Some of my favorite small micro-controller platforms (as you might have seen if you have been reading this blog) are Arduino and ESP8266. It seems that there is going ot be some upgrades to those platforms this year.
ESP32
ESP8266 chip is used to build WiFi modules for serial-to-WiFi conversion and Internet of Things applications. ESP8266 turned to be IoT maker’s favorite component for a good reason: Espressif turned the IoT game on its head by releasing a chip with WiFi and a decent embedded processor for under $1 in bulk, and costing not much more than that in a module. A little more than a year ago, the ESP8266 WiFi module showed up uneventfully in Seeed Studio’s store. During the year 2015 the ESP8266 turned to be success because it was “good enough” (it has it’s limitations) and price was cheaper than practically anything else in the market. Now it is widely available in various module formats (NodeMcu dev kit being my favorite for quick hacks) and supported by lots many programming tools.
Now Espressif looking to repeat the success of the ESP8266 with the ESP32, , that should be coming out in 2016. Espressif has been working on the next generation of powerful WiFi-enabled tiny, cheap systems for some time. They have their silicon ready and there are beta test kits already. The ESP32 Beta Units Arrive article tells that are two Tensilica L108 processors running at up to 160MHz, a lot of peripherals including ADCs, DACs, I2C, SPI, I2S, and PWM, more RAM, AES and SSL for security, and Bluetooth Low Energy. WiFi has also been upgraded. It’s already shortlisted as the best new chip of 2016, but other than that, there’s not much more information.
While the features are great, Espressif has said the ESP32 is not a replacement for the ESP8266. They’re different markets, and if you just wanted to add WiFi to a project, there’s no reason not to choose the ESP8266.
ATmega328PB
Most Arduino boards, like for example well known Arduino UNO are based on ATmega328 micro-controller from Atmel (there are nowadays also many Arduinos that use different CPUs). It seem that with ATmega328 you never have enough peripherals for everything you might want to do. Whether it’s hardware-driven PWM channels, ADCs, or serial communication peripherals, we always end up wanting just one more of these but don’t really need so many of those. Bye-bye ATmega328P, Hello 328PB! posting at Hackaday tells that Atmel’s new version of the popular ATmega328 series, the ATmega328PB, seems to have heard our pleas. ATmega328PB combines 32kB ISP Flash memory with read-while-write capabilities, 1kB EEPROM, 2kB SRAM, 27 general purpose I/O lines, 32 general purpose working registers, five flexible timer/counters with compare modes, internal and external interrupts, two USARTs with wake-up on start of transmission, two byte-oriented 2-wire serial interfaces, two SPI serial ports, 8-channel 10-bit A/D converter, programmable watchdog timer with internal oscillator, a unique serial number and six software selectable power saving modes. The device operates between 1.8-5.5 volts. The ATmega328PB supports capacitive sensors: 24 buttons in self-capacitance mode, or up to 144 buttons in mutual-capacitance mode. This ATmega328PB does not native USB thing in it, so if you need USB support, look at the ATmega32U4 as used in Arduino Leonardo board.
So what does this mean for you? It seems that chips are shipping right now, and there’s an inexpensive dev kit available as well. If you write your own code in C,you should be pretty ready to use new feature. With Arduino you might need to wait until new chips find their way to Arduino boards (there does not seem to be DIP version you could plug to Arduino UNO socket) and support for it on Arduino IDE is added (unless you can hack it to it yourself).
Here is ATmega328PB chip pin-out from summary:
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Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP8266 Killer?
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/30/esp8266-killer/
We’ve seen rumors floating around the Twittersphere about a new integrated microprocessor and WiFi SOC: the NL6621 from Nufront. Details are still scarce, but that doesn’t seem to be because the chip is vaporware: you could buy modules on Taobao.com and eBay right now for between two-and-a-half and three bucks, and Nufront’s website says they’ve produced a million modules since 2013.
The NL6621 WiFi SOC is powered by a 160 MHz ARM Cortex-M3 with 448 KB of RAM, and everything else is integrated in the SOC. The module has 32 GPIOs, SPI, I2C, I2S digital audio, and most of the peripherals that you’d expect. They say they have a completely open source SDK, but we can’t find a link to it anywhere. An English-language forum has sprung up in anticipation of the next new thing
It’s also worth noting that we’ve announced ESP8266 killers before, and it hasn’t come to pass. The mixture of community and official support that (eventually) came out of Espressif seems to be the main factor determining the ESP8266’s success
NL6641
http://www.nufront.com/index.php/portal/page/index/id/366.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Just a reminder that the NL6621 WiFi SoC exists. It’s been called the ESP8266 killer, but some of the most recent posts on the English language development forum are for buying phentermine – an appetite suppressant – without a prescription.
ESP8266 Killer?
