4 ms·

Things like battery life will probably improve with experience, I was talking to a silicon guy about the RP2040 and they said it's pretty characteristic of a fi

Things like battery life will probably improve with experience, I was talking to a silicon guy about the RP2040 and they said it's pretty characteristic of a first generation design. The digital logic that can be validated on an FPGA is fine for the most part, but the analog elements are much more difficult to fine tune, hence the poor power consumption, poor ADCs, and lack of internal DACs or opamps in the RP2040, and why the Pico Ws radio is a separate off-the-shelf part rather than fully integrated like it is on the ESP32.

nimish 2y ago
Analog is large area and expensive in general so sticking to good digital and passable analog is a very good strategy to keep costs down.
- dragontamer 2y ago
  Modern Microcontrollers focus on analog because modern microprocessors start at like $5, maybe even cheaper. If you need digital girth, don't mess with lol 264kB RP2040 systems. Just buy $3 of DDR3L RAM (aka: 128MB) and run Linux for goodness sake. --------- Even ESP32 is a glorified Bluetooth/Wifi chip first and everything secondary. You have to have a niche at this price point to be competitive. RP2040's niche is the 264kB of SRAM, but not much else. It needs a bunch of external parts before it can become a reasonable solution as well, so its not really cost optimized IMO.
  - immibis 2y ago
    You can't run Linux on DRAM. You need a CPU.
    - dragontamer 2y ago
      You can't run anything on an RP2040. There's no Flash or code space. RP2040 sits at an awkward placement. It requires external parts, but low end SPI parts and not the nicer proper RAM like DDR3L or the like. ------ My point is that if you have a design that fundamentally requires external parts like the RP2040, the accurate comparison is against MPUs. Chips that are specifically designed to work with powerful and cost effective external components. -------- Analog-focused designs like ATMega, ESP32 or STM32 comfortably do things that the real computers or MPUs cannot do. Like read a voltage, work with OpAMPs or other analog stuff that cannot fit on a proper Linux computer chip like SAM9x60D1G. And to do so without any external parts, so that you have the simplest design possible.
      - floxy 2y ago
        Glad you mentioned Microchip. The PIC32MK family is MIPS architecture microcontroller, with hardware floating point unit, running at 120 MHz, with a whole slew of peripherals, like 10 MHz unity-gain op-amp, D/A converter, lots of flexibility in mapping peripherals to pins, fast A/D, DMA, etc.. https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-and-microprocessors/32-bit-mcus/pic32-32-bit-mcus/pic32mk https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-an...
      - makapuf 2y ago
        ESP32 chips also need external SPI Flash, and many STM32 have little flash and QuadSPI with execute from external flash capabilities, so I don't see this as a specificity of RP2040.
        orphea 2y ago
        Some ESP32 chips have in-package flash, e.g. ESP32-C6FH4.
      - 127 2y ago
        Turns out you can actually run quite a lot with dual core CPU clocked at 250MHz. You can also use part of the flash as file system, but that's not quite as straight forward.
      - 15155 2y ago
        Many devices run entirely from RAM which is completely viable with the ROM bootloader/SWD.
dgacmu 2y ago
Though it's a continuing puzzle to me why ESPs have worse ADCs than the rp2040, given their relative maturity. (Neither is particularly good, mind you, but I'm generally ok with the rp for my toy applications.)
- datameta 2y ago
  Speaking of relative maturity, I just had a heap corruption debug for a few days. Imagine my surprise when fixing the issue involved switching from the default ESP32 BLE library to the NimBLE library...
  - Ballas 2y ago
    I have been having an intermittent issue as well, but only when using BLE, so I was suspecting the Espressive drivers. I was wondering if it would be worth switching over to NimBLE, so thanks for that tip, I'll try it out and see if the problem goes away. Luckily, it's a very low priority.
- rkagerer 2y ago
  If you read through errata and compare editions of the tech docs, it becomes apparent ESP32 has a history of silicon problems with its ADC's - through a few generations of their chips. In some models they removed huge swaths of related functionality from their documentation because it was bugged. They're slowly getting better but analog is hard and I suspect they haven't prioritized it as much, historically.
baybal2 2y ago
[dead]
konstantinua00 2y ago
he said?
- triyambakam 2y ago
  I was thinking about this. I think there is a trend in English to use they even when the gender is known to indicate a kind of distance from that person. E.g. my guess about the parent poster is that they (he or she in this case, a different usage) may not be very close to the "silicon guy"
  - nsteel 2y ago
    I don't think this is the case. Isn't it that "guy" is essentially gender neutral in this context? In the same way you can reasonably say "hi guys" to greet people of any gender. "Silicon person", "silicon gal" etc would be weirder phrasing. "Silicon specialist" maybe but I don't personally think any of this merits discussion.
    - trealira 2y ago
      Maybe it's used neutrally in greetings (e.g. "Hi guys,") but when referring to someone specific, if you say they're a guy, it will generally be assumed that person is a man.
      - nsteel 2y ago
        There's no maybe about it. And it goes beyond greetings. But I do agree it was non-sensical here
        trealira 2y ago
        You're right, people do use it neutrally in greetings, not just maybe. And in more than greetings, more as a general form of address. More specifically, I would say that when not used to address multiple people in the second person (i.e. when saying "you guys"), then the word "guy" implies that the referent is male.
15155 2y ago
The vast majority of real, commercial MCUs do not have WiFi in-package. The ESP32 is unique in this regard and is one of its only redeeming features. I would rather buy the RP2040 and the NRF7001/NRF7002 for the same or less total cost and have a substantially better wireless solution (5.4GHz WiFi 6).

