[HN Gopher] NodeMCU ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE IoT boards show up for...
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NodeMCU ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE IoT boards show up for about $4
Author : watchdogtimer
Score : 140 points
Date : 2021-07-12 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnx-software.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnx-software.com)
| antattack wrote:
| More importantly, ESP32-C3-WROOM-02-H4 module is $2 at mouser.com
| fr0sty wrote:
| That is the bare module only, no breakout board, and is out-of-
| stock for at least another two months.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| The bare module isn't too bad, there are some excellent
| breakouts that are only for bare modules.
|
| But I can't recommend 16MB WROVER based boards enough for
| people making one-off projects.
|
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/espressif-
| systems...
|
| 16MB of flash lets you use sooo many "creature comforts", and
| as an added bonus, a lot of them tend to be a more breadboard
| friendly width since the module itself is thinner and longer
| than the WROOM.
|
| Like with 4MB of flash, even something as simple a <sstream>
| is off limits, because that pulls in locale data, and that in
| turn blows up your binary size budget unless you turn off OTA
|
| (If you're making an actual product, then yeah obviously
| trading some creature comforts for a simpler codebase and a
| cheaper product is on the table)
| deregulateMed wrote:
| I assumed with the shortages that these went up in price. Or more
| specifically the link I previously used to buy node d1 mini has
| gone from $3 to $8. Guess I should have looked harder.
|
| I might pull the trigger and buy 10 of these for all sorts of
| purposes.
|
| On a side note, these made a bad taste in my mouth for Arduino.
| It's making me think all Brand names should be a red flag.
| detaro wrote:
| > _On a side note, these made a bad taste in my mouth for
| Arduino._
|
| Why?
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Probably because the official version seems more overpriced
| than Apple memory upgrades.
| bityard wrote:
| When you buy a branded Arduino, you're supporting the
| people who develop the hardware, software, libraries,
| documentation and learning resources, community platforms,
| and educational outreach.
| II2II wrote:
| It is important and people should be willing to pay for
| that if they desire it. It is also important to offer
| products that don't offer the same degree of support if
| they do not want it.
|
| Ten years ago, I happily paid for an Arduino. I was
| interested in microcontrollers for about a decade at that
| point. Even though microcontrollers were inexpensive, I
| didn't get into them previously since I needed that extra
| support. Yet the Arduino development board and IDE
| provided that support in a form I found palatable at a
| price I could bear. (There were certainly alternatives
| that provided something similar, but they were expensive.
| There were certainly alternatives that were inexpensive,
| but they lacked support.)
|
| Ten years later, the situation is different. More
| experience means that I don't need as much support. For
| the most part, I just want a development board that I can
| solder a header onto. It's something that I may be
| willing to pay $10 for, but it is much harder to justify
| at twice the price. It looks like this is something that
| the Raspberry Pi Foundation realized with the Pico. The
| development tools are better compared to those provided
| by a microcontroller vendor than with those provided by
| Arduino. The board's price is better compared to those of
| eastern companies than western ones.
|
| The reality is that we need both. The reality is that
| western boards will probably be more expensive than
| eastern ones, but the price differential need not be so
| large when similar products are offered.
|
| EDIT: clarification.
| jjeaff wrote:
| If everyone goes with the cheap Chinese clone, you can't
| have either. Because those cheap clones are so cheap
| because there is little to no R&D required. No software
| stack to create, etc. Because all of that work is being
| done by the more expensive, original brands. Support is
| likely only a small part of the cost.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| I know, and yet the fact that I can buy a Chinese clone
| literally 10x cheaper makes it seem a bit off. I mean, I
| happily spend $35 on a Raspbery Pi and don't feel it's
| overpriced.
| parsecs wrote:
| That's a good part thanks to the fact that nobody other
| than RPi Foundation can get those Broadcom
| microprocessors for cheap. This fact really sets apart
| the money making ability of those two companies.
| hytdstd wrote:
| I'm not sure that RPi foundation's skill is just in
| shmoozing Broadcom-- they just released their $4 Pico
| board, which seems to be their own design.
| krastanov wrote:
| The educational materials, documentation, and software
| support are the main reason for the markup. I really
| enjoy the Espressif boards, but I have faced many
| undocumented bugs or incomplete features on them and have
| had to frequently manually modify the IDE for them to
| work. No such problems with Arduino/Adafruit/Sparkfun,
| which also create high quality educational materials (and
| yes, cost 4x (not 10x) more).