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/30/esp8266-killer/
The NL6621 WiFi SOC is powered by a 160 MHz ARM Cortex-M3 with 448 KB of RAM, and everything else is integrated in the SOC. The module has 32 GPIOs, SPI, I2C, I2S digital audio, and most of the peripherals that you’d expect. They say they have a completely open source SDK, but we can’t find a link to it anywhere.
NL6621 Documentation
http://www.nl6621.net/nl6621-documentation-f1/
Tomi Engdahl says:
tmel is changing a few AVRs. There is a new die for the ATMega 44, 88, 168, and the ‘Arduino chip’, the ATMega328. Most of the changes are relatively inconsequential – slightly higher current consumption in power save mode – but one of these changes is going to trip up a lot of people. The Device ID, also known as the source of the avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1 error, has changed on a lot of chips.
Source: http://hackaday.com/2016/03/13/hackaday-links-march-13-2016/
More: http://www.mouser.com/PCN/Atmel_WC154601___PCN_for_mega48_88_168_328_die_change_RSK.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=elq-Email%20PCN%200-5%20&utm_source=eloqua&subid=0ed68129acd247719b2861f28ecdaa03&utm_content=6962107&elqTrackId=ef44573718914513bfd7992b4f19964c&elq=0ed68129acd247719b2861f28ecdaa03&elqaid=410&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=
Tomi Engdahl says:
Another ESP8266 Lua project
Luanode for ESP32 and ESP8266
A Lua SDK, multi-task support, for ESP32 and ESP8266
https://hackaday.io/project/11477-luanode-for-esp32-and-esp8266
This project was created on 04/28/2016 and last updated 2 hours ago.
Description
We want to make Lua run on the ESP32 Wi-Fi chip, as well as ESP8266, which is the most integrated solution for Wi-Fi applications in the industry. Lua, a well-known programming language, is simple and powerful code, and rapid development for the resource constraints microcontroller. Thus, Luanode is here. In Luanode, we provide some Lua modules for developers to operate periphs more conveniently. Unlike programing with C, the developers can just invoke the methods in the modules to operate periphs, it is no need for them to understand modules in detail. Developers can read/write GPIO in just one line. We believe that the Luanode will make it easier to create great IoT application than ever before!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Atmel Removes Full-Swing Crystal Oscillator
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/03/atmel-removes-full-swing-crystal-oscillator/
It is one of our favorite chips, and the brains behind the Arduino UNO and its clones, and it’s getting a tweak (PDF). The ATmega328 and other megaX8-series chips have undergone a subtle design change that probably won’t affect you, but will cause hours of debugging headaches if it does. So here’s your heads-up. The full-swing oscillator driver circuitry is being removed. As always, there’s good news and bad news.
The older ATmega chips had two different crystal drivers, a low-power one that worked for lower speeds, and higher-current version that would make even recalcitrant crystals with fat loading capacitors sing. This “full-swing” crystal driver was good for 16 MHz and up.
The good news about the change is that the low-power crystal driver has been improved to the point that it’ll drive 16 MHz crystals, so you probably don’t need the full-swing driver anymore unless you’re running the chip at 20 MHz (or higher, you naughty little overclocker).
The bad news is that if you were using the full-swing oscillator to overcome electrical noise in your environment, you’re going to need to resort to an external oscillator instead of a simple crystal.
The ATmega328 has already gotten a makeover, and the new version has improved peripheral devices which are certainly welcome. They don’t have the full-swing oscillator onboard
Tomi Engdahl says:
The ESP32 is Espressif’s followup to their very popular ESP8266 WiFi module. The ESP32 will be much more powerful and include Bluetooth when it’s released in August. Until then, [Pighixxx] has the complete pinout for the ESP32.
Source: http://hackaday.com/2016/07/17/hackaday-links-july-17-2016/
ESP32 pinout
http://www.pighixxx.com/test/portfolio-items/new-esp32-espressif-specs/?portfolioID=337
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Part Day: ATtiny102 and 104
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/01/new-part-day-attiny102-and-104/
Atmel put out some new, small microcontroller chips early this year, and we’re just now starting to think about how we’d use them. The ATtiny102 and ATtiny104 (datasheet) sell for about a buck (US) and come in manageable SOIC packages with eight and fourteen pins respectively. It’s a strange chip though, with capabilities that fit somewhere between the grain-of-rice-sized ATtiny10 and the hacker-staple ATtiny25-45-85 series.
