EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor
1–10 of 66 posts
Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor
#2Does it really have a ground plane directly under the antenna?
Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor
#3Does it really have a ground plane directly under the antenna?
Does not matter. "Wifi needs an external antenna". And indeed there is typical Nokia antenna plug on top right.
Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor
#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.
Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor
#5> While it was easy to get a (RPI) solution up and running in a short time, over time we got a lot of problems resulting from using the Pi. A key problem of the Pi's design is, to rely on an SD-card.
> after some months the SD-card broke and the application crashed. High-end industrial SD-card lasted longer, but finally still broke.
> So we made the decision, to build a replacement, which is focused on high-reliability, but still enable the use of Raspberry Pi universum of add-ons, like HATs and enclosures. We choose the ESP32 dual core, 2x240MHz WROVER module with 8MB PSRAM and 16MB Flash. The EsPiFF, the Esp32 in Raspberry Pi Form Factor was born.
> After the EsPiFF is now mature enough, we we are preparing a campaign at Crowd Supply.
Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor
#6Does it really have a ground plane directly under the antenna?
Does not matter. "Wifi needs an external antenna". And indeed there is typical Nokia antenna plug on top right.
That’s a bit weird. The built in PCB antenna on the ESP32 is pretty good. You only generally need an external antenna for some applications.
The modules with both the connector and PCB antenna normally hace a jumper resistor to switch between.
Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor
#7Does it fit precisely into a raspberry pi case?
I don’t see the TRRS audio/composite video connector.
It would be good if it also had a VGA output port using USB microB.
Esp32 supports these things so it would be nice to see them on this pi “clone”. You might consider the more powerful WROVER-E which has 8MB psram and 16MB flash. https://www.espressif.com/sites/default/files/documentation/...
Add 2 CH599's for only $1 each and you could add 4 USB ports, like the RPi.
Fit it into a genuine case then you'd pretty much have a feature match - VGA video, composite NTSC/PAL video, audio, USB ports, sdcard.
Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does not matter. "Wifi needs an external antenna". And indeed there is typical Nokia antenna plug on top right.
That’s a bit weird. The built in PCB antenna on the ESP32 is pretty good. You only generally need an external antenna for some applications. The modules with both the connector and PCB antenna normally hace a jumper resistor to switch between.
From the readme:
Please notice, that the ESP32-module PCB antenna can not be used, an external wifi antenna is required. This is because of space restrictions, the RasPi form factor not allow us to make the board larger, and there is simply no space left for the required keepout area for the PCB antenna.
Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s a bit weird. The built in PCB antenna on the ESP32 is pretty good. You only generally need an external antenna for some applications. The modules with both the connector and PCB antenna normally hace a jumper resistor to switch between.
From the readme: Please notice, that the ESP32-module PCB antenna can not be used, an external wifi antenna is required. This is because of space restrictions, the RasPi form factor not allow us to make the board larger, and there is simply no space left for the required keepout area for the PCB antenna. Shame they couldn’t make it work.
> Because several people mention the integrated PCB antenna, the version 3.2 offer at least a basic use of the PCB antenna. Still, the external PCB antenna is the prefered way to use Wifi with the EsPiFF, now to use the integrated PCB antenna as well. Keep in mind, that the ESP32-WROVER-IB module requires a solder jumper modification before the PCB antenna can be used.
Re: EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s a bit weird. The built in PCB antenna on the ESP32 is pretty good. You only generally need an external antenna for some applications. The modules with both the connector and PCB antenna normally hace a jumper resistor to switch between.
From the readme: Please notice, that the ESP32-module PCB antenna can not be used, an external wifi antenna is required. This is because of space restrictions, the RasPi form factor not allow us to make the board larger, and there is simply no space left for the required keepout area for the PCB antenna. Shame they couldn’t make it work.
Also from the Readme:
> Because several people mention the integrated PCB antenna, the version 3.2 offer at least a basic use of the PCB antenna. Still, the external PCB antenna is the prefered way to use Wifi with the EsPiFF
It's nice that they removed the ground plane, it should be fairly good now.