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

The Nano ESP32

blog.arduino.cc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 142 posts

Re: The Nano ESP32

#71

Post by dymk »

vachina wrote: post #60
kube-system wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 doe…

Today I learned prototyping on an Arduino makes my product more real

Are you planning on selling it?

Re: The Nano ESP32

#73

Post by andersrs »

I can't find much detail in that marketing page. What makes it IoT? Does it do some low energy protocol like zigbee/thread/lora etc? It appears to be just bt/wifi.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#74

Post by testmasterflex »

mmoskal wrote: post #62
1023bytes wrote: post #13

Interesting that it's using a module from uBlox instead of an ESP directly

I bet they have a deal with uBlox so that people prototyping with this board will use uBlox for final mass produced design. In general you use module instead of chip to save on certification. However for ESP32 the logical choice would be indeed a module from Espressif.

I don’t understand why? What’s ublox addition to it? Antenna design?

Re: The Nano ESP32

#75

Post by briHass »

scosman wrote: post #47
pawelduda wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you post your recommendations? I'm looking to build some stuff for fun, like DIY CO2 sensor. Say I go for something else than Arduino, what am I missing out on?

https://esphome.io ESP32 boards: surprisingly fast/powerful little SOC with wifi ESP8266: cheaper+slower. I like the Wemos D1 mini board: smaller and has enough horsepower for most things. Sourcing: a ton on options on AliExpress. Buy a few extras so if you fry one you aren't waiting for replacements. They are super cheap ($3-$6). Options to consider for board: memory, CPU speed (ESP32 vs ESP8266), size/form factor,…

I'd recommend staying away from the 8266s at this point. The chip is EoL and the ESP32 offers double the speed, more than double the IO pins, and bluetooth. The 8266 is limiting with its single ADC pin, and single hardware serial and inability to define other pins for I2C/SPI.

I started with the 8266s thinking I wouldn't need the extra features, and most of my applications don't need it, but the few times I needed to work around the limitations weren't worth the aggravation to save $1-2.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#77

Post by xmonkee »

kube-system wrote: post #37
xd1936 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 doe…

So, again, what's the benefit? Support and documentation?

Re: The Nano ESP32

#78

Post by steve_gh »

skybrian wrote: post #67
kube-system wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 doe…

It sounds like you're saying price doesn't matter while prototyping, so choose what's convenient. But what's better for prototyping? A Raspberry Pi Pico W has a better SDK and better documentation, so why not go with that? (It's also $6.)

Power consumption. Maybe not so much on the Dev board, but IIRC I can get an ESP32 down to lower power consumption on a custom board.

So I might well start developing on an ESP32 board knowing that my final target is an ESP32 custom board.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#79

Post by petre »

skybrian wrote: post #67
kube-system wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 doe…

It sounds like you're saying price doesn't matter while prototyping, so choose what's convenient. But what's better for prototyping? A Raspberry Pi Pico W has a better SDK and better documentation, so why not go with that? (It's also $6.)

It doesn't even have on chip wireless and the drivers are proprietary. Also external flash that can't be protected using fuses. If's fine for hobby level stuff, but that's about it. If you want to make a product and not have it cloned and the firmware copied, good luck. Also the ESP32 has a power management coprocessor allowing it to.operate on batteries, wake up and do stuff, then go to sleep.

The RP2040's highlight is the PIO and the ease of deployong the firmware, although I find flashing the ESP chips much more straightforward.

Anyway, there are still issues with the official 1.20 and 1.19 micropython esp32 spiram images throwing random guru meditation error messages from esp-idf. I'm using it them with several ESP32 WROVER modules, they all crash in the same ways. Maybe I waste 19€ plus shipping on a Nano ESP32 to see if it still crashes on the U-blox module.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#80

Post by lukeck »

kube-system wrote: post #37
xd1936 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 doe…

Are Aruinos really aimed at the professional prototyping market? I’ve always had the impression they are aimed at students and hobbyists. These two groups are generally more price sensitive but do also value ease of use.

For these non-professional groups, what are the benefits of a $20 Arduino ESP32 vs. one of the many $4 ones?

Post reply on HN