Live data from Hacker News

ESP32-S31

espressif.com

41–50 of 207 posts

Re: ESP32-S31

#41
post #6

Good to have WiFi and wired ethernet on the same part again. Although we lost the MIPI support that the P4 dual-core RISC-V line has.

How does wired internet technically work on these chips? Is it just 8 dedicated GPIO pins?

Not "just", it's (presumably) 8 dedicated pins that form an RMII interface. This is not the same 8 pins as you'll find in your 4-pair Ethernet cable, it's a separate protocol which can be connected to an Ethernet PHY transciever like a TI DP83867E [1], which is further connected to "magnetics" [2], a convenient package of 8 integrated transformers and chokes that provide the galvanic isolation feature of an Ethernet connection.

A few SoCs provide integrated PHY transceivers, but usually it's an external chip.

[1]: https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/dp83867e.pdf

[2]: https://yageogroup.com/content/datasheet/asset/file/DATASHEE...

Re: ESP32-S31

#42
post #6

Good to have WiFi and wired ethernet on the same part again. Although we lost the MIPI support that the P4 dual-core RISC-V line has.

How does wired internet technically work on these chips? Is it just 8 dedicated GPIO pins?

Looks like you need an external PHY. It can talk to the PHY with RGMII which uses 12 pins, which are muxed with GPIO8-19.

Re: ESP32-S31

#43

I'm interested in audio out because I dabble in musical instruments. What's the state of Bluetooth audio out on microcontrollers? Is low latency and high quality output possible?

Is there any reason you want wireless? Bluetooth audio is a disaster, AFAIK. You don't want to use it for music. Just go wired, the ether is too cramped already.

There are alternatives, but being able to use an external amplified speaker and also move around easily would be nice. Maybe it's not feasible yet.

Re: ESP32-S31

#44
post #33

This looks like the long-awaited replacement for the original ESP32. The S and C series have been relatively low performance (the S better than the C but stuck on the outgoing Xtensa architecture), the P4 is powerful but lacks wireless. This is a relatively high performance, dual core MCU with wireless; a nice default option for low volume designs where being able to copy a previous implementation is more important t…

Can it cope with TLS? The esp32 having a viable TLS stack has been a big win

Re: ESP32-S31

#45
I'm excited that this MCU and the P4 has RISC-V CLIC. That puts it at least on par with Cortex NVIC and enables bare metal frameworks like Rust RTIC to work really well.

Also 4x MCPWM peripherals; that's a first for any Espressif MCU.

The additional GPIOs are very welcome as well. CAN-FD!

This device is going to be a big hit for Espressif.

Re: ESP32-S31

#46

How do I order a few samples, seem like there is a MOQ ? Also I want to dive into hardware stuff but I'm always clueless as to what I do afterwards when this would arrive? Are you using a generic board or are you ordering and designing PCBs to hook this up to? What are you using it for ? How do I go from a prototype to mass production via kickstarter?

Typically you look for a development board with the chip embedded on it. The dev board will have a usbc port and multiple pins that can be routed to LEDs, miniscreens, audio devices, etc. To program it you can usually use Lua (a very simple embedded language, almost JS-like) or you can use C/Rust/Zig as well. Arduino IDE works for it, too. You code from desktop and upload ROMs via USBC.

You can plug the dev board into sandwich board for easier prototyping. To go to mass production, you'll need to hand off your prototype spec to a custom PCB maker that you can order from, prices vary a lot based on volume and some shops specialize in low volume for early products.

Your end product should basically be a circuit board, case, battery, and any external components like LEDs or screens, then you assemble with plugs or wiring/soldering.

It is sometimes possible to make a product from the dev boards, especially the small ones, but your product still has to get a custom FCC certification (not a deal breaker, just a hoop to jump through), whether using dev board or custom.

Re: ESP32-S31

#48

Any reason why this device wouldn't have Z-Wave? Is the wireless protocol significantly different than Thread and Zigbee?

As I understand it, Z-Wave is substantially more closed/proprietary. Both Thread and Zigbee are protocols that run on top of 802.15.4, which Espressif already has in other products.

Re: ESP32-S31

#49

Espressif is on fire! And the CPU even has SIMD instructions! RISC-V cores is a big deal for embedded systems because now compiling for SoCs is only a matter of `rustup target add riscv32imac-unknown-none-elf` instead of downloading half-broken proprietary toolchains and SDKs. Take a look at https://kerkour.com/introduction-to-embedded-development-wit... and https://kerkour.com/rust-esp32-pentest to get started with…

>> And the CPU even has SIMD instructions! Yes, but it looks like there is no hardware floating point. The description of the CORDIC module indicates fixed-point calculations, which is consistent with the lack of any reference to floating point. I am happy the have CAN-FD and Motor PWM module, but nowhere did I see conversion times listed for the ADC. For motor control I demand 1uS conversion time or less, and in the…

The datasheet apparently doesn't say, but judging by their other products' listed 12 bit SAR ADC sampling rates (and assuming this one is similar to what appears to be their standard ADC ) the conversion time will be on the order of 10uS.
Post reply on HN