[HN Gopher] Espressif Acquires Majority Stake in M5Stack
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Espressif Acquires Majority Stake in M5Stack
Author : chl
Score : 85 points
Date : 2024-04-22 13:54 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.espressif.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.espressif.com)
| karmicthreat wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is good or bad. I use an M5Stack tough for
| one of my products. It works ok, but I really wish M5 had some
| more OEM friendly options.
| milesvp wrote:
| My experience dealing with Espressif is that they are pleasure
| to work with professionally. I come from a world where Atmel
| made a lot of sense for the lower volume I deal with. Atmel
| support was ok before they got bought by Microchip, now it can
| be impossible to find answers to problems, and support response
| is meh at best. When I started to move products over to esp32 a
| few years ago, it felt like a breath of fresh air. Things
| seemed to just work, and I could find answers easily in the
| documentation. They also responded pretty well when I found a
| problem that was a limitation of the chip that was only
| documented in a code comment in their low level drivers. Their
| response, including several emails, that the info would be
| included in the next revision of datasheet left me feel pretty
| good about the whole thing. I would not expect that kind of
| interaction from any of the chip makers I've worked with so
| far, especially adjusted for the cost of the chip.
|
| So, hopefully this is a good thing for M5Stack. I don't know
| what kind of pressures this will have on the company
| internally, but hopefully their outward facing presence will
| only get better.
| luma wrote:
| I don't think M5 is looking for OEM partners, it's pretty
| clearly a B2C solution. Espressif has most everything you need
| if you're looking to OEM something.
| thebeardisred wrote:
| This was going through my head. From a cost of acquisition
| standpoint Espressif had already captured (effectively) 100%
| of M5 stacks users, so this must be a play to remove some
| inefficiencies and the supply chain they already have in
| place.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Espressif's more recent dev kits (the SBOX series) are very
| popular with hobbyists and overlap with M5 stack's
| products. I wouldn't be surprised if they just eliminated
| their dev kits and pointed people towards M5 stack's line
| up.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| M5Stack has a lot of cool little "almost ready to go" modules,
| both core (esp32 based typically) and accessory (ex sensors).
| They're relatively inexpensive and great for hobby/prototyping.
|
| One of the things that might be a bit different is that M5Stack
| has had decent Python support and Espressif has typically only
| done the core C-based stuff.
|
| But I'm optimistic. Hopefully this just means more access to
| newer chips sooner for M5Stack.
| aksss wrote:
| > the core C-based stuff
|
| Plug for https://www.nanoframework.net/
| https://github.com/nanoframework/nanoFramework.M5Stack
| bru3s wrote:
| Imho the biggest crutch with M5Stack stuff is that for almost
| every single product there's close to 0 support for ESP-IDF, so
| you're either stuck with the Arduino framework and their
| libraries, or you have to se tup everything from the ground up.
| This does not really matter with simpler products like the M5Atom
| but it becomes a real pain when you have to deal with e.g. their
| cores. Also their absolute lack of JTAG support is infuriating,
| because it forces you to deal only with log-based debugging,
| which in current year is ridiculous even for embedded systems
| maximusdrex wrote:
| I bought one of the M5Stack's devices expecting it would work
| out of the box with my ESP-IDF code, I was quite disappointed
| to realize that I had to adapt their code myself. I'm hopeful
| that this merger encourages M5Stack to build their software
| into the ESP-IDF framework.
| duxup wrote:
| I've tried some M5Stack devices and I really like them as it's
| handy to have some defaults like a small screen on your esp32 all
| ready to go in a nice package.
|
| Hopefully they fix their website though, documentation links to
| nowhere left and right last time I was on there. Granted I found
| what I needed mostly on Github.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Now this is really interesting! I've been a fan of M5stack for a
| few years and promote them here often. Up to now, the products
| have been mostly great but sometimes the documentation has been a
| bit lacking. Expressif does a fantastic job on documentation and
| if they can lift M5stack's game here it would be a big step
| forward.
| solarkraft wrote:
| > Expressif does a fantastic job on documentation
|
| As far as I know this took them a while to learn. In the
| beginning they were your typical weird chinese chip maker, but
| people volunteered effort into documenting their products
| because they were just that good. Now they've learned to do it
| themselves and can probably help M5 with it too.
| hackcasual wrote:
| Have half a dozen M5Stack based devices using ESPHome. There's a
| big community supporting that. When I tried developing using an
| IDE found them more troublesome.
| cptskippy wrote:
| ESPHome is really a game changer when it comes to developing
| IoT devices. Unless I'm working with some esoteric hardware
| like GPS or LoRA, I'll load ESPHome on the device for when I'm
| prototyping.
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