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 Spiess] 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.
Bill Gates famously never actually said that.
Lookup R7FA6M3AH3CFC#AA0
And how do you implement dualband WIFI on this specific Renesas device? 😉
With an ESP32-C5 :P
Wow
It’s Andreas Spiess, not Speiss.
Thanks! Fixed.
Just in time to stay behind all the triple band setups rolling out with Wifi 6e and 7.
You mean quadruble band setups. HaLow would be much better for these devices than 5 or 6 Ghz.
What is with the naming conventions for their chips?
they got the idea from the USB Consortium.
Exactly: Bill Gates famously said 640k, but I am stuck because this only has 520k. :)
Be careful what you wish for. Maybe first make sure your own country doesn’t become one.
Let’s ignore, for a moment, the fact that neither of us has a flag next to our name. :)
The fact that whichever country we inhabit is imperfect doesn’t mean that we should dismiss the very real and present threats posed by an expansionist totalitarian foreign regime. When we take that attitude and willfully allow ourselves to become further dependent on hostile supply chains, we set ourselves up to import more than just cheap products, and the hypothetical scenario that you raise becomes a forgone conclusion.
Just last month, China, which is increasingly aligned with Russia, began cutting off exports to Europe and the US of parts that are crucial to Ukraine’s drone manufacturing efforts. This follows China’s existing ban on the direct export of such components to Ukraine, which dates back to at least September 2023.
Democracy is a messy process, and preserving it demands constant vigilance against threats both at home and from abroad. We may want to tell ourselves that basing a personal project on a platform like the ESP32 isn’t going to make a difference in global affairs, but as free/open source software and open hardware increasingly make their way into commercial products, the component choices we make as hackers takes on much greater significance. Why not spend just a little more and base our projects on chips that don’t come from a supplier under CCP control? Diversifying our supply chains doesn’t need to be an all or nothing affair, but why give further leverage to an enemy of democracy when we have alternatives?
I’m no angel, having purchased some Espressif micros when I wanted to check out a project that targeted them, but I think it’s wishful thinking to pretend that our individual choices don’t have broader consequences.