Espressif ESP32-S3

I've got an ESP32-S3 original that was festering in a drawer. Took it out a few weekends back and plugged it into a claude session. Within a morning it was running a custom rust firmware that was showing the monitoring overview for the $WORK network. Considering I've got very minimal rust experience, to be able to spin up a custom firmware in such a short time really was something. Not sure I'd trust in on the network without doing an audit of what it's doing, but as a fun Sunday experiment, it scratched the itch

>esp32-s3 This microcontroller is a beast, currently using it to do dev work on a pi4. Having two usb ports with one otg lets you do some neat things that would cost $100+ otherwise

Yeah that's why I have so many ESP32-S3's around, no project I've done actually needs Linux and the boot times and SD card problems that come with using a Pi.

This is so sick except it only has 2 pulse counters instead of the 4 on the S3 which means I can't use it as a drop in replacement on my current project. Not really complaining, I cut my teeth as an embedded dev on the ESP8266 and for years now all of my personal projects (and a fair few professional ones) have been based on the ESP32 line of chips. They're all pretty incredible for the cost, absolutely my favorite embedded target.

Using two ESP32-S3 modules you can get ~6000 packets per second with CSI data. I'm using this as a cheap replacement for specialty high-G gyroscope modules, but it could see use for this type of motion detection as well.

How so? I have a product that you can buy that runs on an ESP32S3[1]. They work very well and you can even do OTA updates. Even my competitor uses an ESP32 :) [1] https://www.stationdisplay.com/

I did something similar recently. I wanted to wake my laptop via wifi. There's no way to do it using WoL with the laptop's wifi card. For some reason the laptop's wifi card won't be powered during sleep or never responds to WoL packets, but the USB port is powered during sleep. I got an ESP32-S3 which has built-in USB. I cobbled together the examples from the ESP-IDF framework. Using one wifi example I got the ESP32 to detect WoL packets sent to it, and the other example was the USB HID example that acts like a mouse and moves the cursor around. So now I can send a WoL request to the ESP32, and it will then "move the mouse" and wake the laptop. It worked like a charm and only took me about 2 evenings to put together.

> For its price, the ESP32-S3 is a powerhouse of a microcontroller. Indeed, don't forget it is more powerful than computers like this one, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_PC1512

and a day later https://github.com/ESPARGOS/SoapyESPSDR already got native ESP32-S31s USB 2.0 working streaming 20 MSa/s @8bit, pretty amazing at $7 + shipping.

Entirely fair, $1 is just the chip, not the board. No question the ESP32-S3 is incredibly good value.

I’ve used Pi’s quite a bit and probably could have used something else for a lot of applications. When the Pi Pico came out that was an absolute dream for a lot more projects but still lacked the amount of RAM and Flash memory for some projects. Recently I came across the Waveshare ESP32-P4-Module Basic Kit that has 16MB of Flash and 8MB of PSRAM. The board comes in a Pi form factor with the 40 header and MIPI connections for camera and LCD. I’ve been able to port a Linux app by using the ESP IDF port of FreeRTOS and Vuejs/Tailwind for a web UI. The ESP32 P4 has dual core 360/400MHz RISC 5 with a Ethernet port. Waveshare added the C6 to the SOM if you want WiFi. That device is now my go to for anything that used to be done on a Pi. For a lot of other things the ESP32 S3 with the slower flash and PSRAM is the lowest cost that you can find.

I also like the RP2040, but I'd like to explain why I migrated away from it for my current project. First, the drama with PlatformIO really rubbed me the wrong way. I'm taking the side of the developers who are hurt by confusion in tooling. Second, the top of the line ESP32-S3 comes in a module format that can be dropped on a PCB with basically nothing but a few decoupling capacitors. The RP2040 requires careful placement of about a dozen components, including a crystal. Not only does a module reduce implementation complexity dramatically, standardization skips every engineer potentially making their own dumb component placement mistakes. Third, the ESP32-S3 has 14 GPIO pins that can be configured to do capacitive touch, while the RP2040 has none. Most of the projects that use RP2040 and capacitive touch rely on the MPR121, an IC that past its EOL and will likely cause a lot of hasty redesigns over the next few months. It's also worth saying that eventually RP2040 will likely release more or less powerful versions, and hopefully versions in a module format. I doubt they will ever let it become an STM or PIC situation, but the ESP32 product lineup doesn't look so crazy once you are acclimatized to it.