The ESP32 series of microcontrollers have been with us for quite a few years now, providing a powerful processor and wireless connectivity for not a huge outlay. We’ve seen a bunch of versions over the years with both Tensilica and RISC-V cores, but so far the ones with radios have all only serviced 2.4 GHz WiFi. That’s about to change to include 5GHz with the new C5 variant though, and [Andreas Speiss] has been lucky enough to get his hands on a prototype dev kit
It’s very similar to the C6, which we’re already used to beyond the dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio from a software point of view. The C5 is so new that the company has yet to incorporate the new chip into the Arduino IDE. He shows it working and detecting both networks though, and speculates a little about its eventual marketing.
Interesting to us is the dual-band antenna, with branches for both frequencies on the same PCB. We’d be interested to see the real-world performance of this, and also whether they produce a version with separate outputs for each band. The full video is below the break. In the meantime, watch out for this chip appearing on the market.
It’s not the only Espresif chip we’re anticipating at the moment.
Their product line is like a bingo card with a feature matrix, and every once in a while someone has a new product. BINGO!
Would love to see a Bingo with more than 520k SRAM…
520k ought to be enough for anybody.
Oh, I remember when someone said “64KB should be enought for anybody”
Bill Gates famously said 640k not 64k
Close, but still not quite right—There is no record of Gates saying that at all.
Manuel Malagon didn’t claim that it was Bill Gates saying that. I am sure there was someone on this planet saying that words at some time.
Lookup R7FA6M3AH3CFC#AA0
And how do you implement dualband WIFI on this specific Renesas device? 😉
It’s Andreas Spiess, not Speiss.
Just in time to stay behind all the triple band setups rolling out with Wifi 6e and 7.