| blhack wrote:
| These cheap board have turned me sour on some of the brand
| name stuff.
|
| First of all the cheap Chinese boards are _far_ more
| innovative than what I see coming out of the US. If there is
| something you can imagine doing with an ESP32, there is a
| good chance somebody in China is making a pre fabbed dev
| board for you that has exactly the peripherals you already
| need on it
|
| And they're selling it for $8.
|
| The US equivalents which seem to do way less, last cost
| $50-100.
|
| I get it, and I do try to support those US companies as much
| as I can, but when I'm putting together a workshop and need
| 10 boards, it goes from impossible to "I can give every
| student their own board and they can keep it at the end".
|
| These things are educational tools for me. The cost matters a
| lot.
| dtwest wrote:
| Not trying to take away from your main point but isn't
| Arduino Italian?
| parsecs wrote:
| I think he's referring more to the Arduino/Genuino
| ecosystem rather than solely the Arduino company itself
| and its products.
| spfzero wrote:
| Cypress sells PSoC dev/proto boards for as little as 4.99
| IIRC, for Cortex M0+ chips. Lots of periphs on-chip and
| I/Os but not a lot of hw adapters. I've used one of their
| $10 PSoC 5 boards before for test automation.
|
| They do sell more expensive boards but those generally have
| detachable programmers, capacitive touch and lots of extra
| hardware.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The datasheet says "Out-of-band blocking performance" is just
| -5dBm in some frequency ranges...
|
| Surely that is nowhere near enough to meet the FCC requirements
| to still operate when faced with other unrelated radio
| transmissions?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I've been using a preproduction version of this (they were
| distributed widely on social media) with good results. It's
| another iteration of the ESP32 products, but it's not necessarily
| better than the previous boards for every application. All of the
| ESP parts have significant differences that can make them more or
| less appropriate for certain application needs, so read the specs
| carefully rather than skipping straight to picking the latest
| part.
|
| My biggest wishlist item for Espressif would be to make a solid
| WiFi/BT part with SDIO interface that can be used as a radio for
| a Linux host SoC. Espressif provides a hosted version of the
| firmware for previous ESP boards (
| https://github.com/espressif/esp-hosted#12-supported-esp-boa... )
| but it doesn't integrate as cleanly as standard SDIO WiFi parts
| and their latest boards don't support SDIO.
|
| There are many cheap WiFi/BT SDIO modules on the market, but I'd
| like to have one go-to solution that is known to work well,
| readily available, and cheap like the ESP parts are as wireless
| micros.
| dheera wrote:
| I wonder if they are capable of having the convenience features
| of CircuitPython boards of being able to appear as a USB
| storage device that you just drop firmware or code into. That
| would be killer. Even more killer would be if you could just
| drop an "a.out" and have it work. I hate installing
| microcontroller toolchains, especially STM32 and all that DFU
| crap.
| mmoskal wrote:
| It has an USB controller, so the chip should be capable of
| exposing an USB drive. Unfortunately, for whatever reason
| they are running it through an USB-to-serial chip instead of
| using native USB. The same is the case for many ESP32-S2
| boards...
| dheera wrote:
| Hm, I suppose USB serial is fine too, but we should make it
| support something simple like "gcc --arch=esp32 somefoo.c;
| cat a.out > /dev/ttyUSB0". Would be awesome if gcc can
| auto-fetch the cross-compiler like Docker does if you tell
| it to docker run <something you don't already have>.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| How would this work if the current firmware is listening
| for input via the serial port?
| dheera wrote:
| I suppose if you use the serial port then hold down the
| reset button for 8s to not load the current firmware.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| That sounds inconvenient compared to `pio run -t upload`
| I use now.
| G4E wrote:
| >Unfortunately, for whatever reason they are running it
| through an USB-to-serial chip instead of using native USB.
| The reason is cost : you need to pay a fee[0] if you want
| to officially implement USB in your product.
|
| https://www.usb.org/getting-vendor-id
| dheera wrote:
| Well, to hell with that. Make this stuff outside the US
| then and let's be a technologically advanced
| civilization.
|
| The US is quickly becoming a wasteland of angry IP
| lawyers who love to stifle innovation. Pay a fee to use a
| goddamn plug? It's as ridiculous as if you had to pay a
| fee to implement 120VAC or 12VDC power.
