(Tutorial in the making!)
You should have heard enough about the new Chip! From the specifications looks like, this is THE chip of the future, for anything connected that you want to build. Instead of using a microcontroller and add-on WiFi, Bluetooth modules for building connected things , this is the only chip you might want to use. Sounds great? But wait, this brings in a lot of programming complexity. So in this tutorial, I will run through the specifications of the chip from the perspective of practical usefulness. The things that you need to know before you start out and the features that really matter! FeaturesESP32.JPG
The block diagram above shows all that is in there! We will look at each of these blocks and see what they mean when using ESP32 in your project/product.

The Dual Core Processor

The predecessor of ESP32, the ESP8266 has a builtin processor. However due to multitasking involved in updating the WiFi stack, most of the applications use a separate micro-controller for data processing, interfacing sensors and digital Input Output. With the ESP32 you may not want to use an additional micro-controller. ESP32 has Xtensa® Dual-Core 32-bit LX6 microprocessors, which runs up to 600 DMIPS. The ESP32 will run on breakout boards and modules from 160Mhz upto 240MHz . That is very good speed for anything that requires a microcontroller with connectivity options.

The two cores are named Protocol CPU (PRO_CPU) and Application CPU (APP_CPU). That basically means the PRO_CPU processor handles the WiFi, Bluetooth and other internal peripherals like SPI, I2C, ADC etc. The APP_CPU is left out for the application code. This differentiation is done in the Espressif Internet Development Framework (ESP-IDF). ESP-IDF is the official software development framework for the chip. Arduino and other implementations for the development will be based on ESP-IDF.

ESP-IDF uses freeRTOS for switching between the processors and data exchange between them. We have done numerous tutorials on freeRTOS and with all the bare-metal programming tutorials for ESP32 we will try and cover this aspect in detail. Although the feature set is great at the price at which the chip is being sold, the complexity is enormous. For the chip to get widely adopted, it will require huge efforts from Espressif as well as the community.

So form the project/product development perspective, you can do away with an external micro-controller/Arduino however it brings complexity of switching between the processors and handling the application data. It will not be a one way street as with normal micro-controller development. We will be exploring this in the numerous tutorials that we plan to do.

The other processor features:

  • 448 KByte ROM
  • 520 KByte SRAM
  • 16 KByte SRAM in RTC
  • QSPI Flash/SRAM, up to 4 x 16 MBytes

The important thing to note here, is that the application code will usually reside in the external flash chip (QSPI).

The WiFi

Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth Low Energy(BLE)

Dual Core Processors

General Purpose Input/Output

Internal Peripherals

Security Features