The ATtiny104 has a bunch of pins for not much money. It’s got a real hardware USART, which none of the other low-end AVRs do, and it’s capable of SPI in master mode. It has only one counter, but it’s a 16-bit counter, and it’s got the full AVR 10-bit ADC instead of the ATtiny10’s limited 8-bit ADC. The biggest limitation, that it shares with the ATtiny10, is that it has only 1 KB of program flash memory and 32 bytes (!) of RAM. You’re probably going to want to program this beast in assembler.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A few weeks ago, the RTL8710 WiFi module showed up on the usual online marketplaces. Initially, we thought it was a competitor to the ever-popular ESP8266, offering a small microcontroller, WiFi, and a bunch of useful output pins. A module based on the RTL8710, the RTL-00, is much more than a competitor. It’s pinout compatible with the ESP8266. This module can be swapped into a project in place of the ESP-12, probably the most popular version of the ESP8266. This is genius, and opens the door to a lot of experimentation with the RTL8710.
Source: http://hackaday.com/2016/08/21/hackaday-links-august-21-2016/
New Chip Alert: RTL8710, A Cheaper ESP8266 Competitor
http://hackaday.com/2016/07/28/new-chip-alert-rtl8710-a-cheaper-esp8266-competitor/
First RTL-00 module tests
https://www.rtl8710forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10&p=23#p23
I’ve found some time to confirm my suspicion of the B&T RTL-00 RTL8710 module being pin compatible with the ESP12E module. I have desoldered the ESP12E from it’s board and soldered on the RTL-00 module on it
As you can see it’s a perfect fit.
According to the datasheet it should support an AT+ command set.
It seems these modules run on 38400 by default and currently run ROM Version 0.3 built by gcc version 4.8.3 (Realtek ASDK-4.8.3p1 Build 2003)
Ok so this thing is running an operating system of some kind and presents us with a command line, great
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Part Day: The ESP32 Has Been Released
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/05/new-part-day-the-esp32-has-been-released/
A few years ago, a strange little chip showed up on Seeed Studio one day. It was the ESP8266, originally sold as a serial to WiFi adapter. Since then, the microcontroller in this wee WiFi module was discovered, and the ESP8266 has been the breakout module for hundreds of Internet of Thing modules, and other wireless baubles.
The company behind the ESP8266, Espressif, wasn’t sitting on their laurels for the last few years. They’ve been working on a followup to the ESP8266. It’s the ESP32, and it’s faster, has more peripherals, better WiFi, and Bluetooth LE.
Now, it’s finally out. You can buy an ESP32 right now. Consider the ESP32 released.
Almost exactly two years ago, the forerunner of the ESP32 was released, allowing anyone to blink a LED from the Internet for five dollars. There was a catch with the release of the ESP8266, and that was documentation.
Documentation is an issue for the ESP8266, but it doesn’t really matter because someone on the Internet will figure it out.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it is the franchise with the most reboots. There’s some documentation for the ESP32, but it’s far from complete. There’s a CAN bus peripheral in the ESP32, but no one knows what pins it’s attached to. There are some secrets hidden away
Right now, there are several listings on the usual online outlets including Espressif’s Taobao shop and Seeed Studio offering either bare ESP32 chips or modules based on this WiFi Bluetooth wonder.
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/08/more-esp32-info-dribbles-out/
Tomi Engdahl says:
quick N dirty ESP32 board
USP programming and <16V power for the new ESP module!
https://hackaday.io/project/14001-quick-n-dirty-esp32-board
boards for the new ESP32 chip. This is my quick N dirty start on that. Reports seem to indicate that the footprint may be off, I'll check it out tomorrow.
Board design on bitbucket https://bitbucket.org/joshvaldes/esp3212board
Tomi Engdahl says:
The ESP32 has been released. The ESP32 is the follow-on to the very popular ESP8266. The ’32 features WiFi and Bluetooth, dual core processors, and a few undisclosed things that will make it very interesting. You can buy ESP32 modules right now, but no one has them on their workbench quite yet. To get you started when they finally arrive, [Adam] created an ESP32 KiCad Library for the ESP32 chip, and the ESP32-WROOM and ESP3212 modules.
Source: http://hackaday.com/2016/09/11/hackaday-links-september-11-2016/
ESP32 KiCAD Library
KiCAD component and footprint libary for ESP32 ,ESP32-WROOM, and ESP3212 modules
https://hackaday.io/project/13483-esp32-kicad-library
Library includes footprints and symbols for ESP32 IC, ESP32-WROOM module, and ESP3212 module. The ESP3212 module is still in progress BTW, it should be resolved/completed in the next few days.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32 Hands-On: Awesome Promise
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/15/esp32-hands-on-awesome-promise/
The ESP32 is looking like an amazing chip, not the least for its price point. It combines WiFi and Bluetooth wireless capabilities with two CPU cores and a decent hardware peripheral set. There were modules in the wild for just under seven US dollars before they sold out, and they’re not going to get more expensive over time. Given the crazy success that Espressif had with the ESP8266, expectations are high.
