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The Nano ESP32

blog.arduino.cc

121–130 of 142 posts

Re: The Nano ESP32

#121
post #75
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://esphome.io ESP32 boards: surprisingly fast/powerful little SOC with wifi ESP8266: cheaper+slower. I like the Wemos D1 mini board: smaller and has enough horsepower for most things. Sourcing: a ton on options on AliExpress. Buy a few extras so if you fry one you aren't waiting for replacements. They are super cheap ($3-$6). Options to consider for board: memory, CPU speed (ESP32 vs ESP8266), size/form factor,…

I'd recommend staying away from the 8266s at this point. The chip is EoL and the ESP32 offers double the speed, more than double the IO pins, and bluetooth. The 8266 is limiting with its single ADC pin, and single hardware serial and inability to define other pins for I2C/SPI. I started with the 8266s thinking I wouldn't need the extra features, and most of my applications don't need it, but the few times I needed to…

All true.

But I love how tiiiiny they are :)

Re: The Nano ESP32

#122
post #115

Whats the point of Wifi if you need to power it with a USB cable? It should come with a buck-boost so we can run it with batteries! (at least for that price)

> Whats the point of Wifi if you need to power it with a USB cable?

What do you mean? Tons of IoT devices are powered from mains, not batteries.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#123

I can't find much detail in that marketing page. What makes it IoT? Does it do some low energy protocol like zigbee/thread/lora etc? It appears to be just bt/wifi.

"Internet of Things" pretty much by definition requires a connection to the internet, somehow. Technologies like zigbee/thread/etc. can get a device to the internet indirectly via a gateway, but nothing about them is inherently "more" IoT than just connecting to the internet directly. The "Things" part of "IoT" is covered by the Nano ESP32 being a physical "thing", which is able to interface with the real world via the GPIO pins.

Arduino is presumably using the term "IoT" because they're interested in emphasizing that this device can connect to the internet without buying additional hardware, unlike most Arduinos that have existed.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you post your recommendations? I'm looking to build some stuff for fun, like DIY CO2 sensor. Say I go for something else than Arduino, what am I missing out on?

Arduino's have a lot of documentation and a great platform. The language is basically C and there are lots of libraries available so most sensors should be easy to get running. I don't know about the RP2040, but the ATMEGAs can't multitask and have pretty low resolution ADC. In my experience having them calibrated properly is a pain in the ass because they rely on the input voltage and that changes slightly depending…

The RP2040s can multitask. This is because the Arduino compatibility layer is actually built on top of MbedOS which support preemptive multitasking. You have access to the full API set of MbedOS in addition to the Arduino APIs when the code is running on an Arduino RP2040.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#125
What are some proven yet not premium priced boards for MicroPython besides this one?

Goal is just to play around with a bunch of sensors from Joy-It X40 40 sensor sampler - nothing serious.

Looking at https://forum.micropython.org/ looks like activity is evenly split between various ESP8266 and ESP32 boards.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#126
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OG ESP32 and successors esp32-S2 and ESP32-S3 use an ISA from company Tensilica called Xtensa LX6 (LX7 for the S3). The ESP32 C and H series use RISC-V. Xtensa is pretty well supported by compilers at this point, but RISC-V is on the rise and will have better support going forward. At this point in time, the S3 is the speediest ESP32 and is well supported, so it probably doesn't make a big difference. ISA: https:…

risc-v espressif can run rust now I think?

Rust can be compiled to most Espressif MCUs. The critical difference is if there is standard library support. ESP8266 is an older design but can still be a Rust no_std target [0]. Espressif did release a board [1] for use with Rust training designed for the board [2].

0. https://esp-rs.github.io/book/overview/index.html

1. https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-rust-board

2. https://esp-rs.github.io/std-training/

Also: https://github.com/esp-rs/awesome-esp-rust

Re: The Nano ESP32

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the difference between $20 and $4 is nothing if you're prototyping for a real product and you may prefer to have business partners in Europe. Many companies easily drop a $10,000+ premium for a prototyping kit every day of the week to get support from a preferred vendor. If you give one employee making 150k/yr a 10% productivity boost, you're saving money. Prototyping cost is often mostly labor. Unit cost doe…

It sounds like you're saying price doesn't matter while prototyping, so choose what's convenient. But what's better for prototyping? A Raspberry Pi Pico W has a better SDK and better documentation, so why not go with that? (It's also $6.)

Everyone is talking specs, which might be a reason someone picks a product over another, but I'll offer another anecdote:

The last time I bought some prototyping gear, there were a half-dozen options that met my technical criteria. The option we ended up choosing was the first place to answer the phone, discuss our specific needs, and give us a delivery date.

There's a lot of good prototyping boards out there, I'd bet a lot of buyers are making decisions based on how quickly they can get back to business, rather than taking a fine-tooth comb to a spec sheet.

Re: The Nano ESP32

#129
post #53

To those that are in the embedded space, what are some websites that I can lurk to get a better understanding? Places to buy parts? Where do you start?

(assuming you are in the US). Go to Amazon, buy an ESP32 beginner kit, which should come with an ESP32 dev board, a handful of different sensors and components, and a breadboard and some wires. It will also have some sample code. Go through a few of the basic modern IoT "hello world" examples, like making a web-enabled temperature sensor. Then google for "ESP32 [foo]", where foo is some random idea that you have for…

What would you think is the minimum age to do these kind of basic IoT tasks would be?

Looking forward to doing this stuff with my son at some point, but he's only 6 :)

Re: The Nano ESP32

#130
post #8

Based on a pre RISC-V ESP32. Unfortunate.

No, it's fortunate! RISC-V support is still a second-class citizen in ESP-IDF. RISC-V support only just landed in ESP-IDF. Give it a couple more years imo to reach full feature parity.

Two issues with this:

* Arduino SDK does not rely on ESP-IDF, so this doesn't matter.

* Irrespective of when it landed, ESP-IDF already supports RISC-V ESP32 devices well, and will increasingly focus on RISC-V devices thereon, as Espressif is committed to RISC-V going forward.

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