Pocuter – A coin-sized micro computer with WiFi and BLE

Could something like this be leveraged for a physical representation of crypto currency? So that you could spend it like cash.

Maybe nitpicky but why is the ESP32 (dual core @ 240MHz, 300kb+ memory, options with megabytes of flash and memory integrated in package) relegated to coprocessor for a 48MHz microcontroller with 256kb flash and 32kb memory?

Hi! I am actually directly involved with Pocuter. Amazing to see it posted here! The ESP32 alone doesn't have enough pins to handle all of the features of the Pocuter, so the SAMD21 was selected as the main MCU to supplement this. We are looking in to upgrading to the ESP32-C3 in the near future.

Not nitpicky at all. Some ideas.

1. I believe that there are some microcontrollers that have irreversible settings, such as a setting to permanently disable writing to flash memory.

Is the ESP32 such a processor?

If so, maybe they want to have WiFi on a coprocessor that they can write protect so that they can get certification to sell their modules in jurisdictions that require that WiFi has protections against people reconfiguring it to use channels that are not part of the WiFi bands in those jurisdictions.

2. Their software, Pocuter OS 1.0, the SDK, and the 3D and physics libraries seem to be a big part of their pitch.

Maybe they already had these, or a large part of them, for ARM before they decided on how they would do WiFi and BLE. Later they picked ESP for WiFi and BLE and could run everything on that, but porting their OS and low level libraries from ARM to Xtensa or RISC-V (depening on which ESP32 they are using) might be a lot of work.

3. Power savings? If WiFi and BLE aren't being used they can completely shut down the ESP32.

This is probably not it though, because I believe that ESP32 provides very fine grained control over power. They could run everything else on the ESP32 and still completely shut down WiFi and BLE when not in use.

4. I have absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that they are doing it for the next reason I'm going to name. I'm just including it because I'm sure at some point someone on Kickstarter or Indiegogo is going to try it.

Use a coprocessor for WiFI and BLE that is ridiculous overkill if that is all at does, and use all that extra power to run something of interest to you such as mining crytocurrency.

Edit: oh well, none of these guesses turned out right.

Impressive! Congrats! How did you manage to integrate ESP32's WiFi antenna into that space? Specially in this image [1], it seems the pins of the esp32 is very close to the SD card...Wouldn't it cause interference?

[1]: https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/034/323/339/1a68f2cee050491...