3.3V IO, boring. -3-
For long has been the standard for MCUs, just get some biderection logic converter if you need to use something 5v
The Nano ESP32
131–140 of 142 posts
Re: The Nano ESP32
#132Whats 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.
Tons on IOT devices? Could you mention a few (that are actually useful)? The only one I know is the cellphone.
And even if they were powered from mains I don't want it to be inefficient. If they don't come with a buck converter with low quiescent current please don't buy it.
Re: The Nano ESP32
#133Whats 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)
I'm just guessing here, but maybe so that you can power it with just a common USB powerbank, and that way it's much more accessible to a wider audience?
That is starting to require too many resources... We want this things to consume as little as possible.
Re: The Nano ESP32
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Tons on IOT devices? Could you mention a few (that are actually useful)? The only one I know is the cellphone. And even if they were powered from mains I don't want it to be inefficient. If they don't come with a buck converter with low quiescent current please don't buy it.
Deep sleep is 7uA, 240uA light sleep.
And there still is a Vin to power it how ever you want, takes 6-21v. And a USB port makes serial easy.
Re: The Nano ESP32
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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:…
Hey thanks for the links, you seem very knowledgable ;) I am actively looking for any good information or even good hacker communities using ESP32 for some hobby embedded things. Care to recommend any? Thanks again!
Re: The Nano ESP32
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has not been my experience at all. Random cheapie ESP32 board bought off Alibaba performs/is exactly the same as expensive one with better marketing bought off Adafruit, Sparkfun, etc.
Yes, but "does it work" is a low standard. - You don't get any documentation, whereas with something more official you will have a complete schematic (so you know which support components will be used), pinout, information about power supplies etc. - You can't rely on being able to buy the same thing again. Even if you find something with the same pinout, small changes to the power supply or usb-serial converter can…
Totally agree in general, but in the specific case of ESP32s my experience is very different.
The first-party ESP32 documentation from Espressif is excellent. The ESP-IDF has comprehensive documentation, examples, and an active engineering team on the public github bugtracker.
The modules (e.g. ESP-S3-WROOM-1) purchased directly from Espressif (or via Aliexpress or Digikey) are all the same.
Sure, there are tons of "devboards" that slap on a voltage regulator and uart chip (and not much else), both from random aliexpress sellers, to Adafruit, Olimex, and now Adruino. These are all such a thin wrapper around the ESP32 that even the janky ones are equivalent to the ESP32-S3-DevKitC from Espressif.
This devboard in particular is a devboard by Arduino (!), containing a module by u-blox (!), containing a chip from Espressif. That seems like a lot of unnecessary vendor layers to me!
Re: The Nano ESP32
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
You (usually) don't use an Arduino in production, you take the ATMEGA chip, or in this case an ESP32 and you make your own custom board from it.
This doesn't answer the question: which industry professionals prototype their embedded products using an Arduino?
You... don't?
You use Arduino for their super good support and documentation while you're building your device. It's only for prototypes.
You can buy $4 boards off Aliexpress, but then you have to deal with poor documentation, clone boards, buggy code, etc.
I lost 4 days trying to make an SPI screen just "work", until I realized my clone board was outputting the signals offset due to a hardware bug.
Re: The Nano ESP32
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
You (usually) don't use an Arduino in production, you take the ATMEGA chip, or in this case an ESP32 and you make your own custom board from it.
This doesn't answer the question: which industry professionals prototype their embedded products using an Arduino?
Not a product in itself but I've seen one used to prototype an automated testing solution for existing hardware.
I'm not sure why it'd be particularly surprising? Their whole thing is being easy to use and quick to iterate with.
Re: The Nano ESP32
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prototyping with an ESP32 is a lot easier with a $6 breakout board [1]. Still comes out cheaper than TFA Nano without headers. [1] https://www.amazon.com/KeeYees-Breakout-ESP-WROOM-32-Microco...
This looks to have better software with it though. I get that you can probably port between but i'm happy to pay a few dollars to save my own time here. We're talking $4 vs $16 for a board for engineers that cost much more than that an hour. Pick whatever you like. In fact go buy both and play with both the above and this. The cost is literally nothing. These boards are not what goes into a large production run produ…
> This looks to have better software with it though. I get that you can probably port between but i'm happy to pay a few dollars to save my own time here.
There's no porting involved, you'd literally just flash the chip the same way you would if you were updating the firmware.
As a hobbyist, the price difference matters when I want to put 5 or 10 boards around the house, or inevitably fry some.
Re: The Nano ESP32
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but "does it work" is a low standard. - You don't get any documentation, whereas with something more official you will have a complete schematic (so you know which support components will be used), pinout, information about power supplies etc. - You can't rely on being able to buy the same thing again. Even if you find something with the same pinout, small changes to the power supply or usb-serial converter can…
Totally agree in general, but in the specific case of ESP32s my experience is very different. The first-party ESP32 documentation from Espressif is excellent. The ESP-IDF has comprehensive documentation, examples, and an active engineering team on the public github bugtracker. The modules (e.g. ESP-S3-WROOM-1) purchased directly from Espressif (or via Aliexpress or Digikey) are all the same. Sure, there are tons of "…
Yeah, i agree that the ESP32 docs are good, and what you're going to be using most of the time while using these things.
That wasn't what i was talking about though -- if you have a look at the datasheet for this board ( https://docs.arduino.cc/static/4260b2f8de0b7abc50d3773839dee... ), there's plenty of board-specific info in there that's useful, and also plenty of stuff that's technically duplicated from the ESP32 documentation, but harder to find if you're a noob.
I can't get mad about the unnecessary layers, sorry. Using the ublox module is quite reasonable: it's smaller than any of the available modules from espressif (necessary for this form-factor), probably because they have licensed a fancy antenna design (the same one that rpi uses, i think). Using a module in general is a good idea, as it means you don't have to take on the cost and risk of doing the RF design yourself. If you buy a board using a 3rd-party module, there are probably going to be three vendors involved.
Another thing i didn't mention -- as far as i know this is the first ESP32 board you can actually buy in the same form factor as the arduino nano, which is handy if you want to switch an existing project over to ESP32.
In general I fail to understand why people are so salty about this. I see engineers using this kind of thing all the time, and they aren't stupid. It's perfectly fine to spend a bit more money to get something even marginally better.
Yes, the relative price difference is huge, but $20 makes no difference in a lot of situations.