Espressif
Hardware
ESP-C3-12F - These are in the old ESP12F form factor but have a RISC-V processor. I will put them in a page on the C3, here ESP-C3.
ESP12F and programmer, see docs at Amazon
Wemos D1 R1 - ESP8266 board in Arduino form factor. Purchased from MPJA for about $13, available on eBay for $7.
Espressif WROVER-DEVKITC-VIE boards (2) from Digikey ($11). Great except they are too wide to use on a breadboard. This device has 520KB RAM + 4MB Flash + 8MB PSRAM making it a good choice for Micropython.
I have a some Home control stuff deployed around my house that's based on ESP8266 chips including FEIT dimmers and Martin Jerry switches. I intend to reflash them all soon to get them off the IoT and onto the local network. There are more details on the ESP8266 page.
ESP-PROG / JTAG board. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/espressif-systems/ESP-PROG/10259352 Flash download tools: https://www.espressif.com/en/support/download/other-tools There is no install step, you just run it.
M5 hardware
520 kB RAM, 4MB flash; really not enough RAM to mess around with Micropython.
M5StickC orange and wearable. Also has an 80x160 OLED display, a 6-axis accelerometer, and a microphone
M5 Atom Matrix grey with 5x5 Neopixel LED matrix and a 6-axis IMU
M5 Atom Echo white, with a speaker and microphone. It also has a Neopixel.
Projects
Motion sensor -- I have had one deployed for months in our bedroom, it switches on a light in the evening. Works via MQTT I used a RADAR sensor that is too good, it can see through drywall and picks up motion everywhere. I am switching to PIR sensors soon.
LED strip controller -- working on this soon, to control RGBW strips over WiFi, or maybe I will press on with the Nordic nRF52840's and Zigbee.
Toolchains
Right now it's a blob in my mind so I am here writing this to sort it out. I got some nRF52840's and that's just added to the confusion.
Arduino, Espressif IDF, FreeRTOS Visual Studio Code, PlatformIO
I have been using Arduino but I really want to try out working with RTOS and I want to use VSCode as my IDE, I am getting comfortable with it at work.
There is a tutorial here: https://randomnerdtutorials.com/vs-code-platformio-ide-esp32-esp8266-arduino/
- Visual Studio Code (VSCode) is an IDE. It is far more useful than Arduino's IDE.
- PlatformIO is an extension for VSCode.
- There is also an Espressif IDF extension.
- PlatformIO adds the "alien" icon in the left bar.
- ESP-IDF adds a bunch of tools to the blue bar at the bottom.
VSCode + PlatformIO + Arduino framework
When creating a project with PlatformIO you can pick Arduino as the Framework if you don't need the ESP-IDF platform. I put all my source code in ~/source/platformio/.
I cloned the M5Stack repo https://github.com/m5stack/M5Stack.git The Examples/ are great.
I just built and uploaded a Blink program and it worked flawlessly on the first try. In the blue bar there are build and upload tools. There is a "serial monitor" tool in the blue bar too. Output goes to a Terminal window.
So far I find this experience much better than using Arduino IDE, perhaps because I already use VS Code, also partly because the project is organized more the way I'd want. I like having one window for everything, I've never liked how Arduino opens a new window for each "sketch". Also I never liked the word "sketch", lol.
VSCode + PlatformIO + ESP-IDF framework
I followed this tutorial. https://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/tutorials/espressif32/espidf_debugging_unit_testing_analysis.html#
It worked fine, I tested it on an M5 Atom Matrix. I got a soft AP running.
Libraries
PlatformIO has its own library manager and when you add a library, the library is downloaded and referenced in the platformio.ini in the current project.
So how do I do that?
JTAG debugging
https://mcuoneclipse.com/2019/10/20/jtag-debugging-the-esp32-with-ft2232-and-openocd/
Books and resources
Random Nerd
