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The Nano ESP32

blog.arduino.cc

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Re: The Nano ESP32

#31

Post by adolph »

snvzz wrote: post #19
adolph wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OG ESP32 and successors esp32-S2 and ESP32-S3 use an ISA from company Tensilica called Xtensa LX6 (LX7 for the S3). The ESP32 C and H series use RISC-V. Xtensa is pretty well supported by compilers at this point, but RISC-V is on the rise and will have better support going forward. At this point in time, the S3 is the speediest ESP32 and is well supported, so it probably doesn't make a big difference. ISA: https:…

It's not just this, but also that Espressif CEO's expressed their desire to focus on RISC-V[0]. Thus, a new Arduino platform is being created out of a deprecated family of MCUs, the Tensilica-based ESP32s. 0. https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/espressif-moves-exclusively-...

Arduino’s decision process doesn’t make sense to me. The Uno R4 Wifi is another instance of selecting an ESP32-S3, but pretty much treating it as a dumb peripheral to a lower seed main MCU.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#32

Post by xd1936 »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #28
Havoc wrote: post #26

I struggle to understand the appeal of these more premium ESP32 boards. I’m gonna throw the same code on it. It’s an ESP32 either way. What exactly am I buying here for that 3x price

Just for prototyping ease tbh. You would always make a custom board for an actual mass appeal product. If it's not a mass made product why do you care? Pick the easiest one regardless of cost. This is essentially a dev kit. With the ability to easily mess with it. You don't care about the cost here because it's not really an expense when amortized.

I think they're asking, why would you spend $20+ on a board like this when something like a Lolin S2 Mini[1] is $4? There are millions of ESP32s out there... What makes one from Arduino™ any better?

1. https://a.aliexpress.com/_mspsSKa

Re: The Nano ESP32

#33

Post by KennyBlanken »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #29

What you get when you pick a board is not just the raw specs, but also the community, apis, and documentation. I choose to buy Adafruit products because I know they will be documented and supported for a long time.

I have no idea what this is in response to, but the ESP32 is so incredibly popular that this is like saying "I like going to my Ford dealer because I know they'll repair Fords for ages and their mechanics really know Fords."

The problem with the ESP32 is that it has some pretty insane peak power draw figures (nearly an amp at times, far higher than the official spec of ~300mA) that catch people off guard in low power battery applications, and the dev/carrier board quality varies a fair bit. A lot of early 8266 and 32 boards had quite high power drain just from the board itself; things like poorly chosen resistor networks for battery voltage monitoring, for example. You used to be able to find reviews covering this sort of thing but that information seems to have fallen by the wayside.

Wemos/Lolin and 1-2 others are the main/best suppliers for ESP boards, generally.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#34

Post by KennyBlanken »

pathartl wrote: post #2

The price of these aren't quite as egregious as the incredibly dated ATMEGA8-based Arduino Unos, but these still aren't really priced competitively to other offerings on the market. This is even considering other ESP32-S3 boards.

$21 is outright highway robbery. These boards are about $5-7 in single unit quantities.

The value-add simply is not there, particularly since they lead incredibly heavily on end-users, educators, etc to provide support.

I guess someone has to pay for those 8 week vacations.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#35

Post by civilitty »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #28
Havoc wrote: post #26

I struggle to understand the appeal of these more premium ESP32 boards. I’m gonna throw the same code on it. It’s an ESP32 either way. What exactly am I buying here for that 3x price

Just for prototyping ease tbh. You would always make a custom board for an actual mass appeal product. If it's not a mass made product why do you care? Pick the easiest one regardless of cost. This is essentially a dev kit. With the ability to easily mess with it. You don't care about the cost here because it's not really an expense when amortized.

Prototyping with an ESP32 is a lot easier with a $6 breakout board [1]. Still comes out cheaper than TFA Nano without headers.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/KeeYees-Breakout-ESP-WROOM-32-Microco...

Re: The Nano ESP32

#36

Post by TDiblik »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #28
Havoc wrote: post #26

I struggle to understand the appeal of these more premium ESP32 boards. I’m gonna throw the same code on it. It’s an ESP32 either way. What exactly am I buying here for that 3x price

Just for prototyping ease tbh. You would always make a custom board for an actual mass appeal product. If it's not a mass made product why do you care? Pick the easiest one regardless of cost. This is essentially a dev kit. With the ability to easily mess with it. You don't care about the cost here because it's not really an expense when amortized.