| [deleted]
| phkahler wrote:
| Do these things have PWM suitable for power electronics
| applications? Meaning driving complementary pairs with dead time,
| center aligned, synced ADC reading, period start ISR...
| sitkack wrote:
| There is an internal scheduler using the same core to run the
| wifi stack, so if you need hard realtime for power electronics
| control, I'd personally still run that off a dedicated chip.
| meatmanek wrote:
| You'd probably offload PWM onto the in-chip PWM peripheral,
| rather than doing it in software. There isn't a lot of info
| about it in the datasheet[1], and based on my quick skim, the
| ESP-IDF docs[2] don't say anything about complementary pairs.
|
| 1. https://www.espressif.com/sites/default/files/documentatio
| n/... 2. https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-
| idf/en/latest/esp32/...
| spfzero wrote:
| Second this. Heard of a lot of blown H-Bridge Mosfets that
| used MCUs to gate them. With (deterministic) hardware, there
| is a data sheet and test circuits so you can be sure.
| doesnotexist wrote:
| So these are for sale on AliExpress which I've found to be higher
| friction than other open marketplaces (ebay/amazon/etc). The last
| time I tried to buy something there, my checkout was interrupted
| by a notification asking that I submit ID and other info for
| screening to proceed, which I found surprising since I was buyer
| not a seller and was purchasing some rather mundane item, cables
| or jumpers, I can't remember. In the end, the result was I didn't
| complete the order because it didn't seem worth the trouble.
| Additionally, I'm a little hesitant to buy some items on
| AliExpress because I worry they suffer from the same counterfeit
| issues as other open marketplaces due to poor oversight over
| sellers. Except for on AliExpress I have even less of a sense of
| how to distinguish between sellers with established reputations
| or otherwise. Does anyone have any tips for how to best use
| AliExpress?
| mnadkvlb wrote:
| Your mileage may vary. My experience so far has been mostly low
| quality stuff from aliexpress with very long shipping periods.
|
| I found the ratings on aliexpress to be completely useless. as
| compared to aliexpress, even amazon ratings feel legit (which
| has probably the lowest reputation from my experience).
|
| I had way better experience with local vendors here in
| Switzerland or even shipped from Germany for all kinds of
| qualities.
|
| The local vendors here also have way better support and very
| quick shipping times.
| toast0 wrote:
| I've bought a couple items on AliExpress. For me, I had to call
| my card issuer and have them pause the anti-fraud systems for
| my card, so they would allow the charges; and then when I
| bought some more stuff a couple weeks later, I had to do it
| again. Some people on reddit report success or failure with
| different card issuers.
|
| I would only use AliExpress to buy things you can't find
| anywhere else, which should help with counterfeit issues,
| AliExpress has seller ratings and what not, too. I've had some
| luck with BangGood.com for randomly produced NodeMCU style
| boards, and they have a US warehouse which helps with shipping
| speed (at additional cost).
| megous wrote:
| It's on par with local options when it comes to ease of use.
|
| As for the sellers, I either know them due to their other
| online presence, or I select them based on how good the
| descriptions are on the items they sell from a technical
| perspective. Reviews are also useful, especially those with
| more text, photos, and some technical comments.
| OJFord wrote:
| I don't really have any tips, it is more painful/friction-full
| than Amazon (which is in other ways deteriorating into it!) I
| agree. I've only used for things where I've suspected they're
| commodity dozen-'brand' 'drop shipped' items, and the
| AliExpress price has been enough cheaper for me to bother with
| it, and risk worse/non-existent return/refund experience (worst
| case could always charge back I suppose if bothered enough).
|
| A lot of the time though, Amazon is O(tens of pence) more
| expensive, and I just view it as a cheap insurance. (Amazon's
| returns/replacements is great IME; AliExpress's is unknown to
| me and frankly I assume it's bad, and for the sake of tens of
| pence don't want to find out.)
| emteycz wrote:
| Are you sure this information isn't required because of your
| government? That's the case at least in the EU, and the EU gets
| angry if they miss people. Aliexpress tries to do what the
| regulators want, sadly they don't have user experience in mind.
| OJFord wrote:
| I didn't deal with that from the UK (which was at the time of
| my AliExpress orders in the EU).
| Raed667 wrote:
| I have been playing with a couple of NodeMCUs for a hobby project
| and I have to say the documentation and tooling are extremely
| poor (at least with a Mac).
|
| If you're used to the plug-and-play Arduino, be ready to spend
| quite a bit of time on setup before even connecting to a WIFI.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The datasheet suggests these chips support 802.11n, HT40, MCS7,
| which maps to 150 Mbits of data throughput.
|
| But with these little embedded systems, I know the software stack
| typically heavily limits throughput. Can anyone comment on real
| world data rates this can achieve?
