ESP32-C5: Espressif’s First Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6 MCU

Yay for 5ghz and Risc-v. Only other thing is ble with actual ble power consumption from Espressif.<p>Speaking of which, Nordic bought out that WiFi startup late 2020 but have been silent on their WiFi mcu since<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;PLdpg-YXhv0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;PLdpg-YXhv0</a>

I&#x27;d like a version with ~1 MB of on-chip SRAM. 400 kB can be tight, because the wifi stack etc. is consuming a sizable portion of it.<p>And yes, I know about SPI PSRAM, but it has quite a bit of downsides.

5GHz support on an ESP32 is something everyone has been waiting for for a loooong time. So, that would be good I guess?<p>But in general, 802.11ax is orthogonal to &#x27;non-stop battery-based connectivity&#x27;, so we&#x27;ll have to wait and see how well that works out.<p>(Assuming they ship this one, and assuming anyone will be able to buy one in the next 2 years or so.)

Strong resemblance to the ESP32-C6[1], which was announced a year ago &amp; never shipped (from what I can see). RISC-V, Wifi6+BT5.0. 5GHz support is new &amp; great to see; let&#x27;s hope this one materializes!!<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.espressif.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;news&#x2F;ESP32_C6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.espressif.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;news&#x2F;ESP32_C6</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26758050" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26758050</a> (179 points, 110 comments)

Espressif has been releasing a lot of chips recently (past few years) and covering a lot of bases.<p>I am looking forward to their ESP32-H2 in order to get Zigbee functionality.<p>Between these chips and Micropython (and other easy-to-use-on-microcontrollers languages), they are making home developed IOT devices easy to create.

The main reason these chips are so widely used is the low cost (well, and getting everything in one package including Wi-Fi).<p>Wouldn&#x27;t Wi-Fi 6 require relatively expensive IP licensing? (Assumption.)

Okay so I assume microcontrollers don&#x27;t need the bandwidth, is this just about spectrum crowding on 2.4 and allowing people to run 5GHz-only networks?

All these new models have been single core chips. I do I²S mp3 + FFT encoding on an ESP32 and stream that over UDP, but am only able to do so because they are dual core. It would be sad to see that Espressif abandons this.

I really wish Espressif would release a new chip with Dual BT (BR&#x2F;EDR + LE) again beside the original one (which lack a USB phy). BT classic is still around for many application.

Take my money. I have been waiting for chip that can do 5Ghz.

These chips (ESP32-S2,S3,C3,C5) all support Bluetooth LE but it looks like the original ESP32 is the only one that supports Bluetooth Classic. Does anyone know what is going on with that? Classic is what most Bluetooth devices actually use, right? Phones, earpieces, all that kind of stuff. Amirite?<p>(Correction: ESP32-S2 has no bluetooth at all, see dontknowmuch&#x27;s response).

I’m wondering how flexible the WiFi driver stack is? Is it possible to implement a custom MAC layer protocol?

ABOUT TIME!

I have yet to see a real use case for these IOT chips (other than adding wifi to your toaster or other innecesary things)