4 ms·

I was recently playing with an ESP32-C3 and was astonished at how fast it could boot and make an http request. (Can’t remember if it was ssl or not). I was meas

I was recently playing with an ESP32-C3 and was astonished at how fast it could boot and make an http request. (Can’t remember if it was ssl or not). I was measuring just under 1 second. Still an eternity compared to Zigbee, but I was quite surprised. I expected it to be more like 5-10 seconds. It makes me wonder why far more powerful devices (iPhone, MacBook) take so long to connect to or change WiFi networks.

dragontamer 4y ago
Its probably just the nature of optimizing for your customer. iPhones / MacBooks don't care about battery life, or connecting/disconnecting from WiFi all the time. Optimizing from 5s connection to 1s connection is completely irrelevant. Its not like people normally disconnect/reconnect to WiFi. The few times I do it (ie: walk into my house / WiFi is back in range), my phone reconnects long before I even take it out of my pocket. Once connected, it stays connected and active. ESP32 however, is an IoT chip. Optimizing from 5s to 1s connection time is a reduction of 80% of your power usage in practice. Because almost every IoT device will immediately sleep after the WiFi message is sent. That is impressive though. Good on them for making this process more efficient. It'd never beat a specially designed protocol like Zigbee (or any of the 802.15.4 stuff). But so many people use 802.11 / WiFi these days that these kinds of optimizations are hugely relevant.