EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor(github.com) |
EsPiFF: An ESP32 in the Raspberry Pi form factor(github.com) |
I have an irrational frustration when I see people doing simple GPIO, etc with a Raspberry Pi 4 (when you used to be able to get them). I mean come on people, it has four cores, gigabytes of RAM, and can drive two 4k displays(at 30Hz) and you’re using a pin?!?
The Raspberry Pi has relatively low power consumption compared to what most people are used to with anything x86 but an ESP32 based solution comes in at 1/10 the power consumption (or less), a fraction of the cost, and you can actually get them these days.
Then I calm myself down when I remember GPIO on a Raspberry Pi is following one of the 100,000 guides that’s been written on the topic and can be done in a comfortable, standard Linux environment with a few lines of python (or whatever).
Question for this project - does anyone know the specific regulatory issues of a “commercial” product that calls for an external WiFi antenna? From my little understanding on the topic it seems that ERP, etc could pose a regulatory issue although I think there are exceptions for low scale/hobby products.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC1512
Many folks don't have a real perception of how powerful these little computers happen to be.
Although not the same, everything from around MS-DOS 3.3 - 5.0 time that could fit onto 512KB would be a possible application, plus the extra cores and connectivity options.
Edit: If you’re doing ‘real’ real-time stuff then make sure you get a dual core model and use core 2 for time sensitive things, though. The wifi stack uses up some solid chunks of time.
This new SoC has MMU for full Linux installation, NPU for AI processing and network peripherals for IoT.
[1]The $8 Linux Computer:
https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product...
[1]The $8 Linux Computer:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34024914
[2]Sipeed M1s DOCK development board:
If this is the problem, the solutions are no swap and log2ram https://github.com/azlux/log2ram
I also noticed that Armbian logs to a ramdisk. I didn't investigate the implementation and if its contents survive a reboot.
The only real problems for me are that the SD card will eventually fail no matter what (I mean, much sooner than a SDD or HDD) and that there are basically no Pis at sale at a reasonable price. As a platform it is nearly dead.
Thinking about trying to sell my 3x RPi 4b 8gb in DeskPi cases with ~480gb ssds while prices are still pretty inflated.
I've also run tons of RPis off of SSD root and never had this problem. I hear about it constantly though, so maybe it's urban legend?
> after some months the SD-card broke and the application crashed. High-end industrial SD-card lasted longer, but finally still broke.
> So we made the decision, to build a replacement, which is focused on high-reliability, but still enable the use of Raspberry Pi universum of add-ons, like HATs and enclosures. We choose the ESP32 dual core, 2x240MHz WROVER module with 8MB PSRAM and 16MB Flash. The EsPiFF, the Esp32 in Raspberry Pi Form Factor was born.
> After the EsPiFF is now mature enough, we we are preparing a campaign at Crowd Supply.
I was looking at PBCWay just yesterday, and the process is unclear. If I say that I need some parts, do I have to source them, or can PCBWay/alternative do so for me?
EDIT: what software does one use to draw PCBs for production too? I've seen a few options online, perhaps a better question is what preferences there are. One thing I'm curious about is whether that software will say "you need this much resistance between these 2 components".
I don’t see the TRRS audio/composite video connector.
It would be good if it also had a VGA output port using USB microB.
Esp32 supports these things so it would be nice to see them on this pi “clone”. You might consider the more powerful WROVER-E which has 8MB psram and 16MB flash. https://www.espressif.com/sites/default/files/documentation/...
Add 2 CH599's for only $1 each and you could add 4 USB ports, like the RPi.
Fit it into a genuine case then you'd pretty much have a feature match - VGA video, composite NTSC/PAL video, audio, USB ports, sdcard.
- Finds micropython library. Ok.
- Finds schematics for physical connection. Ok
"But where do I find that fiddly SD-card bracket?"
- Opens a drawer, sees a mound of useless MicroSD-adaptors. Ok.
>>> os.mount(machine.SDCard(slot=2),"/sd")
>>> os.listdir('/sd')
['DCIM', 'VIDEO', 'PHOTO']upip.install('sdcard') did not work.
But ChatGPT truly helped and suggested I find it in Github.
https://github.com/micropython/micropython-lib/blob/master/m...
It's a shame that the RP2040 doesn't have a good low power sleep mode. Not really appropriate for battery powered applications.
There's a lot of shame with the RP2040 in my opinion.
1. No internal oscillator. Always requires external clock.
2. No internal flash. Always requires external flash + somewhat complex startup sequence.
3. ~500uA per MHz current consumption. Much higher than competitors (ex: STM32L1 has 180uA per MHz). This is a relatively power-hungry chip both in active, and sleep, modes.
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I think RP2040 is some kind of bridge device between the microcontroller and microprocessor worlds. But the M0+ core is an odd choice for this. Real world uCs / processors utilizing a Cortex M7 (or similar) would probably be a better idea?
That being said, the ESP32 is high-power (~100mA) due to the radio. Radios always use lots of power, especially during transmit. So the RP2040 probably is fine for this use case.
> A Linux system like the Pi on the other hand, is writing permanent its log files and swap partition or to the SD-card
...only if you don't know how to configured an embedded Linux.
The modules with both the connector and PCB antenna normally hace a jumper resistor to switch between.