We’ve read all of the public documentation that’s out there, and spent a week writing our own “hello world” examples to confirm that things are working as they should, and root out the bugs wherever things aren’t. There’s a lot to love about these chips, but there are also many unknowns on the firmware front which is changing day-to-day. Read on for the full review.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The ESP32, the followup to the hugely popular ESP8266 , is shipping. [Elliot] got his hands on one and found it to be a very promising chip, but the ESP3212 modules I bought from Seeed haven’t arrived yet. That hasn’t stopped [Ptwdd] from making a breakout board for the ESP3212, though. We don’t know if it works, but it’s just a breakout board, anyway.
Source: http://hackaday.com/2016/09/18/hackaday-links-september-18-2016/
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP3212 Wifi Bluetooth Combo Module
https://www.seeedstudio.com/ESP3212-Wifi-Bluetooth-Combo-Module-p-2706.html
ESP3212 Wifi Bluetooth combo module is ultra high performance and ultra low-power consumption Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combo wireless platform based on ESPRESSIF ESP32 chipset. ESP-3212 integrates dual-core processor, 448 KByte ROM,520 KByte SRAM,16 KByte SRAM in RTC, 802.11 b/g/n/e/I Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v4.2 BR/EDR & BLE, clocks & Times, abundant peripheral Interfaces and sercurity mechanism.
ESP3212 Wifi Bluetooth combo module provides SDK Firmware for fast on-line programming and open source toolchains based on GCC for development support. It is designed for Generic low power IoT sensor hub, loggers, video steaming for camera, Wi-Fi & Bluetooth enabled devices, Home automation and mesh network applications, aimed at makers, hardware engineers, software engineers and solution provides.
ESP32 is a single chip 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combo chip designed with TSMC ultra low power 40 nm technology. It is designed and optimized for the best power performance, RF performance, robustness, versatility, features and reliability, for a wide variety of applications, and different power profiles.
ESP32 is the most integrated solution for Wi-Fi + Bluetooth applications in the industry with less than 10 external components. ESP32 integrates the antenna switch, RF balun, power amplifier, low noise receive amplifier, filters, and power management modules. As such, the entire solution occupies minimal Printed Circuit Board (PCB) area.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The ESP32 is here, but most of them are still in a shipping container somewhere in the Pacific.
Here’s a breakout board for the Espressif ESP-WROOM-02.
https://twitter.com/stanleyphoong/status/781731096362905600
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Get Started with the ESP32
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/04/how-to-get-started-with-the-esp32/
ESP32 is the hottest new wireless chip out there, offering both WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy radios rolled up with a dual-core 32-bit processor and packed with peripherals of every kind. We got some review sample dev boards, Adafruit and Seeed Studio had them in stock for a while, and AI-Thinker — the company that makes the most popular ESP8266 modules — is starting up full-scale production on October 1st. This means that some of you have the new hotness in your hands right now, and the rest of you aren’t going to have to wait more than a few more weeks.
The ESP32 module comes preloaded with a ROM image with an AT command set, just like the ESP8266 did. If you want to waste 95% of this chip’s potential by using it as a glorified serial-to-WiFi modem, you’re all set! But you all want to dig in, right? Right!
The toolchain for programming the ESP32 in C is pretty straightforward.
Your first stop is the Espressif IoT Development Framework (esp-idf) GitHub.
Getting up and running is “easy”. Clone the repository with the esp-idf libraries, download and unzip the binary toolchain, and clone the template app. There are two environment variables you have to define: one for the path to the toolchain binaries, and another for the location of the libraries.
If you’re on a Linux system, here is a setup script that does everything mentioned in this tutorial.
Note that although this sounds like a lot of work, it’s all a one-time setup cost.
Espressif IoT Development Framework. Official development framework for ESP32.
https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf
Tomi Engdahl says:
The ESP32 is coming, and it’s going to be awesome. Espressif has just released an Arduino core for the ESP32 WiFi chip. The digitalRead, digitalWrite, SPI, Serial, Wire, and WiFi “should” work. If you’re looking for ESP32 hardware, they’re infrequently available and frequently out of stock. Thankfully, stock levels won’t be the Raspberry Pi Zero all over again until someone figures out how to run an NES emulator on the ESP32.
Source: http://hackaday.com/2016/10/09/hackaday-links-october-9-2016/
More:
Arduino core for the ESP32
https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32
Tomi Engdahl says:
Porting NES to the ESP32
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/10/porting-nes-to-the-esp32/
There’s an elephant in the room when it comes to the Raspberry Pi Zero. The Pi Zero is an immensely popular single board computer, but out of stock issues for the first year may be due to one simple fact: you can run a Nintendo emulator on it. Instead of cool projects like clusters, CNC controllers, and Linux-based throwies, all the potential for the Pi Zero was initially wasted on rescuing the princess.
