ESP32 First glance

With the Espressif ESP32 as the successor to the popular ESP8266 starting to get more and more affordable, it is time to look at all the features provided with this MCU.

Adding to the WLAN capability of the ESP8266, we now have Bluetooth (Classic and BLE) available on chip. The data sheet provides quite an impressive feature list:

Wi-Fi Key Features

  • 802.11 b/g/n
  • 802.11 n (2.4 GHz), up to 150 Mbps
  • WMM
  • Tx/rx A-MPDU, rx A-MSDU
  • Immediate Block ACK
  • Defragmentation
  • Automatic Beacon monitoring (hardware TSF)
  • 4 × Wi-Fi interfaces
  • Simultaneous Infrastructure BSS Station mode/SoftAP mode/Promiscuous mode
  • UMA compliant and certified
  • Antenna diversity and selection

BT Key Features

  • Compliant with Bluetooth v4.2 BR/EDR and BLE specification
  • Class-1, class-2 and class-3 transmitter without external power amplifier
  • Enhanced power control
  • +12 dBm transmitting power
  • NZIF receiver with -97 dBm sensitivity
  • Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH)
  • Standard HCI based on SDIO/SPI/UART
  • High-speed UART HCI, up to 4 Mbps
  • BT 4.2 controller
  • Synchronous Connection-Oriented/Extended (SCO/eSCO)
  • CVSD and SBC for audio codec
  • Bluetooth Piconet and Scatternet
  • Multi-connections in Classic BT and BLE
  • Simultaneous advertising and scanning

CPU and Memory

  • Xtensa® single-/dual-core 32-bit LX6 microprocessor(s), up to 600 DMIPS (200 DMIPS for ESP32-S0WD, 400 DMIPS for ESP32-D2WD)
  • 448 kB ROM
  • 520 kB SRAM
  • 16 kB SRAM in RTC
  • QSPI flash/SRAM, up to 4 x 16 MB
  • Power supply: 2.3V to 3.6V

Clocks and Timers

  • Internal 8 MHz oscillator with calibration
  • Internal RC oscillator with calibration
  • External 2 MHz to 60 MHz crystal oscillator (40 MHz only for Wi-Fi/BT functionality)
  • External 32 kHz crystal oscillator for RTC with calibration
  • Two timer groups, including 2 x 64-bit timers and 1 x main watchdog in each group
  • RTC timer with sub-second accuracy
  • RTC watchdog

Advanced Peripheral Interfaces

  • 34 × programmable GPIOs
  • 12-bit SAR ADC up to 18 channels
  • 2 × 8-bit DAC
  • 10 × touch sensors
  • Temperature sensor
  • 4 × SPI
  • 2 × I2S
  • 2 × I2C
  • 3×UART
  • 1 host (SD/eMMC/SDIO)
  • 1 slave (SDIO/SPI)
  • Ethernet MAC interface with dedicated DMA and IEEE 1588 support • CAN 2.0
  • IR (Tx/Rx)
  • Motor PWM
  • LED PWM up to 16 channels
  • Hall sensor

Security

  • Secure boot
  • Flash encryption
  • 1024-bit OTP, up to 768-bit for customers
  • Cryptographic hardware acceleration:
    • AES
    • Hash (SHA-2)
    • RSA
    • ECC
    • Random Number Generator (RNG)

So let’s see how it will behave with a design for a badge for the Zurich Maker Fare. Testing the BLE / WIFI interactivity.

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