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Price and availability had a lot to do with it. When you’re trying to squeeze every dollar out of a BOM, the cheapest chip that gets the job done is going to w
by PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Price and availability had a lot to do with it.
When you’re trying to squeeze every dollar out of a BOM, the cheapest chip that gets the job done is going to win. The TI and STM parts were more expensive and less available, so they did not win.
The landscape is slowly evolving, though. Espressif is getting a reputation as the Raspberry Pi of IoT MCUs: Easy to get started and everyone knows about it, but too many people are trying to use it in places where it’s not really the right tool for the job.
A few years ago I’d hear “can’t you just use a Raspberry Pi…” from people who knew just enough to be dangerous. Now it’s “can’t you just use an ESP32…”
- fest 4y agoWell, since ESP32 is available as chip, you can design a product which is just as robust, safe, resistant to ambient temperature effects, manufacturable at scale as you could with any other TI/ST alternative. With Raspberry Pi, up until the introduction of compute module you would still have been limited to whatever board-level properties Raspberry Pi foundation decided to go (limited temperature range, flakey USB sockets that don't tolerate high vibration, requiring hand assembly, difficulties sourcing reliable SD cards, default OS settings wearing out the SD card, difficulties sourcing in large quantities etc)- in addition to the same judgement on the side of person implementing the design.