Espressif has a new chip coming out, the ESP32, and it’s a miraculous Internet of Things thing. It’s cheap, exceptionally powerful, and although we expect the stock issues to be fixed faster than the Pi Zero, there’s still a danger: if the ESP32 can emulate an NES, it may be too popular.
Hackaday fellow, Hackaday Supercon speaker, Espressif employee, and generally awesome dude [Sprite_tm] just ported an NES emulator to the ESP32. It seems Espressif really knows how to sell chips: just give one of your engineers a YouTube channel.
Nofrendo NES-emulator ported to the ESP32
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ympmRydFMmE
This is a demo of the Nofrendo NES-emulator I ported to the ESP32 in about a day. Sound is not available and the display driver is slightly hackish, but otherwise it works fine. Source is available
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32 Chip
http://analoglamb.com/product/esp32-chip
Tomi Engdahl says:
BASIC Interpreter Hidden in ESP32 Silicon
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/27/basic-interpreter-hidden-in-esp32-silicon/
Getting to BASIC
At first, we thought that the key to getting into the BASIC shell was simply blocking the onboard flash program ROM, because we discovered it by connecting to GPIO 12, labeled as the MOSI pin for “HSPI”.
Anyway, the short version of the story is: pull GPIO 12 high and hit reset. Connect to the ESP32 over serial, and hit enter to stop it from continually rebooting. Falling back to built-in command interpreter.
What’s the first thing you do when faced with a command prompt? Type “help”, right? Well, that works. The ESP32 comes back with “A very Basic ROM console. Available commands/functions:” and then lists out everything you need to get started. Now, our BASIC is a bit rusty, dating from the Tandy Color Computer days, but we quickly whipped up a few demos and frankly, we had a lot of fun.
Anyway, the big news is that the Espressif team has gotten most of the Arduino core up and working, and we have a full review coming out soon. They’re also continuing to work like crazy on development of the C libraries that real programmers will use to run these chips
Tomi Engdahl says:
What’s New, ESP-32? Testing the Arduino Library
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/31/whats-new-esp-32-testing-the-arduino-esp32-library/
In case you missed it, the big news is that a minimal Arduino core is up and working on the ESP32. There’s still lots left to do, but the core functionality — GPIO, UART, SPI, I2C, and WiFi — are all up and ready to be tested out. Installing the library is as easy as checking out the code from GitHub into your Arduino install, so that’s exactly what I did.
Conclusion?
The short version of my dive into Arduino-esp32 is that there’s a lot here, even though it’s not done yet. Blinking LEDs and other simple GPIO is a given, and the core communication libraries that are already implemented worked for me: GPIO, WiFi, SPI, and I2C are up and running.
Non-core libraries are hit and miss. I suspect that a lot of them will work with just a little bit of tweaking. Others, especially those that are architecture-dependent, may not be worth the effort to port and will need to be re-written.
Arduino core for the ESP32
https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32 Modules Popping Up Everywhere, In Stock Almost Nowhere
http://hackaday.com/2016/11/02/esp32-modules-popping-up-everywhere-in-stock-almost-nowhere/
We know what it’s like to wait for newly released electronic parts. Clicking refresh every day at your favorite online retailers, reading reviews published by the press who got preview units, and maybe even daring to order implausibly cheap devices from foreign lands. The ESP32 has many of us playing the waiting game, and we’ll level with you — they’re out of stock most places. But, if you look hard enough you can find one. At least, you could find them before we wrote this quick roundup of ESP32 hardware.
Espressif
Espressif, the company that makes the ESP-32 chip and its support firmware, is also making modules and development boards to support them. Their module is the ESP-WROOM32, is not just the first module out there, but it also serves as the hardware design reference (zip file) for the chip. They also provide a datasheet (PDF) for the module. It’s all there, so you could run their Gerbers and source the parts yourself if you wanted to.
Espressif also makes a simple development board
Whether you think of these as being development kits or ESP32 breakouts, a complete minimal design that would be ready to start programming on should include a power regulator, a USB/serial converter, flash memory, the ESP32 chip and antenna.
nano32_3From the look of things, Gravitech and Maker Asia took Espressif’s demonstration board and module apart and reconstructed it on a single PCB.
Summary
At the moment who has what in stock is in flux, but if you look a little deeper, you can find an ESP32 development board or module. This is all bound to change over the next few weeks
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32 Development Board
https://hackaday.io/project/16278-esp32-development-board
ESP32 Module with A CP2102 http://www.analoglamb.com/product/esp32-development-board/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Maple ESP32 – ESP32 WiFi & BT board with Micro SD
https://hackaday.io/project/19362-maple-esp32-esp32-wifi-bt-board-with-micro-sd
It’s ESP32 wifi & BT board with Mciro SD card, USB 2 USART Chip cp2104, Compatible with Arudino Interface.
