5 ms·

What an odd board. The ESP32-S3 is an absolute powerhouse by itself. I really don't see why would you add another (probably pricey) MCU to serve as the master.

NoraCodes 3y ago
Honestly, I think it's a good choice; I can absolutely see folks running a small web server or something on the ESP32 and putting their realtime code on the main MCU, for instance.
- hoosieree 3y ago
  When I did electronics for a psychology department, nearly everything had to have both hard real-time sensing and be plug-and-play with Windows and MacOS. We ended up using a lot of Arduinos, but having a webserver on board would have been so much nicer than serial over USB, or transferring from SD cards.
- teraflop 3y ago
  But the ESP32-S3 is already a dual-core processor.
- sheepybloke 3y ago
  I think this depends on how the ICs are connected. If it's running something like I2C between them, then your data transfer rates will be too low and you'll be quite limited in some of the applications.
jareklupinski 3y ago
yea I go for the S3 when I need networking on one core while still running realtime applications on the other core, but it's the priciest one i would have probably paired a lower cost -C family (maybe the RISC one for extra nerd cred) with the arduino, since those have only one core, which would have made for a good split maybe i'll think of a three-core micro project :)
adolph 3y ago
It is a beast. Here is an example of object detection using the old ESP32: ESP32-CAM Object Detection with Edge Impulse https://dronebotworkshop.com/esp32-object-detect/ https://dronebotworkshop.com/esp32-object-detect/
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
Modularity and separation of concerns, in hardware. Historically, you wanted your PIC or 8051 to be in complete control of the system. You built the core of your RTOS around some well-understood central processor, but farmed out tasks like converting text display over an SPI-like interface to modulating a 16x2 character LCD, or decoding your UART into USB serial to an FTDI chip, or decoding MP3 bitstreams into I2S or raw DAC signals, or what have you. SOCs added on-chip peripherals for some functions, but a lot of stuff was off-chip like in this Arduino. You wouldn't run code on an FTDI chip, that's an inversion of the architecture, and back in the day that was an ASIC that did nothing but covert RS232 into USB packets so there was no way to run code on it. The ESP32 is what it is because decoding 802.11 RF signals and running a TCP/IP stack is now a task not for an ASIC but a generic microcontroller that's fast enough to do those tasks in software. The processor is so much more powerful than the ancient Atmel Atmega328 in an Arduino Duemilanove that had 32 KB Flash and 2 KB SRAM on an 8-bit bus at up to a whopping 20 MHz that it seems ridiculous to do anything at all with such a 'master' processor.
kkielhofner 3y ago
Somewhat shameless but relevant plug - we use the ESP32-S3 for Willow[0]. The dual core S3 and "high speed" external PSRAM are game changers. What it is capable of (especially considering the price point) is nothing short of incredible. Wake word activation, audio processing (AGC, AEC, etc), audio streaming, even on device speech recognition for up to 400 commands with Multinet. All remarkably performant, easily besting Alexa/Echo in terms of interactivity and response time (even when using an inference server across the internet for speech recognition). Sure we're down in ESP-IDF land and managing everything we have going on in FreeRTOS is a pain but that's not anything you wouldn't have on any microcontroller. We're also doing a lot considering and generally speaking we "just" throw/pin audio tasks (with varying priority) on core 1 while more-or-less dumping everything else on core 0. Seems to be working well so far! [0] - https://github.com/toverainc/willow https://github.com/toverainc/willow
- no_time 3y ago
  Wow good luck with your project. Virtual assistants are not my thing. But if I were to try again, this would certainly be my first choice.
  - kkielhofner 3y ago
    Thanks!
- skykooler 3y ago
  Interesting, this is yet another open source project that relies on a proprietary wake word model. Why are there no open source wake word engines like there are for speech recognition?
  - ktm5j 3y ago
    Probably because no one has built one yet.. feel free to do so.
  - thesh4d0w 3y ago
    The process of generating the wake word data is pretty onerous - https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-sr/en/latest/esp32s3/wake_word_engine/ESP_Wake_Words_Customization.html https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-sr/en/latest/esp32s3...
sbierwagen 3y ago
>another (probably pricey) MCU The R7FA4M1AB3CFM costs $3.42 at quantity: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/R7FA4M1AB3CFM%2523AA0/559-R7FA4M1AB3CFM%2523AA0-ND/10447195 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/R7FA4M1AB3CFM%252... For an Arduino board, voltage and pin compatibility is an absolute hard requirement. (The only reason you use Arduino is to use Arduino software or existing peripherals/shields) ESP32 has fewer pins and is a 3.3V part.

