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Comment by tpmx | Hacker News Reader

I have zero qualms about buying cheap Arduino clone boards because of this.

Although lately I've found myself requiring basic IP/wi-fi for almost every usecase, so I've turned to ESP8266/ESP32 boards instead of AVR boards.

Here's hoping for a low-cost wi-fi-enabled Raspberry Pi Pico. I wonder what the wi-fi IP licensing cost is like for companies that actually need to pay attention to things like that.

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There are RP2040 based boards with wifi are starting to come out. While they aren't horrendously expensive, they are double or triple the cost of a regular base raspberry pi pico model.

Here is one I have seen, but I haven't used or played with it.

https://thepihut.com/products/challenger-rp2040-wifi-chip-an...

"The WiFi section on this board is based on the Espressif ESP8285 chip which basically is an ESP8266 with 1MByte FLASH memory integrated onto the chip".

I suppose I'm wishing for an Espressif-like approach. A (low-power?) RPxxxx core fully assigned to running a Wi-Fi software stack, in the same RPxxxx chip, along with having the analogue RF aspects handled by the same chip/package.

I've found ESP8266 boards really suit my needs more than a "full" Arduino boards, just a few wires and some built in wi-fi is all I want for the most part so far with how I've been using / playing them.

I completely agree, with the exception of wanting easy support for powering from a lipo battery and also charging that battery without disconnecting it. This has led me to use the Adafruit Feather RP2040 lately because it has a builtin lipo charger and will automatically switch between USB and battery power as needed, but of course it doesn't work for projects that need WiFi. I'm hoping that we'll get a board that easily combines the two soon.

Oh I didn’t know about the lipo… did some googling and that seems really handy/ got me thinking.

That explains why I haven’t found many battery powered Arduino options…. it is better on other boards.

Well yeah I mean "Arduino" is just a couple #defines to make a sort of custom C++ version. After a couple months playing with it, most people shouldn't need anything Arduino anymore.

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