Maple ESP32 is developed by AnalogLamb. It’s for ESP32 developer. It has a Micro-SD Interface, Compatible with Arduino Interface. It provides a CP2104 USB-TTL serial adapter, programming and reset buttons, and a power regulator to supply the ESP32 with a stable 3.3 V.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vento
https://hackaday.io/project/19505-vento
A Solar powered WiFi development platform, based on STM32 and ESP32, a descendant of the tech behind SunLeaf
ARM Cortex M4F + WiFi+BLE + MPPT Solar Battery Powered module, mBed and Arduino Compatible hardware development
- ARM Cortex M4F 180MHZ STM32F446RET6
- ESP32 WiFi/BLE Dual Core SoC w/ PCB Antenna
- Bluetooth Classic
- Bluetooth Low Engergy (BLE)
- WiFi
- USB 2.0 Connectivity
- Plenty of GPIO
- PLenty of UART/I2C
- Lithium Ion Battery Power
- MPPT Solar battery charging
- USB bus power for desktop development
- Over the Air Programming
- Low power
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hack Chat: The Incredible Sprite_tm and The ESP32
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/01/hack-chat-the-incredible-sprite_tm-and-the-esp32/
This Friday at 5pm PST, [Sprite_tm] will be leading a Hack Chat talking about the ESP32.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32 Tutorials
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/01/esp32-tutorials/
The ESP8266 has become one of those ubiquitous parts that everyone knows. However, the new ESP32 has a lot of great new features, too. If you want to take the ESP32 for a spin, you should check out [Neil Kolban’s] video series about the device. When we say series, we aren’t kidding. At last count, there were nineteen videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYh2w0HzS7s
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hornbill
https://hackaday.io/project/18997-hornbill
Affordable, Rugged, Secure and Open Hardware for battery powered connected things with ESP32.
Hornbill is based on ESP32. A single chip solution with dual core high speed processors, numerous peripherals and built in WiFi and Bluetooth (Classic as well as BLE). Hornbill ESP32 Dev board comes with built in single cell LiPo charger.
The project Hornbill will also offer a rugged IP67 water/dust proof case and multipurpose baseboard to build rugged hardware. We will be writing numerous bare metal as well as Arduino tutorials to get you started.
We believe IoT devices need to be more secure and we will work on providing end to end TLS1.2 encryption with major IoT cloud platforms. We will also on top build Open Source IoT frameworks to provide templates to run your own secure servers!
Signup to get notified. Early bird Hornbill ESP32 board starts at $15.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building a reliable and rugged Air Quality Logger with Hornbill ESP32 PART-1
https://www.exploreembedded.com/wiki/index.php?title=Building%20a%20reliable%20and%20rugged%20Air%20Quality%20Logger%20with%20Hornbill%20ESP32%20PART-1
In this multi part series, I will be taking you through building, breaking and re-making of a rugged (dust and water proof) and reliable (firmware, power, and connectivity) with Hornbill series of ESP32 dev boards. The aim is show the process of building, documenting the failure as well as the working! So in this first part we will try and build a quick prototype and show that it is possible. At the end of it we will ask some fundamental questions and re-visit the design and see what can be improved.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HariFun #150 Playing with ESP32
Goofing around with the new ESP32 module
https://hackaday.io/project/21069-harifun-150-playing-with-esp32
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32 WiFi Hits 10km with a Little Help
http://hackaday.com/2017/04/11/esp32-wifi-hits-10km-with-a-little-help/
[Jeija] was playing with some ESP32s and in true hacker fashion, he wondered how far he could pull them apart and still get data flowing. His video answer to that question covers the Friis equation and has a lot of good examples of using the equation, decibels, and even a practical example that covers about 10km.
Of course, to get that kind of range you need a directional antenna. To avoid violating regulations that control transmit power, he’s using the antenna on the receiving end. That also means he had to hack the ESP32 WiFi stack to make the device listen only on one side.
Of course, antennas are nothing new–look at all the Pringle can antennas we’ve seen in the past. However, the use of a long range receive-only module is interesting and we can see this technique having applications to remote drone video or telemetry and — of course — wardriving.
Send arbitrary IEEE 802.11 frames with Espressif’s ESP32
https://github.com/Jeija/esp32free80211
Tomi Engdahl says:
Enabling Ethernet On The ESP32
http://hackaday.com/2017/04/18/enabling-ethernet-on-the-esp32/
The ESP32 is the latest and greatest wonderchip from Espressif. It’s a 32-bit, dual-core chip with WiFi, Bluetooth, and tons of peripherals such as CAN and Ethernet. For most of these peripherals, Espressif already has a few bits of example code, but [Frank Sautter] didn’t like the Ethernet implementation. The ‘stock’ code calls for a TLK110 Ethernet PHY, but that’s an expensive chip when bought in quantity one. A better chip would be the LAN8720, so [Frank] built a board to enable Ethernet on the ESP32 with this chip.