nimish 2y ago

Analog is large area and expensive in general so sticking to good digital and passable analog is a very good strategy to keep costs down.

dragontamer 2y ago
Modern Microcontrollers focus on analog because modern microprocessors start at like $5, maybe even cheaper. If you need digital girth, don't mess with lol 264kB RP2040 systems. Just buy $3 of DDR3L RAM (aka: 128MB) and run Linux for goodness sake. --------- Even ESP32 is a glorified Bluetooth/Wifi chip first and everything secondary. You have to have a niche at this price point to be competitive. RP2040's niche is the 264kB of SRAM, but not much else. It needs a bunch of external parts before it can become a reasonable solution as well, so its not really cost optimized IMO.
- immibis 2y ago
  You can't run Linux on DRAM. You need a CPU.
  - dragontamer 2y ago
    You can't run anything on an RP2040. There's no Flash or code space. RP2040 sits at an awkward placement. It requires external parts, but low end SPI parts and not the nicer proper RAM like DDR3L or the like. ------ My point is that if you have a design that fundamentally requires external parts like the RP2040, the accurate comparison is against MPUs. Chips that are specifically designed to work with powerful and cost effective external components. -------- Analog-focused designs like ATMega, ESP32 or STM32 comfortably do things that the real computers or MPUs cannot do. Like read a voltage, work with OpAMPs or other analog stuff that cannot fit on a proper Linux computer chip like SAM9x60D1G. And to do so without any external parts, so that you have the simplest design possible.
    - floxy 2y ago
      Glad you mentioned Microchip. The PIC32MK family is MIPS architecture microcontroller, with hardware floating point unit, running at 120 MHz, with a whole slew of peripherals, like 10 MHz unity-gain op-amp, D/A converter, lots of flexibility in mapping peripherals to pins, fast A/D, DMA, etc.. https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-and-microprocessors/32-bit-mcus/pic32-32-bit-mcus/pic32mk https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-an...
    - makapuf 2y ago
      ESP32 chips also need external SPI Flash, and many STM32 have little flash and QuadSPI with execute from external flash capabilities, so I don't see this as a specificity of RP2040.
      - orphea 2y ago
        Some ESP32 chips have in-package flash, e.g. ESP32-C6FH4.
    - 127 2y ago
      Turns out you can actually run quite a lot with dual core CPU clocked at 250MHz. You can also use part of the flash as file system, but that's not quite as straight forward.
    - 15155 2y ago
      Many devices run entirely from RAM which is completely viable with the ROM bootloader/SWD.

dgacmu 2y ago

Though it's a continuing puzzle to me why ESPs have worse ADCs than the rp2040, given their relative maturity. (Neither is particularly good, mind you, but I'm generally ok with the rp for my toy applications.)

datameta 2y ago
Speaking of relative maturity, I just had a heap corruption debug for a few days. Imagine my surprise when fixing the issue involved switching from the default ESP32 BLE library to the NimBLE library...
- Ballas 2y ago
  I have been having an intermittent issue as well, but only when using BLE, so I was suspecting the Espressive drivers. I was wondering if it would be worth switching over to NimBLE, so thanks for that tip, I'll try it out and see if the problem goes away. Luckily, it's a very low priority.
rkagerer 2y ago
If you read through errata and compare editions of the tech docs, it becomes apparent ESP32 has a history of silicon problems with its ADC's - through a few generations of their chips. In some models they removed huge swaths of related functionality from their documentation because it was bugged. They're slowly getting better but analog is hard and I suspect they haven't prioritized it as much, historically.

baybal2 2y ago

[dead]

konstantinua00 2y ago

he said?

triyambakam 2y ago
I was thinking about this. I think there is a trend in English to use they even when the gender is known to indicate a kind of distance from that person. E.g. my guess about the parent poster is that they (he or she in this case, a different usage) may not be very close to the "silicon guy"
- nsteel 2y ago
  I don't think this is the case. Isn't it that "guy" is essentially gender neutral in this context? In the same way you can reasonably say "hi guys" to greet people of any gender. "Silicon person", "silicon gal" etc would be weirder phrasing. "Silicon specialist" maybe but I don't personally think any of this merits discussion.
  - trealira 2y ago
    Maybe it's used neutrally in greetings (e.g. "Hi guys,") but when referring to someone specific, if you say they're a guy, it will generally be assumed that person is a man.
    - nsteel 2y ago
      There's no maybe about it. And it goes beyond greetings. But I do agree it was non-sensical here
      - trealira 2y ago
        You're right, people do use it neutrally in greetings, not just maybe. And in more than greetings, more as a general form of address. More specifically, I would say that when not used to address multiple people in the second person (i.e. when saying "you guys"), then the word "guy" implies that the referent is male.

15155 2y ago

The vast majority of real, commercial MCUs do not have WiFi in-package. The ESP32 is unique in this regard and is one of its only redeeming features. I would rather buy the RP2040 and the NRF7001/NRF7002 for the same or less total cost and have a substantially better wireless solution (5.4GHz WiFi 6).