Espressif got new competitor RDA5981 dedicated for IoT and audio apps

Few years ago Espressif released their first low cost WiFi chip ESP8266 and turned upside down the WiFi connectivity for small MCU. They have been left relatively to no competition from the big Western chip makers who couldn’t match their aggressive pricing, but later there was semi successful competition from Realtek and now there is another competitor who is focused on low cost IoT audio applications but their chip is quite good for general purpose WiFi stuff also. The RDA5981 is based on Cortex-M4 inside

• running at 160Mhz
•  160KB SRAM
• 8MB PSRAM
• 4MB Flash
• build in USB 2.0 host interface allow USB devices to be connected to the module directly which is advantage toward Espressif chips
• Support Bluetooth 2.1 EDR + BLE4.2
• SDMMC interface
• 2x 10bit ADCs
• SIDO x1, I2C x1, I2S x2, PWM x8, IR, SPI x4, UART x2, GPIO with interrupts x14
• operating temperature -30+80C

According to the PR message their focus is voice recognition / audio play and they shipped already 200 Millions of these chips ин 2016. Looking at the features above they can be used for other IoT applications as well if their SDK is easy enough to use by maker community. The question is will be they smart enough to be more user friendly as ESP.

I check their web and even to download their datasheet they require registration :). I understand this as – we hide our product info from our potential customers as we do not want they to evaluate our chips. These registrations beside pissing off potential customers do not hide anything from their competitors as they would easily register with fake info and get them anyway, but obvious this is the way most Chinese companies work.

via Twitter (Thanks to Rudi!)

EDIT 10-01-2018: There is actually GitHub repo with the datsheet, so their web may be not updated!

New Product in stock MOD-WIFI-AR9271 libre drivers and firmware WiFi dongle

AR9721 chipset is the only one on the market with completely open source linux drivers and firmware, this make it WiFi chipset of choice for people who respect their freedom.

We have MOD-WIFI-AR9721-ANT for quite some time and it’s very popular item, but the 200mm antenna make it not quite small. Now we add to our web shop the version without external antenna. It’s with 85 x 25 x 10 mm dimension and have same working distance as the external antenna version.

ESP32-EVB now get much better

ESP32-EVB revision A was made quick and has too many errors 🙂 some were due to the non very clear documentation, like that we assumed that all ports could have internal pull-ups but  when we try to write the software we found that the GPIOs we used for the buttons has no such. Other were done by our engineer negligence.

We had small 100 pcs series from Revision A, but after all issues we encounter just decided to trash it and just move forward to revision B.

Now in Revision B all interfaces are tested and confirmed to work fine 🙂

What we keep:

1. Two relays 250VAC/10A
2. LiPo charger which allow ESP32 to work without external power supply
3. Reset and User button
4. micro SD card
5. UEXT connector to add temperature, humidity, etc sensors
6. GPIO with all signals available on 0.1″ proto friendly step connector

What we add:

1. USB connector now is also used for automatic programming of ESP32 so no need for external serial cable, with DTR and RTS bootloader mode is entering automatically
2. Ethernet now is correctly wired and works 🙂
3. We were surprised to read ESP32 has CAN and we try and it works great, so in the new revision we add CAN driver
4. We add Infrared transmitter and receiver, so now you can control all your home appliances with IR control like TVs, VCRs, Air conditioners, and everything else with IR control

What we removed:

1. second button, with all above peripherals the ESP32-WROOM-32 module resources are gone, there is no single GPIO unused left

Revision B schematic can be reviewed here . The PCB is now routing.

Color TFT 2.8″ LCD 320×240 pixel display board with UEXT compatible to ESP32-EVB is also coming soon.

ESP32-WROOM-32 WiFi/Bluetooth module is in stock!

ESP32-WROOM-32 modules are in stock now!

Again these are from the very first lot and with limited supply. To give chances to more developers to try them we will not allow more than 3 modules per order.

This module is good only if you develop your own board. For these who are not good with the soldering iron and SMD components soldering our advice is to wait for new supply of ESP32-CoreBoards or our own ESP32-EVB which will come with two Relays, Two buttons, SD-card connector, Ethernet 100Mbit and all signals on prototyping friendly 0.1″ step connectors.

Thanks for all who posted tips on our blog about ESP32-EVB feature wishlist!

EDIT: there was question on Twitter if these are original Espressif parts and why there is no FCC/CE markinig, my guess is that the certification is not complete, as it’s in the datasheet but not on module body. The modules come directly from Espressif, as you can see from reel label they are manufactured October 15th 2016 and one week later are in our stock for sale 🙂

First ESP32-DevKitC development kits in Europe will be in stock next week

We have good news! The first ESP32 development kits in Europe will be next week for sale in our shop.

The quantity is very limited due to the high demand Espressif still can’t fill all the orders they got, so we will got less than 100 to start with.

If your WiFi project needs to go to next level and you want WiFi +BLE in same package ESP32 is the right device for you.

The technical resources are here. Due to the limited supply we will not process orders in which basket is put more than one ESP32-DevKitC, please give chance to more people to evaluate 🙂

The price is EUR 17.00

Smart WiFi Thermostat with MOD-WIFI-ESP8266-DEV

Flavio sent us interesting project done with our MOD-WIFI-ESP8266-DEV.

Smart WiFi thermostat with official repo on Github: https://github.com/souliss/smart-thermostat and development repo: https://github.com/mcbittech/souliss-smart-thermostat-WiFi

Here is video how it works:

 

New product soon to be in stock: MOD-WIFI-AR9271-ANT WiFi USB dongle with Open Source Firmware and Linux drivers

AR9271 chipset is the only one with Open Source Firmware and Linux drivers. It has build in Kernel support since Kernel 2.6.35 so if you want to run GNU/Linux clean of non-free binary blobs with unknown content this is the device for you. It will work with your desktop PC, laptop, or SBC like OLinuXino and Raspberry Pi etc.

MOD-WIFI-AR9271-ANT samples are tested and proven to work with all our OLinuXinos and have excellent WiFi reception due to the huge antenna they came with. We have pending order and they will be in stock very soon.