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| ESP32(having more ram, more cores, more pins, more frequency,
| better than this in all the respect?) is available for $2-3 if
| you look for it. Why is $4 the news?
| colemannugent wrote:
| I wonder if these would be a good fit for the DIY mechanical
| keyboard scene. With a board like this it looks like all you'd
| need electronics-wise is a battery and a charge controller.
|
| I wouldn't think it would be too difficult to get QMK running on
| these.
|
| It doesn't look like these are close to the Pro Micro pinout
| though, so perhaps a shim PCB to wire things up correctly?
| user-the-name wrote:
| I would assume that for a keyboard you'd want something with
| much lower power consumption.
| MivLives wrote:
| There's 6 extra pins over the promicro which is a footprint a
| lot of boards target.
|
| https://beta.docs.qmk.fm/developing-qmk/c-development/compat...
| list of things QMK supports.
|
| There are a few bluetooth keyboard controllers that already fit
| the bluetooth controller niche and are pin compatible
| (nice!nano). This having a microusb port would make it less
| appealing as well.
|
| Personally I'm more interested in the RP2040 Pro Micro variant.
| It uses KMK, works with circuit python and can have its keymap
| changed by editing a file on it rather than reflashing or being
| limited by Via/Vial.
| andrewcchen wrote:
| I'd say they are bad because they aren't very power efficient.
| There are boards with nrf52 chips that already have qmk support
| iirc.
| stavros wrote:
| Only one of the newer ESP32 variants has USB HID support, so
| none of them are compatible (except for Bluetooth, but battery
| life there won't be good). There was someone who was porting
| QMK (or maybe ZMK) to ESP32, so hopefully that'll happen.
| zachruss92 wrote:
| From a hardware perspective, likely. The regular esp8266/esp32
| chips are arduino-compatible. If I remember correctly a common
| chip for DIY keyboards are the Arduino Micros.
| azdle wrote:
| Huh, I wonder why these have the same old CHG USB-Serial chip on
| them. The C3 has a built-in serial (and JTAG) USB interface.
| Maybe the software support isn't there yet?
| pantalaimon wrote:
| The USB-Serial chip still works when your software on the main
| CPU (that runs the USB stack) has crashed
| mmoskal wrote:
| To re-flash it you have to reset while holding the GPIO0 down
| - this starts the ROM bootloader with USB. At least this is
| how ESP32-S2 works.
| azdle wrote:
| Sure, but (not actually knowing how the integrated controller
| works) I don't see why the hardware one couldn't do that too,
| especially since it seems to only be build to support CDC
| (serial) and JTAG.
|
| Are you sure that the integrated one doesn't? It just seems
| like an odd thing to leave out.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| I'm not following, there is only one CPU: It has to run
| your application and 'operating system' (usb stack, Wifi if
| used).
|
| Usually those MCUs don't have much memory protection, so
| when your app crashes down goes the whole thing. Writing
| UART is usually just writing data to a single register,
| fire and forget. This will still work if everything else is
| burning. (unless you screwed with the clocks)
|
| Now USB on the other hand is a complex best, you have to
| keep state and do two way communication. If you corrupted
| your memory, you won't be able to get a debug message out
| over USB.
| NortySpock wrote:
| RISC-V for $4.30 USD? Sounds like they'd sell like hotcakes...
|
| NodeMCU ESP32-C3S_KIt
|
| Specifications: Wireless module - AI Thinker ESP32-C3S (footprint
| compatible with ESP32-S / ESP32-WROOM-32D) with ESP32-C3 RISC-V
| processor @ 160 MHz, 2.4 GHz WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0 LE, 4MB flash,
| on-board PCB antenna, and IPEX connector (which may be soldered
| or not). USB - Micro USB port for power and programming via
| CH340C USB to TTL chip Expansion - 2x 15-pin headers with GPIO,
| SPI, UART, ADC, I2S, 3.3V, GND Misc - RGB LED, Reset key, user-
| programmable key Dimensions - 49 x 26 mm
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Look at the solder joints. How can they mass produce hand-
| soldered PCBs at that price?
