Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 66 posts

Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor

#31

Post by pjmlp »

kkielhofner wrote: post #23

I love seeing more ESP32 based projects and hardware. It’s a remarkably capable platform with a robust ecosystem that for a “microcontroller” somewhat resembles that of the Raspberry Pi. I have an irrational frustration when I see people doing simple GPIO, etc with a Raspberry Pi 4 (when you used to be able to get them). I mean come on people, it has four cores, gigabytes of RAM, and can drive two 4k displays(at 30Hz…

I love it, because the ESP32 is more powerful than this little one,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC1512

Many folks don't have a real perception of how powerful these little computers happen to be.

Although not the same, everything from around MS-DOS 3.3 - 5.0 time that could fit onto 512KB would be a possible application, plus the extra cores and connectivity options.

Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor

#32

Post by tracker1 »

pmontra wrote: post #26

> writing permanent its log files and swap partition If this is the problem, the solutions are no swap and log2ram https://github.com/azlux/log2ram I also noticed that Armbian logs to a ramdisk. I didn't investigate the implementation and if its contents survive a reboot. The only real problems for me are that the SD card will eventually fail no matter what (I mean, much sooner than a SDD or HDD) and that there are b…

I have mostly relied on SSD over USB for my RPi stuff, which takes up more space... With the price hikes on RPi 8GB, I've started just getting the small intel boxes N5000/6000 series mostly, since the cost became not much different than RPi + encloser + power anyway.

Thinking about trying to sell my 3x RPi 4b 8gb in DeskPi cases with ~480gb ssds while prices are still pretty inflated.

Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor

#33

Post by tracker1 »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #24
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is, that an esp32 is not an alternative for a RPi,... it's a totally different kind of a device, that is only suitable in cases, where rpi was a clear overkill. This is like replacing a truck with a bicycle... if a bicycle was enough in the first place, there's no point in even using a truck for such a simple task. The real alternatives are many other linux-based single-board computers (from Pis onwa…

> if a bicycle was enough in the first place, there's no point in even using a truck for such a simple task. Right, but people still use the truck, because it's what they know, and maybe because they like the form factor. A lot of Pis are overkill for the projects they're used in. If those projects could start using this, freeing up Pis for projects that actually need them, that would be helpful.

I think form factor and reliability account for a lot... I've tried using other arm boards, and they just haven't been as reliable in terms of support/drivers/reliability as the RPis have been in general... With the inflated pricing, I've actually just jumped up to the tiny intel systems, since I'd usually be getting a separate enclosure and ssd anyway. I can see others going to esp32 if their original use was a bit overkill, if easier to work against.

Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor

#34

Post by tracker1 »

moffkalast wrote: post #25
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...or a case with a place for an ssd an a usb3.0->sata or whatever interface... RPi4 supports usb boot for some time now.

Yeah, but it's not something you'd really want to use in production though.

Why not? There are plenty of RPi enclosures that will bridge to USB and hold the SSD for you. For me, the cost of an RPi 8gb + enclosure + ssd + power is now close to the micro intel boxes.

Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor

#35

Post by geerlingguy »

moffkalast wrote: post #25
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...or a case with a place for an ssd an a usb3.0->sata or whatever interface... RPi4 supports usb boot for some time now.

Yeah, but it's not something you'd really want to use in production though.

It's both many times faster than booting from microSD, and unless you buy the absolute cheapest SSD from a no-name manufacture, many times more reliable.

Additionally, if you have a good power supply and don't write tons of data on a daily basis to the microSD card, it will be quite reliable as long as it's a name-brand, high quality card.

Source: I've deployed about 50 RPis in various conditions, all but two booting off microSD cards, and have only had one failure requiring swapping in a new microSD card, over the past 8 years of use.

Industrial microSD cards are especially robust and are now available from a variety of manufacturers with environmental and wear ratings that rival decent SSDs.

Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor

#36

Post by tracker1 »

goodpoint wrote: post #30

From TFA: > A Linux system like the Pi on the other hand, is writing permanent its log files and swap partition or to the SD-card ...only if you don't know how to configured an embedded Linux.

