVM backend upstreamed, which means using Rust or everything depending on LLVM is a hassle.
rasz 4y ago
>Yay for ... and Risc-v why? You as a user get 2x less computing power and celebrate it because vendor saved on licensing?

darthcloud 4y ago

I really wish Espressif would release a new chip with Dual BT (BR/EDR + LE) again beside the original one (which lack a USB phy). BT classic is still around for many application.

qwertox 4y ago

All these new models have been single core chips. I do I²S mp3 + FFT encoding on an ESP32 and stream that over UDP, but am only able to do so because they are dual core. It would be sad to see that Espressif abandons this.

kelnos 4y ago
> All these new models have been single core chips. The new models have all been RISC-V-based. I wonder if the multi-core situation for RISC-V is somehow more difficult or more expensive, and Espressif is having trouble justifying doing it?
- londons_explore 4y ago
  I suspect the RISC-V cores are quite a lot larger in silicon area. Remember that the ESP series needs to integrate analogue circuitry for the wifi stuff, so the silicon process isn't optimal for logic, which in turn makes silicon area even more valuable.
dontknowmuch 4y ago
The recently released ESP32-S3 is a dual core, so it doesn't look like they are abandoning multi-core chips anytime soon.
snvzz 4y ago
AIUI S models are dual-core, C models are single-core. And S models still use tensilica CPUs, but that will change over time.
0des 4y ago
> I²S mp3 + FFT encoding on an ESP32 and stream that over UDP what does this mean, if you dont mind me asking?
- qwertox 4y ago
  You hook up a MEMS microphone and read the data (via I²S), encode it to mp3 and also to FFT data and stream the mp3 audio stream via UDP to a server, which can then be connected to via VLC player to play back that stream. The FFT data can also be streamed in a custom binary format, in order to have an real-time visual representation of the streamed mp3 audio.

tpmx 4y ago

The main reason these chips are so widely used is the low cost (well, and getting everything in one package including Wi-Fi). Wouldn't Wi-Fi 6 require relatively expensive IP licensing? (Assumption.)

londons_explore 4y ago
I think expressif just ignores licenses.
- tpmx 4y ago
  (I think so too.) Then it becomes a problem for those that use Espressif chips. I'm pretty sure there is a large volume of cheap/crap wifi controlled things being sold in EU/US by at least somewhat reputable retailers with Espressif chips inside.

xchip 4y ago

I have yet to see a real use case for these IOT chips (other than adding wifi to your toaster or other innecesary things)

xchip 4y ago
Can't mention any good use cases, downvoter?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- generj 4y ago
  I didn’t downvote, but there are lots of useful things hobbyists do with this chips. WiFi enabling homebrew CNC machines for example. To which you may say, just buy a cheaper USB cable. That’s fair, but a homebrew CNC maker could have just bought one of the shelf as well. Part of the fun is making something exactly as you want it, the only trade offs personally imposed. Adding WiFi to all the things is somewhat of a gimmick, but gimmicks are fun. ESP chips are fast, cheap, and easier to program than alternatives. In many cases for hobbyist use the competitor is a Raspberry Pi which is nearly always overkill.
gruturo 4y ago
I have quite a few running at home: Irrigation system driving valves through H-bridges Relays driving ceiling fans IR blasters (actually an additional feature of the previous relay drivers) PIR sensors Expansion of a smoke detector to send a push notification to my mobile Garage door opener Security cameras (Quite a few are ESP8266 rather than 32's, depending on power and i/o lines required)

throwaway81523 4y ago

These chips (ESP32-S2,S3,C3,C5) all support Bluetooth LE but it looks like the original ESP32 is the only one that supports Bluetooth Classic. Does anyone know what is going on with that? Classic is what most Bluetooth devices actually use, right? Phones, earpieces, all that kind of stuff. Amirite? (Correction: ESP32-S2 has no bluetooth at all, see dontknowmuch's response).

dontknowmuch 4y ago
FYI, ESP32-S2 does not have bluetooth at all.
rasz 4y ago
Classic BT is cancer by committee. Imagine complexity of IP networking stack, add Wifi - its still smaller, lighter and less complicated than BT stack. Nobody wants this headache.
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  Sure, no doubt, but there is a bunch of stuff that uses it that doesn't have BLE. So if you want to interoperate with that stuff there's no way around it.
  - rasz 4y ago
    You know how you could probably sustain yourself by eating only butter? You are going to puke a lot and hate yourself, but will technically be alive. This is how I see BT, especially used for Audio (latency, "quality", breaking connection, pairing). Might as well not try at all. By the way in my earlier post I forgot USB. Everyone thinks USB is bad, BT is worse than IP stack + wifi + USB combined.
    - throwaway81523 4y ago
      I can sympathize with that, but BT devices and software stacks are already out there in huge numbers. It's not even clear to me what BLE is good for, if it can't communicate with existing BT devices. USB3 at least didn't make you throw out your USB2 stuff. Is it even possible to buy a BLE keyboard, headphones, etc.? I guess some newer phones support BLE. My old one doesn't, I'm pretty sure.

ei8ths 4y ago

ABOUT TIME!

LeafItAlone 4y ago

Espressif has been releasing a lot of chips recently (past few years) and covering a lot of bases. I am looking forward to their ESP32-H2 in order to get Zigbee functionality. Between these chips and Micropython (and other easy-to-use-on-microcontrollers languages), they are making home developed IOT devices easy to create.

SEJeff 4y ago
Check this out: https://esphome.io https://esphome.io It was originally created for https://www.home-assistant.io https://www.home-assistant.io, but has morphed into its own thing entirely.

