Espressif SoC Overview
Arduino, along with a vast amount of peripheral boards, lacks integration of the networking capabilities in one SoC. Espressif ESP series was the natural answer for this disadvantage as their ESP 8266 with integrated WiFi, introduced in 2014, is widely recognised as a turning point for the IoT market, delivering de-facto fully functional IoT chip, providing high performance and low power to the end users and developers. ESP 32 launched in 2016 brought even more disrupting effect to the IoT ecosystems, introducing additional Bluetooth interface to the above. By the January 2018 company announced they delivered to the market 100 000 000 [1], thus constituting a de-facto standard for the IoT market devices.
Following chapters provide an overview of the networking programming with the use of ESP SoCs.
Please note, interfacing with sensors and actuators has been already covered in the chapter related to Arduino:
“ 4.3. Arduino and Arduino 101 (Intel Curie)”.
The major difference is that ESP SoCs (both 8266 and 32) use 3.3 V logic, while most (but not all!) Arduinos use 5 V logic. This can be easily handled using one or bi-directional voltage converters/adapters. Additionally, many ESP boards and development kits offer double power source, including 5 V, even if the device itself still operates on 3.3 V. Yet programming principals used to be the same while using digital protocols and GPIOs.
- “4.4.1. overview_of_the_hardware_device”.
- “4.4.2. networking”.
- “4.4.3. programming_fundamentals”.
