Interesting that they made a new chip with BLE+BR/EDR again. all the chips after the original ESP32 were BLE only.
Hope this chip has good low power options so we can use it in Bluetooth audio workloads.
ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI
71–80 of 151 posts
Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI
#72It would be good if this chip had good idle current comparable to other MCUs. I have used the ESP32S3 and it's idle current with the radio enabled, but not transmitting, is quite terrible.
My application needed both can bus and Bluetooth (though no wifi) so the S3 was one of the only options available. I'm sure the high current draw is because the wifi and ble share the same radio?
Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI
#73The ESP32 boards I own have bad support and are a bit of a hit and miss. (arduino nano esp32) Did this get better? Or is the support still messy?
Arduino nano are made by arduino using Espressif chips, and Arduino IDE support is indeed hit and miss. ESP-IDF, the official C SDK, is a bit more work, and there is drama around platform-io, but it’s significantly more stable.
> there is drama around platform-io
What do you mean ?
Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It sounds like the PoE spec was designed before the arrival of “IoT” type things like the esp32, raspberry pi’s, etc.
How much of the complexity is a “fundamental electrical engineering problem” and how much of it is just a spec written to solve a different set of problems?
Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI
#75Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI
#76The ESP32 boards I own have bad support and are a bit of a hit and miss. (arduino nano esp32) Did this get better? Or is the support still messy?
Don't use the Arduino framework, use ESP-IDF or Rust.
For those using PlatformIO, the folks at pioarduino[0] are doing a great job keeping up with Arduino Core 3.x support.
```
# platformio.ini
platform = https://github.com/pioarduino/platform-espressif32.git#55.03.37
framework = arduino
```
Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI
#77Earlier 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
Well, yes, but then you need to be "in range" of PoE switch and drag the ethernet cable from it vs the nearby socket. Still, nice to have options
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Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 bi…
That's half the equation. The other half is the reliability and security of wifi, which is less than that of ethernet for people without physical access to my wall innards
Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI
#79I 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?
My 2.4ghz is basically all IOT these days. Things that matter are on 5 or 6 ghz. Busy moving the entire thing to be entirely firewalled off given how clean the separation is
Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI
#80Argh…Wifi 6 , but 2.4ghz.
Adding 2 frequency ranges is more expensive. If you're going to choose just one, you should choose the one with the greatest backward compatibility.