Don't get me wrong, the end result is really cool and if just an ESP can cover their entire use case then the Pi was definitely overkill, but it just seems like inventing a flying car because you once got a flat tire.
Right now the supply chain problems RPys are so big,that they are reselling RP 4s for over 300 euros!!
Imagine that over night the price of cars go 3x and you have to wait a long time for them.
Different people are finding different alternatives. We also created a very convoluted solution.
That's probably why the esp series caught on so quick: way cheaper than rpi, Arduino+wifi, way smaller than both, and still had int wifi.
They saw this, and the RPI2040 has all of the above. Python, low power, low cost, integrated WiFi.
The smaller BOM should also make this less likely to sell out permanently.
RPi4 supports usb boot for some time now.
Personally I'm interested in running ADC daughter boards on it. Current solution is to hook an eMMC Pi-clone to a separate co-processor board, but having both on a single board is easier. An alternative would be to run a RTOS on the Pi-clone, but I don't know any that support clones with eMMC (I have Tinker Boards and RockPis)
But yes, then you need network storage or USB SSDs or something
Anyway, kudos to this board designers ! :)
They also have their own free eda software to design the schematic and pcb that links up with their parts library. Easy eda. It puts out a generic gerber file and bom too so you can shop around if you want to double check what the cost will be at another producer. Kicad is another alternative for PCB design.
Finally you pay. :) PCB assembly services exist from various places, for example Seeedstudio is very reliable but pretty expensive. Note that different factories have different formats for the BOM and annotation PDFs.
This year I decided to expand my electronics hobby into synth stuff. I was by no means prepared for this, but after a year of studying various synth module circuits I’m starting recognize certain patterns when I look at a schematic.
Perhaps the hardest part of this process was learning enough to start asking good questions. Everything has gotten so much easier in the last 2 or 3 months because I’ve finally built enough confidence, knowledge and intuition to ask my EE friends why something was designed a certain way. I’ve also learned that they are often equally puzzled. :-)
I think it helps if you have a project you’re working towards.
KiCad[0] is an open source tool for electronics CAD/EDA [1]. You will use it to create a schematic in the schematics editor, assign a "footprint" [2a] to each component (that's the size and shape of a components) and then import it into the PCB editor to lay these components out. The board outline goes onto the Edge.Cuts layer, the traces [2b] onto the copper layers, e.g. F.Cu for the front layer and B.Cu for the backside layer. You will also place your components on these outer layers (You won't need inner layers for a while). You can switch your traces between layers using a "via" [3].
Generate Gerber and drill files then using the "Plot" dialog, zip them and upload them to a service like JLCPCB (very cheap!), OSHPark, PCBWay, e.g. Aisler [4] if your based in Europe. I'd choose leadfree HASL [5] as surface finish. It's cheaper then ENIG and perfectly fine for the beginning.
If you are fine with soldering, then source the parts from e.g. Mouser or Digikey [6] and solder them yourself. That will save you the trouble of having to generate a list of which parts go where for the manufacturer. Make sure you order the parts with exactly the footprint that you put on the PCB.
Start small, ideally with a circuit of which you already know that it's working. This way you can concentrate on getting the details of the PCB manufacturing process right.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_design_automation
[2a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footprint_(electronics)
[2b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_trace
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_(electronics)
[4] https://jlcpcb.com/, https://oshpark.com/, https://www.pcbway.com/, https://aisler.net/
The Pico doesn't let you use a Raspberry Pi with ssh to develop your code using the very same hardware modules that you will use on the microcontroller. You need to either make a mess of jumper cables, or cross compile and transfer the executable constantly over serial.
Please notice, that the ESP32-module PCB antenna can not be used, an external wifi antenna is required. This is because of space restrictions, the RasPi form factor not allow us to make the board larger, and there is simply no space left for the required keepout area for the PCB antenna.
> Because several people mention the integrated PCB antenna, the version 3.2 offer at least a basic use of the PCB antenna. Still, the external PCB antenna is the prefered way to use Wifi with the EsPiFF
It's nice that they removed the ground plane, it should be fairly good now.
The idea that you could just use trig functions and get away with it on a micro is still kinda foreign. :P
Just last week I fixed a bug in such a system: in an effort to speed things up by avoiding floating point math, calculations were done with uint32_t's and the developer(s) didn't notice that in some cases there was an internal overflow before the final result was produced.
Additionally, if you have a good power supply and don't write tons of data on a daily basis to the microSD card, it will be quite reliable as long as it's a name-brand, high quality card.
Source: I've deployed about 50 RPis in various conditions, all but two booting off microSD cards, and have only had one failure requiring swapping in a new microSD card, over the past 8 years of use.
Industrial microSD cards are especially robust and are now available from a variety of manufacturers with environmental and wear ratings that rival decent SSDs.
The real alternatives are many other linux-based single-board computers (from <other fruit>Pis onwards)... sadly most of them come and go, and trying to find a recent OS image (with working binary blobs) for eve a 6 months old devices is proving to be hard.
Right, but people still use the truck, because it's what they know, and maybe because they like the form factor. A lot of Pis are overkill for the projects they're used in. If those projects could start using this, freeing up Pis for projects that actually need them, that would be helpful.
Lots of alternatives available and superior for most specific use cases, which people are discovering and/or transitioning to because of RPi's availability issues. Once this happens it'll be difficult to win those people back.