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ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

espressif.com

61–70 of 151 posts

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#61
post #31
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a shame, it’d be a cool and, afaik, unique feature for this niche.

Maybe Espressif will notice that there are no RV32 chips with MMU so far (at least to my knowledge); we only have 32 bit MCUs or then only 64 bits for the CPUs. Something like Cortex-A7 is missing.

The upcoming Baochip is an RV32 chip with an MMU, I believe.

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2026/baochip-1x-a-mostly-...

Edit - Oops GeorgeHahn beat me to it

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#63
post #3

I believe this is the first ESP to gain Ethernet capability? I totally wish that a board would come with PoE… Because as it is right now, powering a fleet of those with USB power supplies is annoying as fsck…

Can't you run a 5V supply from where your router is all the way to every god damn device in your house, and then pretend the wifi is also going through it? If you just want it to be inconvenient, there's no reason to let a lack of PoE stop you!

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#64
post #4
post #3

I believe this is the first ESP to gain Ethernet capability? I totally wish that a board would come with PoE… Because as it is right now, powering a fleet of those with USB power supplies is annoying as fsck…

This would be great indeed. On that note, why does the PoE capability often add such a big proportion of the price of various items? Is the technology really costly for some reason, or is it just more there's fairly low demand and people are still willing to pay?

PoE power supplies need to be isolated (except in rare exceptions) and handle much higher voltages than common USB-C or wall wart power supplies.

They have to use a transformer and a more complex control strategy, not a simple buck regulator with an inductor. PoE inputs need to tolerate voltages several times higher than the highest USB-C voltages, so more expensive parts are used everywhere.

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#65
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, ESP32's have had ethernet capability for a while and ESP-IDF supports it well. I've been using one I built for 5+ years now. Unfortunately RMII (ethernet phy) interface takes up a lot of the GPIO pins. This part looks like it'll remedy that issue. There's two ESP32 boards that have been around for a while with PoE: - https://www.tme.com/us/en-us/details/esp32-poe/development-k... - https://wesp32.com/ I'm more h…

Waiting for my ManT1S: https://www.crowdsupply.com/silicognition/mant1s

I really wish there was a camera option. You’d have made wired doorbell cameras possible without a retrofit.

I’d buy in a heartbeat

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#66
post #47
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need long cables, just a local power source Which means batteries that have to be replaced and maintained or cables... So ethernet with PoE or even better SPE (single pair Ethernet) with PoDL (power over data lines which is PoE for SPE) is the best from my point of view

I mean, if I just look at my house. There is just one ethernet outlet, but many power sockets. If I want to connect devices all over my house, the best way is to use wifi and usb power adapters. Not ethernet. Both solutions require 1 cable per device, but the first solution would require only short and thin cables, and the second solution would require very long cables which I don't know even how to do properly witho…

Yep. Mains electricity is ubiquitous, highly interoperable, very reliable, very high power available per drop, can be outdoor capable, common standards, understandable by users, requiring no active components, with many on-call experts available who can come to fix problems or extend/alter connectivity. Mains power wall plates with inbuilt USB power outlets are even available at quite small cost if the look of the bigger plug and wiring is not appealing.

PoE is much fewer of those things. Difficult to recommend it these days with wifi being fast and reliable and so widely used. Certainly not for average residential user.

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#67
post #28
post #3

I believe this is the first ESP to gain Ethernet capability? I totally wish that a board would come with PoE… Because as it is right now, powering a fleet of those with USB power supplies is annoying as fsck…

> Because as it is right now, powering a fleet of those with USB power supplies is annoying as fsck… Therefore, wifi is more convenient than ethernet. You don't need long cables, just a local power source.

Esp32 's wifi is only 2.4ghz though.

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#68
post #21
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoE is not obvious to implement (take it from someone who has done it with a fair share of mistakes), uses more expensive components that normal ethernet, takes up more space on the board, makes passing emissions certification more complex, and is more prone to mistakes that ruin boards in the future, causing support/warranty issues. In other words, a bag of worms: not impossible to handle, but something you would ra…

And what would a better alternative look like ?

There is none, I never said PoE is "bad": it's a very good solution, it's just difficult to implement.

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#69
I don't understand what possesses these folks to continue making 2.4ghz devices. I understand there are use cases for low bandwidth, high range. But surely we've passed the point where that is more desirable to most than lower latency and high throughput, right?

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#70
post #69

I don't understand what possesses these folks to continue making 2.4ghz devices. I understand there are use cases for low bandwidth, high range. But surely we've passed the point where that is more desirable to most than lower latency and high throughput, right?

> I understand there are use cases for low bandwidth, high range.

Use cases like IoT? The very thing this is for?

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