|
| X marks the spot.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Through-hole components like headers can be soldered by
| selective solder machines, for example:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sm_qdeconI or https://www.yo
| utube.com/watch?v=oaJ67KUOHiYhttps://www.youtu... They use a
| little 'fountain' of molten solder that's controlled by cnc
| to touch each component and solder it in place.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| The solder joints pictured are all rough enough to have
| been hand soldered by a beginner, though.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Most of these cheap boards are sold with the headers not
| soldered on.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Slave labor.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Or could be super low commodity prices.
| conk wrote:
| When did ESP 32 switch to RISC-V? Are there any comparisons on
| how the change impacts performance?
| snuxoll wrote:
| There's no "switch" (yet), the C3 is their new MCU with a
| RISC-V core, but they will be continuing to manufacture their
| Xtensa-based designs for some time.
| tzs wrote:
| They didn't _switch_ to RISC-V. The _added_ RISC-V. Their
| recent releases have been a mix:
|
| September 2019: ESP32-S2. Single core Xtensa LX7.
|
| November 2020: ESP32-C3. Single core RISC-V.
|
| December 2020: ESP32-S3. Dual core Xtensa LX7.
|
| April 2021: ESP32-C6: Single core RISC-V.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Didn't know the differences between the original ESP32 and
| the ESP32-S3, so I looked it up. The ESP32-S3 is basically
| an updated version.
|
| Major differences:
|
| Xtensa(r) dual-core 32-bit LX6 vs LX7 (better FPU I think?)
|
| BR/EDR + Bluetooth LE v4.2 vs Bluetooth LE v5.0
|
| SRAM 520 vs 512
|
| ROM 448 vs 384
|
| USB OTG none vs 1
|
| Plus some minor differences in the peripherals.
| tyingq wrote:
| I'd add 400kb SRAM to the spec list.
|
| Full data sheet:
| https://www.espressif.com/sites/default/files/documentation/...
| jason0597 wrote:
| My dad buys loads of this stuff from eBay and Aliexpress, we got
| a lot of plastic boxes just filled with modules like this. It's a
| shame I don't have any ideas on what to do with them though, they
| just sit there doing nothing.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| One of many resources about ESP32 and a quite informative
| overview of ESP32 realm is
| https://randomnerdtutorials.com/projects-esp32/
|
| It also shows examples of projects to learn the use of the
| board.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| > ... It's a shame I don't have any ideas on what to do with
| them though, they just sit there doing nothing.
|
| You've got the supply, that's good!
|
| Now, if you have the interest, then asking your dad to show how
| these components could be practically used for something
| interesting could as well be a beginning of a wonderful
| journey.
|
| Perhaps, your dad just needs such a signal from you. In my own
| experience, Snap Circuits set is currently providing this
| journey.
| jason0597 wrote:
| Oh I have interest in this stuff, it's just that it's pretty
| much useless for an engineering career. Plus, you can't
| really make any profit because a Chinese inventor will just
| copy your idea and scale it up and drive you out of whatever
| market you make.
|
| To be honest I understand more on how these components work
| than my dad does, he usually just clicks on the first results
| on Google and glues together Arduino/Hackaday projects.
| Whenever I talk to him about doing real low level stuff and
| writing actual drivers, it always goes over his head.
| gigel82 wrote:
| Son !?
| toast0 wrote:
| I've got 5 esp8266 based temperature/humidity probes hanging
| out around the house and collecting data once a minute. At some
| point, I'm going to use that to better control my central HVAC
| systems (mostly I want to run the fan more strategically), and
| alert on bad conditions.
|
| Also, another two to use as an alternative controller (with
| opensource firmware) on a video conversion board; but I only
| installed one, because it didn't satisfy my hopes.
| paulkrush wrote:
| Yah, I bet there are 50 other people reading this wondering
| when their son started posting on HN.
| fnordfnordfnord wrote:
| My sons aren't named Jason but I still feel called out a
| little bit.
| tlack wrote:
| Here are some quick ideas:
|
| 1. Home automation
|
| 2. Garden management
|
| 3. Vehicle data logger incl OBD2 via CAN
|
| 4. Open wifi-based services like a bulletin board for a cafe
|
| 5. Mesh sensor network
|
| 6. Retro gaming
|
| 7. Autonomous vehicle experiments (ESP32 can run
| TensorFlowLite)
| epx wrote:
| Any idea if this board supports BLE Mesh? I've been waiting
| for an affordable platform to play with Mesh (tried ZigBee
| but didn't like).