NoraCodes 3y ago

Honestly, I think it's a good choice; I can absolutely see folks running a small web server or something on the ESP32 and putting their realtime code on the main MCU, for instance.

hoosieree 3y ago
When I did electronics for a psychology department, nearly everything had to have both hard real-time sensing and be plug-and-play with Windows and MacOS. We ended up using a lot of Arduinos, but having a webserver on board would have been so much nicer than serial over USB, or transferring from SD cards.
teraflop 3y ago
But the ESP32-S3 is already a dual-core processor.
sheepybloke 3y ago
I think this depends on how the ICs are connected. If it's running something like I2C between them, then your data transfer rates will be too low and you'll be quite limited in some of the applications.

jareklupinski 3y ago

yea I go for the S3 when I need networking on one core while still running realtime applications on the other core, but it's the priciest one i would have probably paired a lower cost -C family (maybe the RISC one for extra nerd cred) with the arduino, since those have only one core, which would have made for a good split maybe i'll think of a three-core micro project :)

adolph 3y ago

It is a beast. Here is an example of object detection using the old ESP32: ESP32-CAM Object Detection with Edge Impulse https://dronebotworkshop.com/esp32-object-detect/ https://dronebotworkshop.com/esp32-object-detect/

LeifCarrotson 3y ago

Modularity and separation of concerns, in hardware. Historically, you wanted your PIC or 8051 to be in complete control of the system. You built the core of your RTOS around some well-understood central processor, but farmed out tasks like converting text display over an SPI-like interface to modulating a 16x2 character LCD, or decoding your UART into USB serial to an FTDI chip, or decoding MP3 bitstreams into I2S or raw DAC signals, or what have you. SOCs added on-chip peripherals for some functions, but a lot of stuff was off-chip like in this Arduino. You wouldn't run code on an FTDI chip, that's an inversion of the architecture, and back in the day that was an ASIC that did nothing but covert RS232 into USB packets so there was no way to run code on it. The ESP32 is what it is because decoding 802.11 RF signals and running a TCP/IP stack is now a task not for an ASIC but a generic microcontroller that's fast enough to do those tasks in software. The processor is so much more powerful than the ancient Atmel Atmega328 in an Arduino Duemilanove that had 32 KB Flash and 2 KB SRAM on an 8-bit bus at up to a whopping 20 MHz that it seems ridiculous to do anything at all with such a 'master' processor.

kkielhofner 3y ago

Somewhat shameless but relevant plug - we use the ESP32-S3 for Willow[0]. The dual core S3 and "high speed" external PSRAM are game changers. What it is capable of (especially considering the price point) is nothing short of incredible. Wake word activation, audio processing (AGC, AEC, etc), audio streaming, even on device speech recognition for up to 400 commands with Multinet. All remarkably performant, easily besting Alexa/Echo in terms of interactivity and response time (even when using an inference server across the internet for speech recognition). Sure we're down in ESP-IDF land and managing everything we have going on in FreeRTOS is a pain but that's not anything you wouldn't have on any microcontroller. We're also doing a lot considering and generally speaking we "just" throw/pin audio tasks (with varying priority) on core 1 while more-or-less dumping everything else on core 0. Seems to be working well so far! [0] - https://github.com/toverainc/willow https://github.com/toverainc/willow

no_time 3y ago
Wow good luck with your project. Virtual assistants are not my thing. But if I were to try again, this would certainly be my first choice.
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  Thanks!
skykooler 3y ago
Interesting, this is yet another open source project that relies on a proprietary wake word model. Why are there no open source wake word engines like there are for speech recognition?
- ktm5j 3y ago
  Probably because no one has built one yet.. feel free to do so.
- thesh4d0w 3y ago
  The process of generating the wake word data is pretty onerous - https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-sr/en/latest/esp32s3/wake_word_engine/ESP_Wake_Words_Customization.html https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-sr/en/latest/esp32s3...

sbierwagen 3y ago

>another (probably pricey) MCU The R7FA4M1AB3CFM costs $3.42 at quantity: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/R7FA4M1AB3CFM%2523AA0/559-R7FA4M1AB3CFM%2523AA0-ND/10447195 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/R7FA4M1AB3CFM%252... For an Arduino board, voltage and pin compatibility is an absolute hard requirement. (The only reason you use Arduino is to use Arduino software or existing peripherals/shields) ESP32 has fewer pins and is a 3.3V part.