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  jameshart
  The range of difference in capabilities of different boards branded ESP32 is getting larger. Makes it tricky to figure out when someone says ‘you can run this on an ESP32’ what level of hardware investment is required.
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  dsign
  I’ve been developing a guitar pedal firmware in an ESP32-P4, and the flash image size is still under 1 MB and the PSRAM sits unused. It has not only a bunch of sound filters, control code for ADC, DAC a couple of USB devices, SDIO and LittleFS, but also a full-blown serial terminal TUI to control all sorts of details and to monitor performance. Said performance is good, but what blows me away is that there’s no jitter in the number that measures the number of cycles the processor executes while processing a sound frame, i.e. no preemption by the kernel to go and take care of its business.There’s no way a multi-user OS such as Linux can be as efficient as a firmware blob that does one thing. Tell me if I’m wrong, but in my mental model, one can get about the same mileage with 16 MB of PSRAM in an MCU running FreeRTOS as one can get in a 512 MB SBC running Linux. For my use case, the winner combination would, of course, be a 512 MB SBC running FreeRTOS, but I’ve so far been unable to find such a wondrous thing.
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  mstaoru
  Ah, the Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away. P4 didn't have enough raw speed for camera applications but had MIPI CSI, S31 has enough raw speed but no CSI.
• polycancel
  Not hitting the site in Tor. Getting "Secure Connection Failed"Here are the archive onion and regular links:https://web.archivep75mbjunhxc6x4j5mwjmomyxb573v42baldlqu56r...https://web.archive.org/web/20260924163612/https://www.xda-d...
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  hwh
  The article seems to confuse the MCU and some sort of undisclosed SBC for the MCU. Well, it’s starting to do this in the headline.
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  tdhz77
  I have esp32’s in every room for tracking down The Who in home automation via home assistant and Bermuda. I soldered some headers for the first time and now I’m making custom pcb boards. I added a fog machine for my halloweeen decorations and I’m just having fun. I could see how a much powerful esp32 could eliminate the dozen have and allow to switch between the outlet and battery.
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  ValdikSS
  Too bad Linux has removed Execute-in-place (XIP) support for RISC-V since 7.1. It allows to run the kernel (and applications) from NOR flash directly, without copying it into RAM first. Somebody should reintroduce it.Espressif's port use 6.18 due to this exact reason. There's also another port, using 7.1, not sure if it supports XIP.https://www.phoronix.com/news/RISC-V-XIP-Being-RemovedXIP is almost essential for these low-RAM devices. You can run Linux with 8 MB RAM with reasonable functionality.
• evek
  Hopefully soon they will make a model that merges something like S3 and Grove Vision AI accelerator.Tried running yolo pose on bare S3, and the results were underwhelming.
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  rbanffy
  With all the capabilities, video and audio output, it might be an excellent platform for software emulation of older devices. There is plenty of GPIO that can be driven by the 40 MHz core while the other two work on nobler things.
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  tahoemph999
  In the abstract I don't care. Without a set of project requirements for an embedded project this is just a soup of features. What is more impressive is the wild diversity of options they offer. Further making serious fun of anybody who gets lost in trying to maintain a MCU vs SBC processor dichotomy. Focus on the application. I think the difference is in how people conceptualize general purpose computing (desktop) and the thing I want on my wrist or on my copter or in my machinery and so on. It isn't in MCU vs SBC etc.
• Tepix
  Sounds nice. I'd like to see a hardware that is optimized for being a low power, high bandwidth network server at home:- 1 or 2 M.2 NVMe for fast storage- 2 RAM sockets for expandability. Not sure if DDR5 or if DDR4 is sufficient. SO-DIMM is fine.- 2.5 GBit ethernet (or better). Two ports would be better than one.- a CPU with a bunch of cores that can saturate it well. Also a NPU inside the CPU.- power via USB-PD- optionally a couple of USB ports for things like USB sticks, Wifi (if needed), printer.That's it. I don't need a display port like HDMI or DP.
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  sidewndr46
  It looks like this latest version has an actual MMU of sorts, so that should make many things possible.
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  pjmlp
  My Android phone is also much more beefy than all PC combined I owned between 1992 and 2003.Most embedded stuff doesn't need that much power.That is how we end up with Electron.
• 100percentjake
  On the topic of general purpose OSes for the ESP32 a project I've been a big fan of is SolarOS, which provides Python and Lua runtimes for user application development and a rapidly expanding API and list of built-in applications. I use it on a LilyGO T-Deck to turn it into something similar to a classic PDA with a python program that reads battery status from various devices I have running on ANT BMS units, far quicker than the utter garbage first-party ANT mobile app.https://github.com/nilseuropa/solar_os
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  jgbuddy
  Good. Raspberry pi foundation thinks making $200 computers is progress, hope they get their lunch eaten
• abu-matterize
  i used to serve esp32s31.fun, now building a zigbee/ble-mesh multi-protocol matter hub that can comfortably host 1000 bridged nodes.
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  ruvie8812
  Still only 2.4GHz wifi :-/
• chorylee
  [flagged]
• Ledgermellow
  [dead]
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  poisonborz
  Sorry for the staple "duh AI article" but the product would be interesting, XDA-Devs is an established name, and then reading chapter titles like "Peripherals already change how it looks" is appaling. Like, ok, you pump up the text with AI, but at least proofread that sentences make sense? At least the titles?