New Chip Alert: RTL8710, A Cheaper ESP8266 Competitor

July 28, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 98 Comments

Almost exactly two years ago, shocking news thundered across the electronics blogosphere. There was a new WiFi module on the block. It was called the ESP8266, a simple serial device capable of taking care of an 802.11 network and a WiFi stack, giving any project with a microcontroller access to the Internet. Earlier modules to connect microcontrollers were sufficient for the task, but nothing could beat the ESP8266 on price.

Now, there’s a new module that’s even cheaper and more powerful than the ESP8266, and just like all of our favorite parts from China, it inexplicably shows up on eBay and AliExpress before anywhere else. It’s the Realtek RTL8710, available on eBay, on AliExpress, and elsewhere around the web for about $1.50 per device. There’s also a dev kit for the device featuring breakouts, an additional microcontroller, and a few switches and buttons for about $15.

As you would expect, there is zero English-language data available about the RTL8710, everything is in Chinese. There is a forum of sorts going over this new chip, and the Google Translatrix is good enough to glean a little bit of info about the new chip.

The RTL8710 features an ARM processor clocked at 166MHz. Stock, this module is running FreeRTOS. There’s 1MB of Flash, 48k of RAM available to the user, up to 21 GPIOs, 3 I2C, 4 PWM pins, and 2 PCM. This module also comes with an FCC logo, but I can’t find anything on the FCC website about this module.

If anything, the Realtek RTL8710 isn’t meant to be a competitor to the ESP8266. While extremely popular and still very useful, the ‘next gen’ ESP32 is due to be released in a month or so, and with the exception of Bluetooth on the ESP32, this Realtek module should match its capabilities quite well. Whether anyone can get an English datasheet is another matter, but if history is any indication a few English language RTL8710 forums will pop up a few hours after this is posted.

Thanks [sabas] for sending this in

Espressif Releases ESP8266-Killer!

June 21, 2016 by Elliot Williams 135 Comments

It’s no secret that we love the ESP8266 chip, and the community of hackers that have contributed to making it useful. We often joke about this or that new WiFi-enabler being an ESP8266 killer, but so far none have stepped up. Here we go again!

Espressif has released a chip that’s going to be an ESP8266 killer, and no, it’s not the ESP32. The ESP8285 went into mass production in March, and should start to appear in the usual outlets fairly soon.

What makes it an ESP8266 killer? It’s an ESP8266, but with the flash memory onboard. Nothing more, but also nothing less. What does this mean? Tiny, tiny designs are possible. And, if the street price ends up being right, there’s no reason you wouldn’t opt for built-in flash. (Unless you were planning on doing some ROM hacking.)

Continue reading “Espressif Releases ESP8266-Killer!” →

The Latest, Best WiFi Module Has Been Announced

November 6, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 85 Comments

A little more than a year ago, a new product was released onto the vast, vast marketplace of cheap electronics. It was the ESP8266, and this tiny and cheap WiFi module has since taken over the space of hobbyist electronics and become the de facto standard for connecting tiny microcontrollers to the Internet.

Now there’s an upgrade on the horizon. [John Lee], the public face of Espressif, the makers of the ESP8266, has announced the next product they’re working on. It’s called the ESP32, and if the specs given are correct, it looks to be the next great thing for the Internet of Things.

The ESP32 will now contain two Tensilica processors running at 160MHz, compared to the ‘8266’s one processor running at 80 MHz. The amount of RAM has been increased to 400 kB, Bluetooth LE has been added, WiFi is faster, and there are even more peripherals tucked away in this tiny piece of silicon.

The new ESP32 includes new, simplified APIs and unlike when the ESP8266 was announced, documentation in English.

Right now, Espressif is beta testing the ESP32, with about 200 boards manufactured so far. If you’re one of the few lucky people who have one of these boards on your workbench, we’d love to see your take on it.

Review: HUZZAH Is The ESP8266 WiFi Setup You Need

May 1, 2015 by Mike Szczys 44 Comments

A little board that adds WiFi to any project for a few hundreds of pennies has been all the rage for at least half a year. I am referring to the ESP8266 and this product is a marrige of one of those WiFi modules with the support hardware required to get it running. This week I’m reviewing the HUZZAH ESP8266 Breakout by Adafruit Industries.

