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

ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

espressif.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 95 posts

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#71

Post by dekhn »

hackshack wrote: post #15
sen wrote: post #6

Huge huge fan of ESP32s over Arduino/RPi/etc for any/all projects where I can do so. I’ve probably got 15-20 ESP32 projects around the house, and have done somewhere around 80-100 for other people. Arduino does a great job with marketing but at the end of the day you could do 99% of Arduino projects with an ESP32 for 1/10th the cost, use less power, and get way more features at the same time, while still using the Ar…

Agreed - they deliver a very flexible, cost-effective, performant MCU. Downsides (to me) are toolchain and power consumption. Has the Arduino toolchain been enough for home automation? I’ve been playing with Zephyr, but when I’ve gotten down into those gritty late-AM Saturday night programming hours, actual library support seems to be patchy, outside Arduino and Espressif toolchains. I ended up running MicroPython on…

I want to emphasize that MicroPython is actually really great, especially on the ESP-32. I was pretty skeptical (having written both Arduino and ESP-IDF code) but after using it a bit, it solves a wide range of problems for me. I was surprised to see that interrupts in python actually can be fast enough to be useful, and it can control a number of the peripherals through DMA, which means you can often do stuff at hardware speeds w/ no CPU involvement. You also get a REPL and a real filesystem for free. And I know I can always take whatever I've written and transliterate it to ESP-IDF.

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#72

Post by zackees »

blutack wrote: post #58
dragontamer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use ESP32 if you're powering with PoE? Might as well use an "Ethernet-on-board" like Teensy 4.1, and then use a PoE splitter (ex: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3239 ) to power it. Why pay for WiFi power (which is rather expensive) when you literally are sending Ethernet communication wires to your uC ? https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy41.html

I use these https://www.olimex.com/Products/IoT/ESP32/ESP32-POE/open-sou... - they support proper PoE as opposed to the dodgy passive stuff you usually end up with with splitters. Personally I'd take an ESP32 over a teensy 4.1 unless you specifically need the extra GPIOs or something. The teensy's are great hardware, but you're stuck with either Arduino or hand rolling. You don't pay for WiFi power if the RF amp is o…

[dead]

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#73

Post by MSFT_Edging »

mastax wrote: post #49

Looks broadly similar to the stm32h7 series that I'm familiar with. Of course all of those are out of stock and cost up to $25. Presumably these are cheaper, though don't have onboard flash memory. The documentation for the STM32s is probably better though still not impressive, and the STM32 software libraries are nothing to write home about. I think the ESP IDF might actually be better though I don't have a lot of e…

The code generation of the STM tooling is honestly the best part of using STM32s IMO. Especially in the personal project/hobby area where sometimes you just don't feel like churning out boilerplate but also don't want to sink to arduino ide levels.

The ESP-IDF framework is very nice but I haven't had much exposure to CMake so I'm still wrangling around with project structure.

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#74

Post by jononor »

phoehne wrote: post #63
hackshack wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - they deliver a very flexible, cost-effective, performant MCU. Downsides (to me) are toolchain and power consumption. Has the Arduino toolchain been enough for home automation? I’ve been playing with Zephyr, but when I’ve gotten down into those gritty late-AM Saturday night programming hours, actual library support seems to be patchy, outside Arduino and Espressif toolchains. I ended up running MicroPython on…

There are 2 flavors of the ESP, depending on model. The Xtensa cores and RISCV, go with the RISCV variant. The Xtensa variant requires you to use their compilers, which are derived from he ones provided by Cadence. There's a better path long-term for the RISCV cores to get tooling on par to what's available for ARM.

The Xtensa based ESP32 chips have upstream support in GCC, do they not?

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#75

Post by mkl »

tambourine_man wrote: post #66
pjmlp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any use for them, but I am also a fan of the ESP32, mainly because it represents having the desktop computers of my 9th grade (similar somehow to PC1512) available on the palm of my hand, and with much better hardware.

And WiFi, running on 3AA batteries, GPIO and costing US$ 5. Same feeling.

What kind of battery life do you get? I know it depends on workload/wifi use etc., but any such data would be helpful.

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#76

Post by szundi »

genericacct wrote: post #4

I'm running a few ESP32s and given their widespread usage I was surprised to notice that Espressif stock is very much near the lows of its 5 yr range, having lost over 2/3rds of its value from the peak. Is it just a function of market volatility? Do they have competition?

Tech market is down worldwide

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#77

Post by Zenst »

mkl wrote: post #75
tambourine_man wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And WiFi, running on 3AA batteries, GPIO and costing US$ 5. Same feeling.

What kind of battery life do you get? I know it depends on workload/wifi use etc., but any such data would be helpful.

So many variables due to application, so camera streaming will use more that a humidity/temp/pressure sensor that deep sleeps for a minute, awakes, reads and sends the data and pops back to sleep.

A good YouTube Channel I find for microcontroller aspects is - Andreas Spiess

One of his videos you may find useful - https://youtu.be/ajt7vtgKNNM

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#78

Post by brocklobsta »

jononor wrote: post #74
phoehne wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 2 flavors of the ESP, depending on model. The Xtensa cores and RISCV, go with the RISCV variant. The Xtensa variant requires you to use their compilers, which are derived from he ones provided by Cadence. There's a better path long-term for the RISCV cores to get tooling on par to what's available for ARM.

The Xtensa based ESP32 chips have upstream support in GCC, do they not?

Yes, but not llvm support. Which makes rust a no go.

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#79

Post by bombela »

mkl wrote: post #75
tambourine_man wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And WiFi, running on 3AA batteries, GPIO and costing US$ 5. Same feeling.

What kind of battery life do you get? I know it depends on workload/wifi use etc., but any such data would be helpful.

I made a bunch of temp sensors that would wake up every 5min and post the data via wifi. Powered by 4 C-cells it lasted about 450 days.

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#80

Post by rajangdavis »

scotty79 wrote: post #27

There's a very nice language dedicated to ESP32 programming that has semantics very similar to ruby and python and very clean minimalistic syntax. It called toit https://toitlang.org/

I looked through the docs and did a couple of google searches and found nothing, but what’s the story with using toit for a DIY MIDI controller using the ESP32?
Post reply on HN