I believe this is the first ESP to gain Ethernet capability?
I totally wish that a board would come with PoE…
Because as it is right now, powering a fleet of those with USB power supplies is annoying as fsck…
I totally wish that a board would come with PoE…
Because as it is right now, powering a fleet of those with USB power supplies is annoying as fsck…
There's two ESP32 boards that have been around for a while with PoE:
- https://www.tme.com/us/en-us/details/esp32-poe/development-k... - https://wesp32.com/
I'm more hopeful for single-pair ethernet to gain momentum though! Deterministic, faster than CANBUS, single pair, with power delivery:
https://www.hackster.io/rahulkhanna/sustainable-real-time-la...
I’d buy in a heartbeat
I keep looking for a reasonably priced 10baseT to 10Base-T1L bridge... everything commercial seems too expensive (for me) and the two hobby designs [1] [2] I've seen are not orderable :(
But I'm seeing more commercial options lately, so that's hopeful.
On that note, why does the PoE capability often add such a big proportion of the price of various items? Is the technology really costly for some reason, or is it just more there's fairly low demand and people are still willing to pay?
The trick is as others have said in what adding it to your design does in terms of complicating compliance design.
[0] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/silvertel/AG9705-...
They have to use a transformer and a more complex control strategy, not a simple buck regulator with an inductor. PoE inputs need to tolerate voltages several times higher than the highest USB-C voltages, so more expensive parts are used everywhere.
How much of the complexity is a “fundamental electrical engineering problem” and how much of it is just a spec written to solve a different set of problems?
Oh, and a cheap bridge rectifier and some signaling resistors to take care of input polarity and signal to the source that we in fact want the approximately 50V that could hurt a device not made for it.
That’s not a cheap buck lol. Order of magnitude more expensive then 12v not even mentioning capacitors that can withstand 80v is $$$ and your derating goes to shit
Therefore, wifi is more convenient than ethernet.
You don't need long cables, just a local power source.
Which means batteries that have to be replaced and maintained or cables... So ethernet with PoE or even better SPE (single pair Ethernet) with PoDL (power over data lines which is PoE for SPE) is the best from my point of view
Both solutions require 1 cable per device, but the first solution would require only short and thin cables, and the second solution would require very long cables which I don't know even how to do properly without milling my walls.
PoE is much fewer of those things. Difficult to recommend it these days with wifi being fast and reliable and so widely used. Certainly not for average residential user.
Is security of wifi an actual practical concern? I've not heard of it since WPA2.
For average residential user, even most hobbyist / enthusiast, I doubt those things will matter. Almost everybody who wants extremely fast reliable wired connectivity will be much better off using fiber, and using wifi for cameras and automation and streaming and other such things. Getting power to where you need it is not the difficult part, especially if you're pulling wires anyway, which is why PoE has always been fairly niche.
Another point is that mains power in my area can go down periodically. My PoE switch is powered by a Li-Ion UPS and can provide power for about a day.
I've not had that in a decade, and only for really shitty devices. I've also had crappy PoE devices stop working, ports blow. Too much effort to be worth the bother for me nowadays. If I had to bet my life sure I'd probably use wired ethernet. But if I had to bet my life I wouldn't be using PoE for power either.
UPS is entirely possible to do on residential mains circuits.
Every ESP32-based WiFi device _will_ at some point get stuck in the disconnected state. It's almost an ironclad guarantee.
> UPS is entirely possible to do on residential mains circuits.
Sure, but then you're getting into the "whole house" backup with subpanel, transfer switches, etc. You can install backup for your router as a small UPS, but then I also have cameras, doorbells, sensors, etc.
If you already have a house without Ethernet wiring, then opening up the walls just to run PoE makes no sense. But if you're building a new house or if you have pre-existing wiring (and a lot of newish houses do), then PoE is a no-brainer.
See earlier note about crappy devices.
> Sure, but then you're getting into the "whole house" backup with subpanel, transfer switches, etc. You can install backup for your router as a small UPS, but then I also have cameras, doorbells, sensors, etc.
Well you can get small UPS for them too, but sure there are probably some points you can find around your corner of the envelope where PoE makes sense. That's not where many people are though.
> If you already have a house without Ethernet wiring, then opening up the walls just to run PoE makes no sense. But if you're building a new house or if you have pre-existing wiring (and a lot of newish houses do), then PoE is a no-brainer.
Not many new houses do at all because it costs money nobody really wants to pay. A builder will put some in if you ask but not off their own bat because they think it'll make the house worth more, because it won't. So unless some super nerd like your or I ask, no houses will be wired for ethernet. There was a brief window where wifi was non-existent or pretty slow and terrible where it got slightly popular, but that's long past.
If I was building a new house I would wire ethernet from a small server room/cupboard to just several places for wifi APs, plus ethernet and fiber from there to office. No PoE, they would all have USB-C power from same/adjacent wall plate as ethernet. And would probably look at solar+battery system with UPS capability, especially if I lived somewhere with shitty mains power. But even that is not appropriate for normies. They'd just buy a few mesh/repeater wifi things, not care that much about power going out once every few years, and be done with it.
Same - and i can "remote yank" the power, thus restart the devices without lifting a finger (much).