If you saw the article [cnlohr] woite for us about direct programming this board you will know that a good chunk of that post covered what you need to do just to get the module into programming mode. This required adding a regulated 3.3V source, and a way to pull one of the pins to ground when resetting the power rail. Not only does the HUZZAH take care of that for you, it turns the non-breadboard friendly module into a DIP form factor while breaking out way more pins than the most common module offers. All of this and the price tag is just $9.95. Join me after the break for the complete run-down.

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How To Directly Program An Inexpensive ESP8266 WiFi Module

March 18, 2015 by cnlohr 121 Comments

The ESP8266 is the answer to “I want something with Wifi.” Surprisingly, there are a number of engineers and hobbyists who have not heard of this chip or have heard of it but don’t really understand what it is. It’s basically the answer to everything IoT to so many engineering problems that have plagued the hobbyist and commercial world alike.

The chip is a processor with integrated RAM, some ROM, and a WiFi radio, and the only external components you will need are 4 capacitors, a crystal and an external flash! It’s CHEAP, like $4/ea cheap! Or $5 if you want it on a nice, convenient carrier board that includes all these components. The power consumption is reasonable (~200mA)¹, the range is insane ~300m² without directional equipment, and a PCB trace antenna and ~4km if you want to be ridiculous.

One place thing that more people need to know about is how to program directly for this chip. Too many times projects use it as a crutch via the AT commands. Read on and find out how to hello world with just this chip.

Continue reading “How To Directly Program An Inexpensive ESP8266 WiFi Module” →

Hacklet 25 – ESP8266 WiFi Module Projects

December 5, 2014 by Adam Fabio 6 Comments

Few devices have hit the hacker/maker word with quite as large a bang as the ESP8266. [Brian] first reported a new $5 WiFi module back in August. Since then there have been an explosion of awesome projects utilizing the low-cost serial to WiFi module that is the ESP8266. This week’s Hacklet is all about some of the great ESP8266 projects we’ve found on Hackaday.io!

We start with [TM] and the ESP8266 Retro Browser. [TM] has a great tutorial on combining the ESP8266 with an Arduino Mega2560. [TM’s] goal was a simple one: create a WiFi “browser” to access Hackaday’s Retro Site. This is a bit more complex than one would first think, as the Arduino Mega2560 is a 5V board, and the ESP8266 are 3.3V parts. Level shifters to the rescue! [TM] was able to bring up the retro site in a terminal, but found that even “simple” websites like google send enough data back to swap the poor ESP8266!

Next up is [Thomas] with the Simple Native ESP8266 Smartmeter. [Thomas] has created a device to measure run time on his oil heating system. He implemented this with some native programming on the ESP8266’s onboard Diamond Standard L106 Controller. When he was done, the ‘8266 had two new AT commands, one to start measurement and one to stop. A bit of web magic with some help from openweathermap.org allows [Thomas] to plot oil burner run time against outside temperature.

[Matt Callow] is also checking out native programming using the EspressIf sdk with his project ESP8266 Native. ExpressIf made a great choice when they released the SDK for the ESP8266 back in October. [Matt] has logged his work on building and extending the demo apps from EspressIf. [Matt] has seven demo programs which do everything from blinking an LED to connecting to thingspeak via WiFi. While the demos aren’t all working yet, [Matt] is making great progress. The best part is he has all his code linked in from his Github repo. Nice work [Matt!]

[Michael O’Toole] is working on ESP8266 Development PCBs. The devboards have headers for the ESP8266, an on-board ATmega328 for Arduino Uno compatibility, and a USB to serial converter to make interfacing easy. [Michael] also provides all the important components you need to keep an ESp8266 happy, such as programming buttons, and a 3.3V regulator. We really like that [Michael] has included a header for a graphical LCD based local console.

Want to see more ESP8266 goodness? Check out our curated ESP8266 list on Hackaday.io!

Hackaday.io Update!

Hackaday.io gets better and better every day. We’ve just pushed out a new revision which includes some great updates. Search is now much improved. Try out a search, and you’ll find you can now search by project, project log, hacker, or any combination of 11 different fields. Our text editor has been revamped as well. Update a project log to give the new look a try!
We know everyone on .io is awesome, but just in case a spammer slips in, we’ve added “report as inappropriate” buttons to projects and comments. Once a few people hit those report buttons, projects or comments get sent to the admins for moderation.

That’s all the time we have for this week’s Hacklet! As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of Hackaday.io!