More ESP32 Info Dribbles Out

In case you’ve been hiding under a virtual rock over the last two years, you might have missed it when 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.

They’re looking to repeat the success of the ESP8266 with the ESP32, that should be coming out any time now. As we get closer to the release date, details start to dribble out. [Alberto], who makes very nice-looking pinout diagrams for a number of our favorite chips and modules, has already made us an ESP32 module pinout diagram.

And [Rudi] has been digging up nearly every crumb of info on the ESP32 that’s publicly available. For instance, it was through his website that we learned that the new RTOS SDK source is already up on GitHub.

There’s also a source of official information in the ESP32 forum, but there’s not much news there just yet. We expect this to change as more beta units make it out into the wild.

We covered the announcement of the forthcoming ESP32 last month, and we have to say that we’re looking forward to getting a module or two in our hands. Twin cores, BTLE support, and better DMA are tops on our list of neat features.

29 thoughts on “More ESP32 Info Dribbles Out

      1. wat? A 32kHz crystal just means it has an RTC and presumably the RTC will run from a CR2032 with everything else entirely *off*. Like an STM32 does for example.

        The CPU having low-power interruptible modes is a completely orthogonal issue. I mean, I’d expect it to have super-low-power modes because that goes really well with BLE, but it’s really got nothing to do with the RTC.

          1. VDDPST_RTC 19 19 P RTC IO Power Supply 1.8V – 3.3V
            Battery Regulator Supply Voltage VBAT 2.8 3.3 3.6 V
            Pin 19

            But there are more secrets hidden in this pin.

      2. In their (earlier) press release: “…built-in low power options to ensure that you can still do ADC conversion, computation, level thresholds, etc. while in deep sleep.”

        Most of that sounds like the standard sleep-the-cpu, power-the-peripherals sleep. But what’s up with “computation”? Maybe they’re just down-clocking the CPU off of the lower frequency crystal? But will they have enough grunt to run Bluetooth? (I doubt it, but they’re clever.)

        OTOH, anything they’re doing to lower power consumption is a huge win in terms of applications. WiFi has been a problem for long-running battery operated devices, for which the ESP8266 would have otherwise been perfect.

    1. I just finished reading your guys’ letter to the people about the esp32, and I just want to say it’s so refreshing to see a company so forward with their audience and humble in their approach :) bravo, can’t wait for the esp32 (hopefully it’s almost as cheap as the esp8266 :D )

  1. Looks like it may have enough features to do speech to text and text to speech. If a single 16MHz AVR can do both on a primitive level the ESP32 should result in some very impressive projects.

    1. Funny, that is the one module I used the most, because for most applications I wanted to add wifi/internet to something already existent or to something the ESP by itself will never be capable of doing. So, I appreciate its existence. True, for many stand alone applications that appeared, it is limited.

      1. that’s the thing, bluetooth should be able to keep an active connection with 10s of uA. With the current ESP you either shut it down, needing 2 seconds to connect and send data, or keep it in some intermediary power options which would drain batteries much too fast.

        My logic so far with IOT has been that with micro + low power radios(RFM12, 69, 73) i can do what the ESP can, with less battery, but I need a gateway. And it takes more time to assemble the modules. Maybe it will change.

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