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Comment by g8425 | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't anticipate too much from m5stack. They have a habit of developing products that are well designed from a physical standpoint... but when you try to develop with them one finds that the software and support needed to achieve your goals are half-baked and downright annoying. UIFlow1/2, I'm looking at you...

For reference, see the M5dinmeter

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These are an ESP32-S3 so you can use standard tools instead of whatever their offering is. Like EEZ Studio for GUI creation on LVGL.

Most of their products are ESP32 based I think.

All of my devices from them are running micropython and my own code. Because they're all ESP32s and how everything works is documented.

The software to achieve my goals basically "just works".

as long as they include a schematic for their products, i'm set

i've always viewed m5stack / seeed / tindie as 'dev board marketplaces'; once i proof the rest of the design using their board, i take the known-working schematic and simply cut out the parts i dont want to spin rev 2, then once that is working i optimize the remaining parts for rev3, and project done :)

The better phrase is probably “reference design” marketplace. When I worked as an EE pretty much all but the hardest boards (which needed to be simulated) were glorified stripped down reference designs.

Especially seeing how M5Stack is majority-owned by Espressif.

I use plain arduino-cli to develop for them. UIFlow looks like an awful experience.

You can just use freeink.org to develop for it fwiw

That's been my experience too. That has lead to a small community and little real excitement around them.

I have a tiny devboard collection habit, and gotta say coding agents work great with these. I've got a stick and a few dials running various hyper specific UIs for home assistant.

That's when their documentation site is even up!

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