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EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor

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

#51

Post by bonzini »

synergy20 wrote: post #39
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.

I am not sure why the Raspberry Pi Pico abandoned the 40 pin interface. It would be really cool to be able to develop C or Python code both under Linux, for ease of editing and debugging, and then run it on a microcontroller.

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

#52

Post by bonzini »

nevi-me wrote: post #27

How does one get PCBs with all the components wired in? I've been prototyping for a while, and it would be great for me to learn how to start putting stuff in cases instead of having wires dangling around. I was looking at PBCWay just yesterday, and the process is unclear. If I say that I need some parts, do I have to source them, or can PCBWay/alternative do so for me? EDIT: what software does one use to draw PCBs f…

The PCB can be prepared with KiCad or Eagle for example. Then you do a lot of preparation work. You have to prepare the bill of materials, be super careful about the annotation layers on the PCB to prepare a PDF of the components.

Finally you pay. :) PCB assembly services exist from various places, for example Seeedstudio is very reliable but pretty expensive. Note that different factories have different formats for the BOM and annotation PDFs.

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

#53

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

epx wrote: post #44
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…

Wish there was an ESP64 with just enough RAM to run a Debian distro, even slowly, so we could stop waiting for Zeros to get cheaper.

BeagleBone has always been an option. The cool kids just choose to ignore it.

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

#54

Post by epx »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #53
epx wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wish there was an ESP64 with just enough RAM to run a Debian distro, even slowly, so we could stop waiting for Zeros to get cheaper.

BeagleBone has always been an option. The cool kids just choose to ignore it.

It is quite expensive (US$ 50-ish). In 2023 we should have plenty of $2-5 chips capable of running a normal distro of Linux.

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

#55

Post by _Microft »

nevi-me wrote: post #27

How does one get PCBs with all the components wired in? I've been prototyping for a while, and it would be great for me to learn how to start putting stuff in cases instead of having wires dangling around. I was looking at PBCWay just yesterday, and the process is unclear. If I say that I need some parts, do I have to source them, or can PCBWay/alternative do so for me? EDIT: what software does one use to draw PCBs f…

Speedrun

KiCad[0] is an open source tool for electronics CAD/EDA [1]. You will use it to create a schematic in the schematics editor, assign a "footprint" [2a] to each component (that's the size and shape of a components) and then import it into the PCB editor to lay these components out. The board outline goes onto the Edge.Cuts layer, the traces [2b] onto the copper layers, e.g. F.Cu for the front layer and B.Cu for the backside layer. You will also place your components on these outer layers (You won't need inner layers for a while). You can switch your traces between layers using a "via" [3].

Generate Gerber and drill files then using the "Plot" dialog, zip them and upload them to a service like JLCPCB (very cheap!), OSHPark, PCBWay, e.g. Aisler [4] if your based in Europe. I'd choose leadfree HASL [5] as surface finish. It's cheaper then ENIG and perfectly fine for the beginning.

If you are fine with soldering, then source the parts from e.g. Mouser or Digikey [6] and solder them yourself. That will save you the trouble of having to generate a list of which parts go where for the manufacturer. Make sure you order the parts with exactly the footprint that you put on the PCB.

Start small, ideally with a circuit of which you already know that it's working. This way you can concentrate on getting the details of the PCB manufacturing process right.

[0] https://www.kicad.org/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_design_automation

[2a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footprint_(electronics)

[2b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_trace

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_(electronics)

[4] https://jlcpcb.com/, https://oshpark.com/, https://www.pcbway.com/, https://aisler.net/

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_air_solder_leveling

[6] https://www.mouser.com, https://www.digikey.com/

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

#57

Post by jbuzbee »

jccooper wrote: post #45
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…

They also have a built-in ramdisk overlay, which basically solves the problem (so long as you don't need persistence!)

I use this in a little raspberry pi project. For persistence, I occasionally copy data to a writable partition and then at boot, after the ram overlay is mounted, I copy it back.

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

#58

Post by teleforce »

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.

ESP-32 is a little computer that is very capable but this new breed of low cost SoC is really taking it to the next level [1].

This new SoC has MMU for full Linux installation, NPU for AI processing and network peripherals for IoT.

[1]The $8 Linux Computer:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34024914

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

#59

Post by timonoko »

timonoko wrote: post #11

"All I want for Christmas is SD-card reader on my ESP32." - Finds micropython library. Ok. - Finds schematics for physical connection. Ok "But where do I find that fiddly SD-card bracket?" - Opens a drawer, sees a mound of useless MicroSD-adaptors . Ok.

That was easy -- eventually. One only has to believe what the micropython manual says and not watch any instructables-videos.

   >>> os.mount(machine.SDCard(slot=2),"/sd")                                                                                                            
   >>> os.listdir('/sd')                                                                                                                                 
   ['DCIM', 'VIDEO', 'PHOTO']

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

#60

Post by teleforce »

epx wrote: post #44
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…

Wish there was an ESP64 with just enough RAM to run a Debian distro, even slowly, so we could stop waiting for Zeros to get cheaper.

This new breed of similarly price low cost SoC is an awesome alternative to ESP-32. It has MMU for full Linux installation, NPU for AI processing and network peripherals for IoT [1],[2]:

[1]The $8 Linux Computer:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34024914

[2]Sipeed M1s DOCK development board:

https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/zh/maix/m1s/m1s_dock.html

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