The ESP32 only needs a few components to wire it into an Ethernet network. Just a few resistors, capacitors, and an RJ45 jack will take care of most of the work, but because he’s taking the Ethernet ‘shield’ route, he needs to add his own Ethernet PHY. The Waveshare LAN8720 is the chip for this
https://sautter.com/blog/ethernet-on-esp32-using-lan8720/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Simple, Easy To Use ESP32 Dev Board
http://hackaday.com/2017/04/19/a-simple-easy-to-use-esp32-dev-board/
The ESP32 is Espressif’s follow-up to their extraordinarily popular ESP8266 WiFi chip. It has a dual-core, 32-bit processor, WiFi, Bluetooth, ADCs, DACs, CAN, a Hall effect sensor, an Ethernet MAC, and a whole bunch of other goodies that make this chip the brains for the Internet of Everything. Everyone has been able to simply buy an ESP32 for a few months now, but the Hackaday tip line isn’t exactly overflowing with projects and products built around this wonderchip. Perhaps we need an ESP32 dev board or something.
The Hornbill is the latest crowdfunding campaign from CrowdSupply. It’s an ESP32 dev board, packed with the latest goodies, a single cell LiPo charger, and a USB to serial chip that will probably work with most operating systems.
https://www.crowdsupply.com/explore-embedded/hornbill
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32’s Dev Framework Reaches 2.0
http://hackaday.com/2017/04/23/esp32s-dev-framework-reaches-2-0/
We’ve been watching the development of the ESP32 chip for the last year, but honestly we’ve been a little bit cautious to throw all of our friendly ESP8266s away just yet. Earlier this month, Espressif released version 2.0 of their IoT Development Framework (ESP-IDF), and if you haven’t been following along, you’ve missed a lot.
We last took a serious look at the IDF when the chips were brand-new, and the framework was still taking its first baby steps. There was no support for such niceties as I2C and such at the time, but you could get both cores up and running and the thing connected to the network.
http://espressif.com/en/media_overview/news/esp-idf-20-released
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32’s Freedom Output Lets You Do Anything
http://hackaday.com/2017/04/24/esp32s-freedom-output-lets-you-do-anything/
The ESP32 is Espressif’s new wonder-chip, and one of the most interesting aspects of its development has been the almost entirely open-source development strategy that they’re taking. But the “almost” in almost entirely open is important — there are still some binary blobs in the system, and some of them are exactly where a hacker wouldn’t want them to be. Case in point: the low-level WiFi firmware.
So that’s where [Jeija]’s reverse engineering work steps in. He’s managed to decode enough of a function called ieee80211_freedom_output to craft and send apparently arbitrary WiFi data and management frames, and to monitor them as well.
This ability is insanely useful for a WiFi device. With low-level access like this, one can implement custom protocols for mesh networking, low-bandwidth data transfers, or remove the requirement for handshaking entirely.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Pycom Deep Sleep Problem
https://blog.hackster.io/the-pycom-deep-sleep-problem-f1042ea1a706
For anyone that has been running into issues trying to get their Pycom WiPy, LoPy, or SiPy ESP32-based boards to enter deep sleep mode, the company has now tracked down the issue to design problems with the hardware of the boards themselves.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32 monster board
https://hackaday.io/project/21321-esp32-monster-board
A multi-function ESP32 board with Ether (100BASE-TX), CAN-bus, and OLED, and LiPo charger and FTDI
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hands-On the Hot New WeMos ESP-32 Breakout
http://hackaday.com/2017/05/03/hands-on-hot-new-wemos-esp-32-breakout/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Thermal Panorama One Pixel At A Time
http://hackaday.com/2017/05/02/thermal-panorama-one-pixel-at-a-time/
Inspiration can strike from the strangest places. Unearthing a forgotten Melexis MLX90614 thermopile from his ‘inbox,’ [Saulius Lukse] used it to build a panoramic thermal camera.
[Lukse] made use of an ATmega328 to control the thermal sensor, and used the project to test a pair of two rotary stage motors he designed for tilt and pan, with some slip rings to keep it in motion as it captures a scene. That said, taking a 720 x 360 panoramic image one pixel at a time takes over an hour, and compiling all that information into an intelligible picture is no small feat either.
DIY thermal vision shoots 360 panoramas
http://kurokesu.com/main/2017/04/18/diy-thermal-vision-shoots-360-panoramas/
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32 monster board
https://hackaday.io/project/21321-esp32-monster-board
A multi-function ESP32 board with Ether (100BASE-TX), CAN-bus, and OLED, and LiPo charger and FTDI
How to develop program by esp-idf?
kodera2t • 2 hours ago • 0 comments
ESP32 is quite powerful MCU but unfortunately at this moment Arduino environment cannot make it show ESP32′s full ability. Very quick way is using ESP-IDF, the Official development framework for ESP32. It can work on Win, OSX, and Linux and here I would like to show the flow hot to program ESP32 by esp-idf on OSX.
https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to develop program by esp-idf?
