ESP32-Hx Family

ESP32-H2 is a family of microcontrollers (SoC) that combines IEEE 802.15.4 connectivity with Bluetooth 5 (LE). The system does not have a Wi-Fi protocol, but Thread and Zigbee protocols are available. ESP32-H2 has been certified as a “Zigbee-Compliant Platform” and has officially become a “Thread-Certified 1.3.0 Component”. The SoC is powered by a single-core, 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller that can be clocked up to 96 MHz. The ESP32-H2 has been designed especially for connected devices with low power consumption and security in mind. ESP32-H2 has 320 KB of SRAM with 16 KB of Cache, 128 KB of ROM, 4 KB LP of memory, and a built-in 2 MB or 4 MB SiP flash. It has 19 programmable GPIOs supporting ADC, SPI, UART, I2C, I2S, RMT, GDMA and LED PWM. For now, the ESP32-H2 family documentation is available as preliminary information only.

Figure 1 shows a functional block diagram of the ESP32-H2 chip. Main common features of the ESP32-H2 are ^[1]:

Processors

• Main processor: 32-bit RISC-V single-core CPU up to 96MHz,
  • Cores: 1

Wireless connectivity

• Bluetooth: v5.0 Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) ( speed: 125 Kbps - 2 Mbps),
• 802.15.4-2015: up to 250 kbps; stacks include Thread 1.3, Zigbee 3.0, Matter, HomeKit, MQTT.

Memory: Internal memory

• Embedded flash 2 or 4 MB,
• ROM: 128 kB (for booting and core functions),
• SRAM: 320 kB (for data and instructions),
• LP memory: 4 KB of SRAM that can be accessed by the CPU. It can retain data in deep sleep mode,
• eFuse - 4 Kbit: 1792 bits are reserved for user data, such as encryption key and device ID.

Peripheral Input/Output

• 19 x GPIO,
• 2 x 12-bit ADCs (analog-to-digital converter) up to 5 channels,
• Internal temperature sensor,
• 3 × SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface),
• 2 x UART (universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter),
• 2 × I²C (Inter-Integrated Circuit),
• 1 × I²S (Integrated Inter-IC Sound),
• LED PWM up to 6 channels,
• General DMA with - 3 x Tx + 3 x Rx,
• PWM for Motor control,
• 1 × TWAI® controller compatible with ISO 11898-1 (CAN Specification 2.0),
• 1 x Parallel IO controller (PARLIO),
• USB Serial/JTAG controller.

Security

• Secure boot,
• Flash encryption,
• 4096-bit OTP, up to 1792-bit for customers,
• Cryptographic hardware acceleration:
  • AES-128/256,
  • SHA accelerator,
  • RSA accelerator 3072 bit,
  • random number generator (RNG),
  • digital signature.

There are not many prototype kits with ESP32-H2 SOCs on the market yet. One of them is produced by the Espressif company itself:

• Espressif - ESP32-H2-DevkitM-1^[2]