Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE RISC-V processor is pin-to-pin compatible with ESP8266

cnx-software.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 119 posts

Re: ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE RISC-V processor is pin-to-pin compatible with ESP8266

#61

Post by Ericson2314 »

ducktective wrote: post #35
AlotOfReading wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty uncharitable description, but yeah. There are only two types of companies that do this though: companies where they're working at such a scale that spending a few extra months to years of developer time doesn't make a dent compared to the BOM savings. You're more likely to get vendor support by name recognition at these kinds of companies, so it's not as bad as the hobbyist experience. The second kind i…

Is it even possible to make as much as the hype fields (webdev, data science, ML) in embedded? Is there opportunities for startups in HW sector?

Your best bet is anti-trust:

Basically, if there more customers but smaller orders, the wasteful overhead of customers reverse engineering the produce will grow. But then there's more incentive for HW companies to overtake the competition by offering better docs.

Re: ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE RISC-V processor is pin-to-pin compatible with ESP8266

#62

Post by drcross »

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #33
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #3

> Pricing will also be similar to ESP8266. How can they possibly sell these chips at these prices? This is impossibly cheap. You can’t even accuse them of trying to flood and control the market because they already own the market!

You are seeing economies of scale (and cheap labour) in action.

And people have the gall to badmouth capitalism from the comfort of their Ikea couch on their Iphone.

Re: ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE RISC-V processor is pin-to-pin compatible with ESP8266

#63

Post by willemmerson »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #57
willemmerson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of esp32 boards with 10-20uA deep sleep current, how low do you want it?

Mind pointing me in the right direction? The ones I have are more like 10-20 m A (maybe that's a side-effect of having USB on board? I'm not really an expert, I just want my battery powered stuff to last months instead of days)

https://www.ezsbc.com/product/esp32-feather/

https://www.crowdsupply.com/unexpected-maker/tinypico

https://www.olimex.com/Products/IoT/ESP32-S2/ESP32-S2-DevKit...

Re: ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE RISC-V processor is pin-to-pin compatible with ESP8266

#64

Post by pjbk »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #43
ducktective wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it even possible to make as much as the hype fields (webdev, data science, ML) in embedded? Is there opportunities for startups in HW sector?

If you're doing automation of some kind in the bay, embedded has roughly comparable payscales to other dev jobs. Beyond that, no. You'll generally be paid slightly less than webdevs (but still far more than most engineers make).

In my humble experience, slightly less ≈ 30% to 40% less.

Re: ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE RISC-V processor is pin-to-pin compatible with ESP8266

#65

Post by AlotOfReading »

pjbk wrote: post #64
AlotOfReading wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're doing automation of some kind in the bay, embedded has roughly comparable payscales to other dev jobs. Beyond that, no. You'll generally be paid slightly less than webdevs (but still far more than most engineers make).

In my humble experience, slightly less ≈ 30% to 40% less.

Wow, that's a much bigger differential than my experience. Are you comfortable sharing the general region so I can avoid it?

Re: ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE RISC-V processor is pin-to-pin compatible with ESP8266

#67

Post by cerplum »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #57
willemmerson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of esp32 boards with 10-20uA deep sleep current, how low do you want it?

Mind pointing me in the right direction? The ones I have are more like 10-20 m A (maybe that's a side-effect of having USB on board? I'm not really an expert, I just want my battery powered stuff to last months instead of days)

https://www.tindie.com/products/kdcircuits/trigboard-ultra-l...

That one has extra circuitry to shut the esp down completely and wake it on either an external trigger or RTC based alarm. It claims 1.5uA sleep current.

The creator has a YouTube channel with lots of info about low power and other interesting tidbits https://www.youtube.com/user/kdarrah1234

Re: ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE RISC-V processor is pin-to-pin compatible with ESP8266

#68

Post by sam_bristow »

meekrohprocess wrote: post #2

Nice. The XTensa cores always felt weird. Too bad they only included the I/M/C extensions - no floats, vectors, or atomics. And USB would be nice (nevermind, it has USB :D). But it's still very exciting. Maybe there'll be less conflict between ARM/XTensa/PIC32/etc. cores in the coming years.

Having a RISC-V based ESP also means it should be easy to add support in Renode [1].

[1]https://renode.io/

Re: ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE RISC-V processor is pin-to-pin compatible with ESP8266

#69

Post by amelius »

nrp wrote: post #17

Espressif is no longer alone in the ultra low cost hobby WiFi SoC space. Pine has started working with the Bouffalo BL602 which seems to be a fairly similar RISC-V powered part: https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/10/28/the-quest-for-a-blob... It will be interesting to see which one gains critical mass in community use.

Meanwhile, the US government is worried about our dependence on Chinese tech, and security implications. What if these convenient and cheap little WiFi modules become ubiquitous and start DOS'ing the entire spectrum?

Re: ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE RISC-V processor is pin-to-pin compatible with ESP8266

#70

Post by lights0123 »

ducktective wrote: post #18

Just recently, Bouffalo Lab introduced BL602 which is a RISC-V WiFi-BLE chip with ESP8266 price. I guess Espressif had other plans for the competition! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24877335 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24916086 Skimming over C3 datasheet, it seems it doesn't have DAC but has one I2S. BL602 has DAC but no I2S!

I2S is also handy for bit-banging protocols without using CPU time—it's popular to use it on the ESP* chips to drive WS2812B and similar strips without hassle.
Post reply on HN