A project log for ESP32 monster board
https://hackaday.io/project/21321-esp32-monster-board/log/59231-how-to-develop-program-by-esp-idf
ESP32 is quite powerful MCU but unfortunately at this moment Arduino environment cannot make it show ESP32′s full ability. Very quick way to maximize ESP32 power is using ESP-IDF, the Official development framework for ESP32. It can work on Win, OSX, and Linux and here I would like to show the flow how to program ESP32 by esp-idf on OSX.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino IDE for Building Environment of esp32
Arduino IDE for Building Compiling Environment of ESP32
https://hackaday.io/project/21882-arduino-ide-for-building-environment-of-esp32
There are many development platforms for ESP32 (ESP-WROOM-32). In some situations, using Linux or cygwin in Windows are quite intimidating for beginners. Using Arduino IDE is a more user-friendly approach.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HeartyPatch: A single-lead ECG-HR patch with ESP32
https://hackaday.io/project/21046-heartypatch-a-single-lead-ecg-hr-patch-with-esp32
HeartyPatch is a fully open-source, IoT connected, BLE enabled heart-rate variability & ECG patch with great accuracy
Tomi Engdahl says:
NEW PRODUCT – Adafruit HUZZAH32 – ESP32 Feather Board
https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/05/11/new-product-adafruit-huzzah32-esp32-feather-board/
We packed everything you love about Feathers: built in USB-to-Serial converter, automatic bootloader reset, Lithium Ion/Polymer charger, and just about all of the GPIOs brought out so you can use it with any of our Feather Wings.
Because it’s part of our Feather eco-system, you can take advantage of the 50+ Wings
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32 monster board
A multi-function ESP32 board with Ether (100BASE-TX), CAN-bus, and OLED, and LiPo charger and FTDI
https://hackaday.io/project/21321-esp32-monster-board
Tomi Engdahl says:
The ESP32 is the next great wonderchip, and has been for a while now. The ESP32 also has a CAN peripheral stuffed in there somewhere, and that means WiFi and Bluetooth-enabled cars. [Thomas] has been working on getting a driver up and running. There’s a thread on the ESP32 forum, a Hackaday.io page, and a GitHub page.
Source: http://hackaday.com/2017/05/21/hackaday-links-may-21-2017/
More: https://esp32.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=380&p=8922#p8922
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32 CAN Driver
Umm… a ESP 32 CAN Driver
https://hackaday.io/project/20204-esp32-can-driver
CAN Driver for the ESP32. Comes with a small example project.
I wanted to communicate with a CAN Bus in one of my projects. There was no driver for the ESP-IDF, so I wrote one. Maybe soon we will have an official driver, till then: you can find the links to the example project
CAN driver project for the Espressif ESP32
https://github.com/ThomasBarth/ESP32-CAN-Driver
Tomi Engdahl says:
HeartyPatch: A single-lead ECG-HR patch with ESP32
https://hackaday.io/project/21046-heartypatch-a-single-lead-ecg-hr-patch-with-esp32
HeartyPatch is a fully open-source, IoT connected, BLE enabled heart-rate variability & ECG patch with great accuracy
ECG monitors are plenty, so how is this one different? We’re glad you asked, read on to find out more. HeartyPatch is a completely open-source wireless single-lead ECG “patch” which can calculate heart-rate, R-R intervals and most importantly, Heart-rate variability (HRV). Connect this data to the web of things through WiFi/Bluetooth, or also connect to an app on your phone, and you’ve got your very own, smart, cloud-connected HRV monitor.
HRV is the trend at which the heart-rate, or more specifically, the time between two peaks on your ECG, changes. This change in R-R interval, and ultimately the heart-rate can mean a lot of things. For starters, it gives a good indicator of the health of your heart, one step further than just plain old heart-rate. The social implications of such a product would be enormous, think of a device that can predict heart attacks !!!
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Solar-Powered Wi-Fi ePaper Display
https://blog.hackster.io/a-solar-powered-wi-fi-epaper-display-de24d4a70b78
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESP32 Hamster Wheel Tracker Tweets Workout Stats
http://hackaday.com/2017/05/27/esp32-hamster-wheel-tracker-tweets-workout-stats/
Even with all the hamster wheel trackers out there (and on this site) there’s room for improvement. [Bogdan] upgraded his hamster wheel from an Arduino and datalogging shield to an ESP32, and unleashed some new capabilities one does not ordinarily associate with hamster wheels.
Hamster Wheel – IoT Tracker w/Twitter integration
http://www.bogdanberg.com/2017/05/21/hamster-wheel-iot-tracker/