| fullstop wrote:
| Here's a few things that I made with the esp8266:
| * Connected an accelerometer and hall effect sensor, used to
| know when the washing machine is in use and the state of the
| lid. I taped a magnet to the lid so that it can be sensed with
| the hall sensor, so no wires are moving / need to be managed.
| Sends a message if we've left clothes in the wash. *
| Fish tank lights with WS2812B strips * Water softener
| brine level sensor using an IR transmitter / receiver in the
| lid of the brine tank, lets me know when to add salt. *
| Plant moisture sensor, lets me know when to water. *
| 1x4 WS2812B lights that we can all use to mark ourselves as on
| a call, either through a web page or Telegram, so that we know
| to be quiet because someone is on some sort of video call.
|
| If you're using esp32 or esp8266 take a look at esphome.io for
| ideas -- you can do a ton of stuff without writing much code at
| all. Most of my projects are done with the Nodemcu framework
| because I have a soft spot for Lua, but I do use esphome.io to
| interact with some Mijia BLE temperature and humidity sensors.
| Abundnce10 wrote:
| I love these ideas! I've always wanted to do home automation
| stuff but I worry about sending data to outside parties. Do
| you happen to know if Home Assistant monitors the things you
| have installed and/or keep track of the data your devices
| pass to each other?
| mason55 wrote:
| The whole philosophy behind HA is "local only as much as
| possible".
|
| There are a few analytics modules that report back which
| integrations are in use so that they can help focus dev
| efforts but those are optional. They also have a cloud
| service that can be used to help expose your instance
| externally if you don't want to run a local nginx and
| expose your home network to the outside world, but even
| that is not a way for them to monitor the devices you're
| running.
|
| Plenty of people run HA with absolutely no access to the
| outside internet (like, the host is firewalled from
| communicating outside the local network). Plus it's all
| open source so you don't need to trust anyone, you can look
| at the code if you want.
| fullstop wrote:
| All of my stuff is completely decoupled from the internet.
| I publish mqtt messages to a broker running on PC in my
| basement. Any interaction with the internet, such as
| sending messages to my phone, happens from there and I am
| 100% in control of where traffic goes.
| blackfawn wrote:
| Care to elaborate more on the IR sensor for a water softener?
| I had thought of doing something similar but with ultrasonic
| for level. I'm curious what you are doing with IR. I suppose
| resistance could be used based on dissolved salt but I like
| the non-contact options, when possible.
| fullstop wrote:
| Sure, it's purely optical. I don't know if this was the
| exact sensor since I salvaged it off of something else, but
| it was something like this one:
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075FPR2VX/
|
| It's hooked up to the ADC of the ESP8266, and thankfully
| the output was between 0 and 3.3V since that's the range
| that the Wemos D1 boards can accept, as they have a built
| in voltage divider. It's measuring the distance between the
| lid and whatever reflects the IR back.
| otter-in-a-suit wrote:
| Forgive me if it's an ignorant question, but what's the
| benefit of an ESP32/ESP8266 over a Pi Zero (W), apart from
| saving ~$5, assuming all your applications are indoors and
| don't need to run on battery?
|
| I've only recently gotten into the whole topic, and have yet
| to see the benefit of dealing with micro-controller
| toolchains, MicroPython etc. if power consumption is not a
| big factor. Seems like a full Raspbian offers a lot more
| flexibility.
|
| I've used a Pi Zero W that runs regular Python and sends
| messages to a REST API on my home server (little go thing) +
| MariaDB + Grafana, for similar use case (although I will now
| need to build the washer/dryer idea :)).
| tene wrote:
| If you're happy with a Pi Zero for your use-case, then
| there probably isn't anything you'd appreciate about moving
| to a microcontroller.
|
| One big driver for microcontroller use is power, as you've
| suggested. A quick look on Google shows that the Pi Zero
| uses about 100mA at idle, and even its "sleep" mode uses 30
| mA. In contrast, the esp32-c3 datasheet lists power
| consumption at 130 micro-Amps for light sleep and 5 micro-
| amps for deep sleep. If you want to run something on
| battery or small solar, you can go a lot farther with a
| microcontroller using power-efficient sleep.