Hi, just asking, I'm interested in embedded but as an outsider I fail to understand how would I go about making custom board? I googled a lot, but I still fail to grasp how do you make the board? How do you program the chip? How can you test your board? How can you prototype on an arduino, if you'll use different architecture STM vs Atmega, etc... I've done some arduino projects using VSCode and Platformio and I want to level up my skill level, however I've been struggling to find a resources that goes throught the process of actually making the product from scratch (starts with nothing and ends with a programmed product on custom board). For example, I have this project of mine where I make smart watches using an arduino and e-ink paper display. I would like to read / watch a resource where I learn to design a board that has custom STM32

Re: The Nano ESP32

#37

Post by kube-system »

xd1936 wrote: post #32
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for prototyping ease tbh. You would always make a custom board for an actual mass appeal product. If it's not a mass made product why do you care? Pick the easiest one regardless of cost. This is essentially a dev kit. With the ability to easily mess with it. You don't care about the cost here because it's not really an expense when amortized.

I think they're asking, why would you spend $20+ on a board like this when something like a Lolin S2 Mini[1] is $4? There are millions of ESP32s out there... What makes one from Arduino™ any better? 1. https://a.aliexpress.com/_mspsSKa

Because the difference between $20 and $4 is nothing if you're prototyping for a real product and you may prefer to have business partners in Europe.

Many companies easily drop a $10,000+ premium for a prototyping kit every day of the week to get support from a preferred vendor. If you give one employee making 150k/yr a 10% productivity boost, you're saving money. Prototyping cost is often mostly labor. Unit cost doesn't really matter as much until you're talking about the production BOM.

Some rough math, for an employee with a 200k fully loaded cost working 1800/hr/yr, the difference in the price of those boards is about 8-9 minutes of labor. So if it's 10 minutes quicker to get the documentation for the Arduino -- it's cheaper.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#38

Post by TDiblik »

TDiblik wrote: post #36
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for prototyping ease tbh. You would always make a custom board for an actual mass appeal product. If it's not a mass made product why do you care? Pick the easiest one regardless of cost. This is essentially a dev kit. With the ability to easily mess with it. You don't care about the cost here because it's not really an expense when amortized.

Hi, just asking, I'm interested in embedded but as an outsider I fail to understand how would I go about making custom board? I googled a lot, but I still fail to grasp how do you make the board? How do you program the chip? How can you test your board? How can you prototype on an arduino, if you'll use different architecture STM vs Atmega, etc... I've done some arduino projects using VSCode and Platformio and I want…

chip on it, e-ink display sawthered on and etc, just get me from my prototype to a full on product. Basically, I want to advance my skills to the next level, but I struggle to find how :/ .... you seem to have experience in this kind of stuff, could you please answear some of these questions?

Ps: accidentally posted before I finished the comment and using mobile client without ability to edit comments :d

Ps2: these comments are kinda out of context, but it's something that's bothering me for more than a month now.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#39

Post by scosman »

100phlecs wrote: post #27

To those that are in the embedded space, what are some websites that I can lurk to get a better understanding? Places to buy parts? Where do you start?

AliExpress has been surprisingly great. Good selection. Great prices. Just make sure to buy from reputable sellers.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#40

Post by squarefoot »

nqzero wrote: post #22
pathartl wrote: post #2

The price of these aren't quite as egregious as the incredibly dated ATMEGA8-based Arduino Unos, but these still aren't really priced competitively to other offerings on the market. This is even considering other ESP32-S3 boards.

there are new 2022-23 cell phones available for $50-70, including the cameras, battery, display, case, gps, DAC, usb, radio, accel ... why aren't we seeing feature-rich dev boards based on the same platforms ?

> $50-70

Economies of scale. If they sold hundreds of thousands ESP32 or Arduinos every day, their price would likely fall down to €1 per complete board.

> why aren't we seeing feature-rich dev boards based on the same platforms ?

Because those platforms are closed as hell and their manufacturers have no intention of publishing enough technical data to allow developers to write Open Source drivers.

That's the reason why the engineers at Pine64 had to design the PinePhone from scratch to make it run a real Linux distribution instead of using already available proprietary boards that would indeed be a lot faster and cheaper, but also would be restricted to run only Android with closed device drivers and the same crappy untrustworthy software that plagues cellphones today.

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