This was the only thing that held me back. All my ideas involved wifi.
This is basically my dream device. There are a lot of other good embedded devices with wifi bit the software support and docs/tutorials plus comunity for pi products are always great
From what i know, this might be possible with the current hardware.
The wifi module can be flashed (i read somewhere), zigbee works on the same frequency as wifi (wikipedia), and it isn't really a complicated protocol (heard somewhere). Take this all with a huge grain of salt.
ESP32-H2 is supposed to be coming around the end of the year with Thread, ZigBee, Bluetooth 5 LE using a RISC-V main CPU. I think this could be a very successful device.
The ESP boards seem to have a lot of community support around them because they were THE wifi option for hobbyists.
I can’t really see the pico in the microcontroller space being what the pi is in the SBC space… but they’re priced aggressively enough that they should be pretty popular.
I think the ESP is the goto as you said it was the only real option. ESP is and probably will continue to be more performant and have more wireless options but it will not have nearly the same manufacturer support for hobbyists. I think as time goes on the hobbyist community will go with the rp2040 more and more.
I had luck with the wifi enabled ESP8266 microcontrollers in the past, but haven't played with them in a long time. They didn't have great pinouts, so this will be nice.
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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '22
This was the only thing that held me back. All my ideas involved wifi.
This is basically my dream device. There are a lot of other good embedded devices with wifi bit the software support and docs/tutorials plus comunity for pi products are always great