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.

[Sprite_tm] should require no introduction, but we’re going to do it anyway. He’s can install Linux on a hard drive. He can play video games on his keyboard. He built the world’s tiniest Game Boy, and gave the greatest talk I’ve ever seen. Right now, [Sprite] is in China working on the guts of the ESP32, the next great WiFi and Bluetooth uberchip.

[Sprite] recently packed his bags and headed over to Espressif, creators of the ESP32. He’s one of the main devs over there, and he’s up to his neck in the varied and weird peripherals contained in this chip. His job includes porting NES emulators to a WiFi-enabled microcontroller. If you want to learn about the latest and greatest microcontroller, this is the guy you want to talk to, and he’s taking all questions.

Note that we usually do these things earlier in the day but this week we start rolling at 5 PM Pacific Friday to help match up with [Sprite’s] timezone. You can figure out when this event will happen with this handy time and date converter.

Here’s How To Take Part:

Buttons to join the project and enter the Hack Chat
Buttons to join the project and enter the Hack Chat

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. Log into hackaday.io, visit that page, and look for the ‘Join this Project’ Button. Once you’re part of the project, the button will change to ‘Team Messaging’, which takes you directly to the Hack Chat.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

And Tindie Too

In addition to [Sprite]’s Hack Chat on Friday, we’re going to have a Tindie Chat in the Tindie Dog Park on Friday at noon, Pacific time. You can figure out when that’ll be in your local time by following this link.

In the Tindie Chat, we’re going to be talking about all the aspects of selling hardware on Tindie. This is a phenomenal community that keeps on growing, and right now there’s some really, really cool hardware being offered up from makers and creators around the world.

Upcoming Hack Chats

We have a few more Hack Chats on the books. On February 10th, we’ll be talking RF with [Jenny List]. Sparkfun will be around for a Hack Chat on February 17th. If stats are your thing, we’ll have a chat on the ins and outs of R in a few weeks.

19 thoughts on “Hack Chat: The Incredible Sprite_tm And The ESP32

  1. A Pity this chat is so obfuscated by hackaday.io. what is wrong with a irc chat people? i’m not even able to find the transcript of the kicad chat in the horrible hackaday.io interfarce

    1. nobody is, except maybe those three 18yr old phone* addicted devs who developed it.

      * my theory is .io looks and works great on mobile, but Im over 20 and use real computers for web stuff.

  2. Brian: Sprite_TM didn’t install Linux that HD. What he created was a “malware” that modify his Linux root password. This is a nice proof-of-concept. In theory it could be possible to run Linux there because it is an ARM9 and the board has 64MB of RAM, but need to replace the SPI NOR with something bigger because Linux will not fit in 256KB Flash. Other option is NuttX, a Linux-like RTOS for microcontrollers.

      1. hi mac012345, unfortunately it is not true. Zephyr doesn’t follow any on Linux standard, it is not POSIX. LinuxFoundation cares about $, then they accepted Zephyr as “imposed” by Intel. Please compared both system and you will see what I’m talking about.

  3. I think the guys at Espressif should pick a default board configuration for their chip and ship like that too, It would help make a standard configuration for the boards a bit like what PI & Arduino did so we can have ESP specific module boards, I know there are lots of after market options but because there is so many no one really bothered making shield type devices on mass.

    1. They’re leaving it to the marketplace to settle on a default, which makes some sense. “Like what Arduino did” gives you pin-headers with incompatible spacings that everyone has to work around.

      I don’t know where everyone else is at, but a whole bunch of us have settled on the WeMOS mini as a reasonable standard pinout for the ESP8266 — in no small part because they’re the cheapest and cheerfullest among the 8266 boards.

      My claim is that’s what we want to happen with the ESP32 as well. Settle, as a community of users, on the design with the best performance/price ratio, and design accordingly. We don’t need no top-down decisionmaking.

      1. I see where you are coming from, I think you have swayed me on this, Arduino is a great product but their pin spacing is probably their biggest let down. Just because Arduino messed up doesn’t mean Espressif will but the point is this type of community works best when everything isn’t just handed on a plate. People make designs and some come and go but one will stick and it will stick because it is the best/price like you said.

  4. I got the Widora Ebox ESP-32 running Blynk and I’m really liking it. It’s got ext. Antenna and it fits on breadboard with 1 open hole on each side. A lot of stuff crammed in there! Place I got it from has a 1 year warranty on it too!

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