4 ms·
Still super weird that Espressif is the only company that managed it to get a Wifi modem into a more or less decent microcontroller. ST still far behind when i
by ElectRabbit 2y ago
Still super weird that Espressif is the only company that managed it to get a Wifi modem into a more or less decent microcontroller.
ST still far behind when it comes to this stuff.
- smat 2y agoNordic semiconductor also has microcontrollers with BT and Wifi. They are much less common than espressifs solution though.
- ElectRabbit 2y agoBT/Wifi on a single chip? Do you have a part number? That'd be revolutionary. I love the ESP32. But they love (too much) current.
- Arch-TK 2y agohttps://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Wireless/WiFi/Products?lang=en https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Wireless/WiFi/Products?l... Search for the SiPs and SoCs, they all support BLE.
- 3abiton 2y agoBecause the prices are not competitive enough for hobbyists. How can you expect people to adopt and develop on top of your chips if they can't afford it?
- elromulous 2y agoFyi, while Nordic products are usually excellent, they did not design the wifi ics. They bought a company and slapped their name on the chips. I haven't used them yet, but from what I've heard they don't live up to Nordic's standard. Edit: also afaik they don't have a mcu+wifi in one yet.
- chpatrick 2y agoMost TuYa-based modules on AliExpress are Beken.
- vdfs 2y agoOther examples: - BK72xx Ex: BK7231T, BK7231N - RTL87xx Ex: RTL8710BN, RTL8710BX - RP2040 But seems like the wifi is an extranl module in W boards Taken from https://esphome.io https://esphome.io
- odiroot 2y agoBeken modules are so weirdly cheap. I've seen them inside 2£ LED bulbs in discount stores.
- arghwhat 2y agoWiFi and Bluetooth for the Raspberry Pico W is provided by an Infineon CYW43439 (https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/wireless-connectivity/airoc-wi-fi-plus-bluetooth-combos/wi-fi-4-802.11n/cyw43439/ https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/wireless-connectivit...), which has its own ARM cores.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- trelliscoded 2y agoTI has had wifi+bluetooth microcontrollers for almost a decade now, and you get a cortex m4.
- LeifCarrotson 2y agoThose are great in a professional context, but the CC3200s never had a <$10 Chinese breakout board. And they're programmed in IAR or CCS instead of in the Arduino IDE, and they're programmed with an RTOS and the Cortex M4's powerful ISR engine instead of just a "while" loop. ESP32/ESP8266 are basically optimized to be hobbyist-friendly, while most other wireless systems are not.
- ajsnigrutin 2y agoThey hit the right combo of cheap ($€), accessible (you can buy them everywhere, shipped everywhere, even in quantities of 1), easy to use hardware (they're sold on many different 'breakout boards' with usb connectors for power and programming and marked pins), easy to use software (documentation, examples, arduino ide, nodemcu) and without any weird limits licencing wise. Arduino was similar at first, but stayed on low-performance avr chips for way too long and non-chinese ones were expensive (and well, no wifi), rpi pico has some nice features, but much harder to get at first, and everything else is a "raw chip" bought on sites like digikey, with expensive shipping, 600+ pages of documentation, 300+ of them needed to send a first ping, you need to solder them onto a board and programming usually requires some expensive rig.
- ryao 2y agoQualcomm did this years ago: https://github.com/qca/open-ath9k-htc-firmware https://github.com/qca/open-ath9k-htc-firmware