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ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

espressif.com

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Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#11

Post by pjmlp »

sen wrote: post #6

Huge huge fan of ESP32s over Arduino/RPi/etc for any/all projects where I can do so. I’ve probably got 15-20 ESP32 projects around the house, and have done somewhere around 80-100 for other people. Arduino does a great job with marketing but at the end of the day you could do 99% of Arduino projects with an ESP32 for 1/10th the cost, use less power, and get way more features at the same time, while still using the Ar…

I don't have any use for them, but I am also a fan of the ESP32, mainly because it represents having the desktop computers of my 9th grade (similar somehow to PC1512) available on the palm of my hand, and with much better hardware.

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#12

Post by sen »

sgt wrote: post #7
sen wrote: post #6

Huge huge fan of ESP32s over Arduino/RPi/etc for any/all projects where I can do so. I’ve probably got 15-20 ESP32 projects around the house, and have done somewhere around 80-100 for other people. Arduino does a great job with marketing but at the end of the day you could do 99% of Arduino projects with an ESP32 for 1/10th the cost, use less power, and get way more features at the same time, while still using the Ar…

How do you connect them? I would actually love to have a few PoE powered and connected ESP's since you have to power these things anyway.

Depending on the project, but either find a nearby USB port (I have home temperature sensors powered off the back of my TV, and other projects off USB ports around the house) or use battery power. Batteries can last months on ESP32s if you set them up right. They have great deep-sleep modes and can use practically nothing unless they're actively needed.

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#13

Post by pjc50 »

genericacct wrote: post #4

I'm running a few ESP32s and given their widespread usage I was surprised to notice that Espressif stock is very much near the lows of its 5 yr range, having lost over 2/3rds of its value from the peak. Is it just a function of market volatility? Do they have competition?

Every tech company stock looks like that?

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#14

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

sgt wrote: post #7
sen wrote: post #6

Huge huge fan of ESP32s over Arduino/RPi/etc for any/all projects where I can do so. I’ve probably got 15-20 ESP32 projects around the house, and have done somewhere around 80-100 for other people. Arduino does a great job with marketing but at the end of the day you could do 99% of Arduino projects with an ESP32 for 1/10th the cost, use less power, and get way more features at the same time, while still using the Ar…

How do you connect them? I would actually love to have a few PoE powered and connected ESP's since you have to power these things anyway.

I use old phone chargers accumulated over the years. It's been 3 or 4 years since I started doing that and they don't seem to mind at all.

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#15

Post by hackshack »

sen wrote: post #6

Huge huge fan of ESP32s over Arduino/RPi/etc for any/all projects where I can do so. I’ve probably got 15-20 ESP32 projects around the house, and have done somewhere around 80-100 for other people. Arduino does a great job with marketing but at the end of the day you could do 99% of Arduino projects with an ESP32 for 1/10th the cost, use less power, and get way more features at the same time, while still using the Ar…

Agreed - they deliver a very flexible, cost-effective, performant MCU. Downsides (to me) are toolchain and power consumption.

Has the Arduino toolchain been enough for home automation? I’ve been playing with Zephyr, but when I’ve gotten down into those gritty late-AM Saturday night programming hours, actual library support seems to be patchy, outside Arduino and Espressif toolchains.

I ended up running MicroPython on the Sonoff Dual R3 (a cheap and cheerful box about the size of a fig, controlling two separate line voltage relays) but GPIO access is really unsafe, which makes it useless for sensing, but fine for control. For everything else I use the ESP-WROOM-32, a fairly ancient dev board, and it’s highly capable, but I get the sense there are better boards for prototyping in 2023.

If you have a preferred board, do tell!

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#16

Post by sylware »

64bits RISC-V cores? or a mix of 64bits/32bits RISC-V cores like on the bouffalo BL808? I cannot find anything about it.

This is chip is interesting as it is said the BL808 has a USB bug which forbid you to flash the bootrom over USB and you need to use the UART.

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#17

Post by gswdh »

ESP32 is my go to MCU to use now. Their tooling and libraries are so far ahead of the competition especially when you factor in the choice of CLI or VS Code - an actually good IDE. ESP-IDF is so reliable and easy to use I don’t feel the need to JTAG/SWD debug anymore…

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#18

Post by KaiserPro »

sen wrote: post #6

Huge huge fan of ESP32s over Arduino/RPi/etc for any/all projects where I can do so. I’ve probably got 15-20 ESP32 projects around the house, and have done somewhere around 80-100 for other people. Arduino does a great job with marketing but at the end of the day you could do 99% of Arduino projects with an ESP32 for 1/10th the cost, use less power, and get way more features at the same time, while still using the Ar…

> use less power,

I was about to go off on a rant about how power hungry the ESP32 is. But having a look its not as bad as I remembered (or perhaps I was thinking about the 8266)

https://diyi0t.com/reduce-the-esp32-power-consumption/

depending on the board you can get it to as low as 15ma in "normal" use(light sleep microprocessor only, modems off). But when the wifi is on it chows down powers.

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#19

Post by solarkraft »

Ha, for most of my applications the ESP32s are actually wildly over-powered - but the development experience is quite good.

It's cool that they're seriously expanding their media interfacing capabilities - the ESP32s already have some, but they're quite basic.

I don't see a mention of it, so I have to wonder: What about Linux? There was a project a while back to get Linux running (at a snail's pace) by using JuiceVM to emulate a RISC-V CPU - now we have ESP32s with actual RISC-V CPUs (and MMUs as well!) ... so what's stopping Linux from running?

To answer the foreseeable "why would you want that": It would be really nice to get a standard OS with preemptive multitasking, dynamically loaded binaries, a shell and standard tooling.

NuttX has a lot of these (Zephyr has some), but I still feel find them quite limiting: At best you have to deal with "the microcontroller version of ..." (see Python, Go, .NET - they're all somehow worse versions). Don't we have enough power nowadays, even in the lower-tier ESPs or is my intuition totally off?

I know there are relatively cheap "SBC-style" boards (Raspberry Pi Zero W) for this purpose, but there's still a sizeable pricing (and size) gap between those and "MCU style" boards.

The one board I'm aware of that is trying to bridge the gap is the 128Mb Ox64 (https://pine64.com/product/128mb-ox64-sbc-available-on-decem...) and basically I wonder whether this might be Espressif's response to it.

Re: ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features

#20

Post by sen »

hackshack wrote: post #15
sen wrote: post #6

Huge huge fan of ESP32s over Arduino/RPi/etc for any/all projects where I can do so. I’ve probably got 15-20 ESP32 projects around the house, and have done somewhere around 80-100 for other people. Arduino does a great job with marketing but at the end of the day you could do 99% of Arduino projects with an ESP32 for 1/10th the cost, use less power, and get way more features at the same time, while still using the Ar…

Agreed - they deliver a very flexible, cost-effective, performant MCU. Downsides (to me) are toolchain and power consumption. Has the Arduino toolchain been enough for home automation? I’ve been playing with Zephyr, but when I’ve gotten down into those gritty late-AM Saturday night programming hours, actual library support seems to be patchy, outside Arduino and Espressif toolchains. I ended up running MicroPython on…

I use a wide mix of ESP-WROOM-32, Lolin ESP-32-OLED (when I want on-board display), and all sorts of other random ones.

For all my home automation I use ESPHome and Home Assistant (20+ custom devices, plus however many light bulbs and Sonoffs and stuff).

For tool chain I personally use Platform.IO in VSCode but I’ve done a fair few with Arduino IDE and it works in a pinch.

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