|
| One other thing that might be relevant to some use-cases is
| deterministic realtime control. When your program is the
| only thing running on the processor, with no OS involved,
| you can have much more reliably control over your timing
| and latency. This isn't an area I know much about.
| fullstop wrote:
| You're missing the cost of the uSD card.
|
| esp8266 and esp32 boot almost instantly and don't really
| have a file system. My issue with Pi setups is that they
| eventually fail due to SD card corruption.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I'm for sure going to copy your first one, thanks for
| sharing.
| fullstop wrote:
| Good luck! I used a SS441R hall sensor. You don't need to
| use an ADC or anything like that since the output is the
| same level as what would be needed for GPIO and you can use
| an edge trigger interrupt to know when the state has
| changed.
|
| The accelerometer is a GY-521 breakout board. It was a
| little tricker to work with because orientation is
| important and they are sensitive. Different cycles on my
| washer result in different vibration patterns, and the
| "bulky" setting rests for several minutes with no motion.
|
| Overall, it's the one project which gets used the most and
| has saved us from having to re-wash stuff because it was
| forgotten and got kinda funky.
|
| Best of luck!
| triangleman wrote:
| The question is, if you did grab a box and tried to do
| something with it, how would your dad react?
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Make no mistake about it: these have been assembled using slave
| labour. Check out the soldering job if in doubt.
| rurban wrote:
| I don't think that they are assembled in US prisons. Looks more
| like a typical Chinese assembly, with fully automatic placement
| machines.
| quaintdev wrote:
| Awesome. I wonder if, in future, ESP8266 chips will be replaced
| with this one since former is WiFi only.
|
| There really needs to exist an alternative WiFi chip from another
| manufacturer. It would significantly drive the price down due to
| competition. Currently there's no competition to Espressif in
| this segment. Maybe Raspberry Pi should come up with RP2040 WiFi
| chip. That would be amazing.
|
| While we are on this topic I did a lockdown project based on
| ESP8266 thought I had share :p
|
| https://www.ankshilp.com/monitoring_solar_panel_output_over_...
| megous wrote:
| There's bl602.
| quaintdev wrote:
| Not available at all in India. Also, other international
| vendors don't seem to have it too.
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| Esp32-S2 are pretty much the 8266 replacement chips.
|
| ESP8266 don't have secure boot or flash encryption so it's not
| good for production.
|
| C3 doesn't have Risc-V ULP, whereas the S2 does, but the S2
| doesn't have BLE!
|
| I'm waiting for a RISC-V ESP with ULP and an actual low power
| consumption BLE.
|
| Espressif also announced the ESP32-WROOM-DA which is has dual
| antenna configuration, can't wait to see how it handles!
|
| Very cool project, I want to play with Solar Panels as well it
| looks very fun :).
|
| Please check out my project too :P https://www.kokonaut.com
| quaintdev wrote:
| Cost of ESP32-S2 is 5 times that of 8266 at least in India.
| From price perspective C3 looks like replacement for 8266.
|
| BTW cool project.
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| How is the price comparison with just ESP32?
|
| The S2 is more of a direct upgrade as it has ULP and only
| wifi. Surprising the c3 is that much cheaper, the release
| is also much more recent. Wonder why that's the case?
| zxcvgm wrote:
| From the datasheet, it looks like the C3 doesn't have the Ultra
| Low Power (ULP) co-processor. This co-processor was there on
| previous ESP32s and allowed you to run code for sensor monitoring
| or other basic tasks while the main CPU was stopped, consuming
| ~150uA. It can then wake the main CPU if certain conditions were
| met. Wonder why it was removed, and if this would prevent the C3
| from being used in these kinds of low-power applications.
|
| Datasheet:
| https://www.espressif.com/sites/default/files/documentation/...
| postpawl wrote:
| That's what allowed ESP.deepSleep(uS)?
| zxcvgm wrote:
| I believe that's a wakeup triggered using the RTC timer,
| which is still available in the C3.
| willemmerson wrote:
| Actually it only consumes 150uA when it's active so if it's
| just doing one reading a minute then it'll be closer to the
| deep sleep current which is 5uA or so.
|
| There is an awesome library (https://github.com/boarchuz/HULP)
| which makes using the ULP much easier so that things like
| software i2c and ADC multisampling are trivial.
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