TooSmugToFail 4y ago

I’m wondering how flexible the WiFi driver stack is? Is it possible to implement a custom MAC layer protocol?

baybal2 4y ago

rektide 4y ago

Strong resemblance to the ESP32-C6[1], which was announced a year ago & never shipped (from what I can see). RISC-V, Wifi6+BT5.0. 5GHz support is new & great to see; let's hope this one materializes!! [1] https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32_C6 https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32_C6 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758050 (179 points, 110 comments)

Gys 4y ago
The article says: 'The ESP32-C5 enriches Espressif’s Wi-Fi 6 solutions as a follow-up to the ESP32-C6 SoC, which was announced last year'
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Odd naming scheme, aren't the version numbers supposed to increase?
  - azdle 4y ago
    They're not version numbers, they're model numbers. And the C5 seems to have fewer features/peripherals than the C6.

myself248 4y ago

Okay so I assume microcontrollers don't need the bandwidth, is this just about spectrum crowding on 2.4 and allowing people to run 5GHz-only networks?

themerone 4y ago
I've experienced pains using mobile apps to configuring 2.4ghz IOT devices on dual band home networks. This is more of a shitty router problem, but if everything is dual band this problem will go away.

vardump 4y ago

I'd like a version with ~1 MB of on-chip SRAM. 400 kB can be tight, because the wifi stack etc. is consuming a sizable portion of it. And yes, I know about SPI PSRAM, but it has quite a bit of downsides.

antoniuschan99 4y ago
That has a limit of 8mb as well?
mmoskal 4y ago
It seems the main thing eating RAM is TLS. It's kind of funny we have these protocols like MQTT that are designed to be simple with MCUs in mind, but then use them over TLS which is way more overhead than say HTTP. It would be interesting to have a secure communication channel that is simpler than TLS. OTOH I guess we can just wait and the RAM will get cheaper.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  Encryption kind of sucks for these tiny IoT gadgets. I'd much rather have everything completely open and local only, and just not give out access to my network to people I don't trust. It's always possible that another device hacks its firmware update, and leave a payload that then hacks a NAS or something, but that's a fair tradeoff to have devices that don't phone home to some server that could vanish at any time, considering that it's pretty unlikely unless you buy really bad no name stuff. Plus, it can be very easily prevented by just not having a firmware update that can be accessed without a physical connection or button. A lot of this stuff doesn't need updates regularly. It's just a light bulb. It doesn't have to be secure against people on the same network. The cloud stuff is the stuff that gets obsolete or gets hacked, so it should go through a separate hub.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    I've been working on little temp/humidity/air qual sensors on ESP32, and I've been feeling the MQTT+TLS pain as well. I was thinking I might create a separate wifi network just for these devices, with a rule on the router that only allows MQTT from the sensor network to the main network, and ssh from the main network to the sensor network. Then I can just get rid of TLS. Sure, the MQTT will flow in cleartext from the AP, through the switch, and to the MQTT broker machine, but I think that's fine.

matthewfelgate 4y ago

Take my money. I have been waiting for chip that can do 5Ghz.

lostlogin 4y ago
What is the use case? I’ve got a fair few and can’t think what I’d want 5ghz for, but every time I ask why people want a particular feature I’m impressed with that people are doing.
- myself248 4y ago
  I think it's for environments where 2.4 is just trash and you'd rather not run any of it all, and your iot crap is the only reason you're force to still stand up a 2.4 AP in the first place. This lets you go 5-only, and that's big for some settings.
  - pathartl 4y ago
    I noticed yesterday how much traffic was on my 2.4GHz IoT network last night because my phone connected to it. TBH I have no problem with everything being on 2.4, I just wish it was common to have two 2.4 radios so you could have a true IoT-only network.
    - randyrand 4y ago
      You can do that with two wifi modems.
- wolrah 4y ago
  > What is the use case? I live in an apartment. Not even a super dense tower or anything, just a townhome style complex where everyone has their own garage and front door. From where I sit right now my phone can see nine networks on 2.4G channel 1 alone. 6 and 11 are around the same. I want everything I can get running on the 5 GHz band and in the future the 6 GHz band. I've been holding off on new APs to upgrade from 802.11ac until I can get ones that support 6 GHz.

MarkovChain242 4y ago

5GHz support on an ESP32 is something everyone has been waiting for for a loooong time. So, that would be good I guess? But in general, 802.11ax is orthogonal to 'non-stop battery-based connectivity', so we'll have to wait and see how well that works out. (Assuming they ship this one, and assuming anyone will be able to buy one in the next 2 years or so.)

ihattendorf 4y ago
Target Wake Time (TWT) in 802.11ax could actually substantially increase battery life for devices that need to remain connected and can't modem/deep sleep.
- MarkovChain242 4y ago
  Yes, could, assuming that the AP supports it -- and nobody seems to be in a big hurry to implement that. After all, 802.11h has been standardized since, like, 2018 or so, with exactly zero mass-market support so far. Absent a proper 'how to join the local Wi-Fi network' story, IoT connectivity is converging around LoRaWAN anyway. As I said, I like the 5GHz support, but spinning it as 'power efficient' is a reach.
  - R0b0t1 4y ago
    I see lots of LoRaWAN for sale, but nothing really using it. There's 802 series standards for WiFi-compatible-ish packet switched radio on the ISM bands, I suspect that will get more traction once it's finally in real products.
  - Havoc 4y ago
    >nobody seems to be in a big hurry to implement that. Just checked & my 2 year+ old APs do support it according to Asus website (Asus RT-AX92U)...so can't be that uncommon
    - londons_explore 4y ago
      The problem is, until nearly all networks support it, nobody can release a product that relies on it. If you buy a battery powered IoT doorbell and it's box claims a battery life of 1 year, but then the battery is dead in a week because your router doesn't support the right 802.11 extensions, are you going to blame the router maker or the doorbell?