Out of interest, has anyone successfully used an ESP32 on a commercial project, or are these intended primarily for hobbyists?
Also, what would be considered the go-to chip for commercial applications?
Also, what would be considered the go-to chip for commercial applications?
They’re not really intended at all for hobbyists. The espressif products are in countless IoT devices.
This is not marketing aimed at hobbyists.
Further I think most of the people using ESPHome and the like are reflashing commercial products.
> the go-to chip for commercial applications?
For a pacemaker, a Mars rover or a video game console? What exactly do you think unifies “commercial application” that would allow narrowing down in such a way.
If you’re talking about low cost IoT, there are a handful of vendors including Beken, Realtek, SiLabs, ST, TI, nRF. For this super low cost WiFi/BLE consumer niche espressif is not the only player but they are dominant along with nRF and Beken.
I bought 1000 ESP32-S2 chips (not modules) for a project, it cost me a grand total of 1200 bucks as a nobody. During the height of the shortage from most western manufacturers too!
Consumer products routinely drop support after 3/5 years, Android phones being exhibit A, Sonos speakers are exhibit B, and Google in general being in the corner of shame.
While I applaud any efforts at product longevity, I am not getting the impression that it's a first-priority concern at present.
I was able to fix them by finding someone who sells a replacement remote on TaoBao and getting a shipping company to send it to me at 2x the price.
Point is - availability of parts does not guarantee manufacturer has any interest is supporting the product.
On the contrary, if manufacturer wants to fix something, they actually can, even if exact same parts aren't available.
Esp32 is available at every major Western distributor (digikey mouser etc) this hasn't been a real concern for many years
The hardware itself is fine, but the biggest pain was getting stable WiFi and BLE connections simultaneously, because of only one antenna/radio. RAM was also a problem, it would be great to have at least 512kb. The SDK from Espressif is sometimes a little bit weird, but usable and bugs are fixed quickly. The build system is ok, nothing special.
That said both the original ESP32 and the S3 support external PSRAM (4MB* for the og, 32MB for the S3).
You can buy modules with such RAM already (which you would likely do for most deployment), but if you really need a single chip solution they also sell the ESP32 chips with that "external" RAM embedded in it (albeit in smaller qty, like 2MB).
* The OG actually supports 8MB but only the first 4MB is directly addressable, you have to handle bankswitching yourself to access more.
In the past we mainly used STM32 both because it's a great chip and because we have a tight relationship with ST. However, some of the younger employees we recently brought on are big fans of the ESP32 and we thought "why not give the youngsters a chance".
It's looking really promising, the ESP32 nicely fills the niche between low-level Arduino-like micros and Linux-based larger boards like the Pi.
STM32 would be the other big family of microcontrollers. And if you can get your hands on them, and need the vastly more powerful capabilities, the i.MX series can be interesting.
The answer is yes, they are in millions of devices.
I have several controllable LED light bulbs that are all ESP-based, bought on Amazon. Lot's of sensors, and general business and consumer oriented stuff using ESP8266 and ESP32 chips.
>Also, what would be considered the go-to chip for commercial applications?
ESP32, if it fits the product needs.
There are as many types of microcontrollers as there are needs for specific functionality. ESP32 fits practically any application that needs a microcontroller and wifi or bluetooth. That's the description of quite a lot of IoT products.
Cheap ICs and hobbyists-only do not go together. Cheap hobbyists ICs are almost invariably cheap because there's substantial commercial volume, and someone figured they could work for hobbyists as well.
https://github.com/makerbase-mks/MKS-DLC32
Many/all of the Sonoff smart home things use various ESP chips:
https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/06/17/sonoff-pow-elite-esp...
I use it and it's crazy how much it can do with close to no power.
Why, I have no idea - they don't support any form of app-based control at the moment. Maybe they're intending to do so in the future?
[1]: https://www.hoiax.no/produkter/varmtvannsberedere/smartbered...