Can anyone recommend a #RasPi alternative for #embedded #electronics projects? There's the #Arduino, which is nice, but sometimes you need something with a little more oomph.
@Ray Kelm I don't expect especially high speed signaling to be a requirement. I do want to be able to establish a TCP connection to a PC over wifi, though.
my current project is doing just that and with #esp32
[edit]This setup uses a handful of #esp8266 with sensors, all in a mesh with network, plus one esp32-c3 as the bridge to the normal home WiFi network, and a #RaspberryPi Zero for data storage
Attached: 2 images
Since this one works, I ordered a few more sensors and microcontrollers from the same manufacturers and I soldered them
I now have a bunch of these little devices around the house, and I am very happy with how they extend the ran…
look for RISC-V boards, there's a bunch of new ones. They're cheap because of no royalty fees. Some can run Linux. I bought a couple, but didn't yet have the time to work on them.
Arduino produces a range of boards, including ones that are far more powerful than the Uno.
I would recommend the Pi Pico though if you're looking for something faster than the Uno and still cheap. There's Arduino IDE support for them as well.
@xorbit Keep in mind that there are two major families of the ESP32 now. I forget which alphabet soup is which, but one of them is the Xtensa core and the other is a RISC-V core. It will probably be easier and easier over time to find free RISC-V tooling over Xtensa.
@xorbit I can't recall which is which. Modern ESP32s have the ESP32-S* family and ESP32-C* family. I think the latter is RISC-V but you need to check to be certain. There's also an ESP32-H* family I've seen flash before my desk, but I know nothing at all about it, including which core it has.
@qqmrichter It doesn't tend to be very important which core it uses from an application point of view, the tooling selects the correct compiler etc. More important are the interfaces and particular radios you want. The base environment is ESP-IDF but there's an #Arduino core and other languages like #MicroPython, #Lua, #JavaScript, #Elixir, #Rust etc that have been made to work on them. Very well supported ecosystem. Some of these other languages may only work on Xtensa or #riscv though.
@qqmrichter To get started you wouldn't really use a bare chip, there are tons of dev boards, breakouts and solderable modules out there. If you care for having Ethernet with PoE, I sell one called wESP32, but if you don't, there are many cheaper options out there. wesp32.com
@xorbit I just started using one, a C6 (that’s what they had in stock in the shop where I was ordering the other stuff.)
I program it with the Arduino CLI, because that’s what I’m used to and I don’t want to learn another toolchain before I know if I need to. I’m impressed so far. The dev board is cheaper than an Arduino Nano, it has many features, WiFi, Bluetooth, Flash memory is very flexible.
depends on your use case. Pi and Arduino are extremely different beasts.
Do you need lots of GPIO? Network? Wi-Fi? Memory? Flash? Camera/LCD connections? Floating point or integer only? A multitasking OS (with X! and a GPU!), an RTOS, or bare metal? Interoperability with some ecosystem? With good community support or something raw that you can slog through in god-mode and never need to update?
Michał
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Jonathan Lamothe likes this.
Ray Kelm
in reply to Michał • • •@RicoElectrico I'll second the recommendation on ESP32. I probably have 10 of them now and they are quite capable.
That said, the Pi Pico is decent too, especially if you have unusual high speed signaling requirements.
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Ray Kelm • •Guillaume Rossolini
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •my current project is doing just that and with #esp32
[edit]This setup uses a handful of #esp8266 with sensors, all in a mesh with network, plus one esp32-c3 as the bridge to the normal home WiFi network, and a #RaspberryPi Zero for data storage
infosec.exchange/@GuillaumeRos…
Guillaume Rossolini (@GuillaumeRossolini@infosec.exchange)
Infosec ExchangeJonathan Lamothe
in reply to Michał • •Shae Erisson
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •I buy from AdaFruit. Their boards are more powerful than the Arduino, and not as powerful as a Raspberry Pi.
If I need an operating system, I plug an AdaFruit board into a Raspberry Pi.
My most popular project in that area is: github.com/shapr/bloohm
GitHub - shapr/bloohm: visual bloom filter to display process status as neotrellis m4 output
GitHubrhempel
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Bonkers
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •BardMoss
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Sconient
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Arduino produces a range of boards, including ones that are far more powerful than the Uno.
I would recommend the Pi Pico though if you're looking for something faster than the Uno and still cheap. There's Arduino IDE support for them as well.
Patrick Van Oosterwijck
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Jonathan Lamothe likes this.
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Patrick Van Oosterwijck • •Michael T. Richter
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Michael T. Richter • •Michael T. Richter
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Patrick Van Oosterwijck
in reply to Michael T. Richter • • •Michael T. Richter
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Patrick Van Oosterwijck
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •wESP32 - wESP32 — Wired ESP32 with PoE
wesp32.comÖlbaum
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •@xorbit I just started using one, a C6 (that’s what they had in stock in the shop where I was ordering the other stuff.)
I program it with the Arduino CLI, because that’s what I’m used to and I don’t want to learn another toolchain before I know if I need to. I’m impressed so far. The dev board is cheaper than an Arduino Nano, it has many features, WiFi, Bluetooth, Flash memory is very flexible.
docs.espressif.com/projects/es…
ESP32-C6-DevKitM-1 - - — esp-dev-kits latest documentation
docs.espressif.comWilliam
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •depends on your use case. Pi and Arduino are extremely different beasts.
Do you need lots of GPIO? Network? Wi-Fi? Memory? Flash? Camera/LCD connections? Floating point or integer only? A multitasking OS (with X! and a GPU!), an RTOS, or bare metal? Interoperability with some ecosystem? With good community support or something raw that you can slog through in god-mode and never need to update?
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to William • •silverwizard
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to silverwizard • •