Even then... I mostly stopped using SD on these things when I had a (other-fruit)-Pi device that would on rare ocassion (3x in under a year) just nuke the SD card's data when power was cycled... I was using it for a mini emulation box (atari, nes, etc) and just irked me to no end. Since then, SSD over USB, far more reliable, properly configured or not.

Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor

#37

Post by jacquesm »

pjmlp wrote: post #31
kkielhofner wrote: post #23

I love seeing more ESP32 based projects and hardware. It’s a remarkably capable platform with a robust ecosystem that for a “microcontroller” somewhat resembles that of the Raspberry Pi. I have an irrational frustration when I see people doing simple GPIO, etc with a Raspberry Pi 4 (when you used to be able to get them). I mean come on people, it has four cores, gigabytes of RAM, and can drive two 4k displays(at 30Hz…

I love it, because the ESP32 is more powerful than this little one, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC1512 Many folks don't have a real perception of how powerful these little computers happen to be. Although not the same, everything from around MS-DOS 3.3 - 5.0 time that could fit onto 512KB would be a possible application, plus the extra cores and connectivity options.

You could stick the equivalent of a BBC micro in a matchbox and have room for a battery. Whole generations of programmers cut their teeth on platforms like that.

Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor

#38

Post by dragontamer »

matthews2 wrote: post #4

> The EsPiFF V3 will bring the following > an RP2040 IO-processor additional to the ESP32 It's a shame that the RP2040 doesn't have a good low power sleep mode. Not really appropriate for battery powered applications.

> RP2040

There's a lot of shame with the RP2040 in my opinion.

1. No internal oscillator. Always requires external clock.

2. No internal flash. Always requires external flash + somewhat complex startup sequence.

3. ~500uA per MHz current consumption. Much higher than competitors (ex: STM32L1 has 180uA per MHz). This is a relatively power-hungry chip both in active, and sleep, modes.

-------

I think RP2040 is some kind of bridge device between the microcontroller and microprocessor worlds. But the M0+ core is an odd choice for this. Real world uCs / processors utilizing a Cortex M7 (or similar) would probably be a better idea?

That being said, the ESP32 is high-power (~100mA) due to the radio. Radios always use lots of power, especially during transmit. So the RP2040 probably is fine for this use case.

Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor

#39

Post by synergy20 »

kkielhofner wrote: post #23

I love seeing more ESP32 based projects and hardware. It’s a remarkably capable platform with a robust ecosystem that for a “microcontroller” somewhat resembles that of the Raspberry Pi. I have an irrational frustration when I see people doing simple GPIO, etc with a Raspberry Pi 4 (when you used to be able to get them). I mean come on people, it has four cores, gigabytes of RAM, and can drive two 4k displays(at 30Hz…

rp2040 might be a good alternative nowadays, esp with its PIO blocks. esp32 might have some other political "risks" these days as it is made in china.

Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor

#40

Post by taneq »

pjmlp wrote: post #31
kkielhofner wrote: post #23

I love seeing more ESP32 based projects and hardware. It’s a remarkably capable platform with a robust ecosystem that for a “microcontroller” somewhat resembles that of the Raspberry Pi. I have an irrational frustration when I see people doing simple GPIO, etc with a Raspberry Pi 4 (when you used to be able to get them). I mean come on people, it has four cores, gigabytes of RAM, and can drive two 4k displays(at 30Hz…

I love it, because the ESP32 is more powerful than this little one, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC1512 Many folks don't have a real perception of how powerful these little computers happen to be. Although not the same, everything from around MS-DOS 3.3 - 5.0 time that could fit onto 512KB would be a possible application, plus the extra cores and connectivity options.

The ESP32 is stronk. I wasted a bunch of time implementing fixed point maths and lookup table trig functions because “of course” before testing it and finding that for our purposes just calling sin/cos wasn’t an issue.

Edit: If you’re doing ‘real’ real-time stuff then make sure you get a dual core model and use core 2 for time sensitive things, though. The wifi stack uses up some solid chunks of time.

Post reply on HN