Uups. You are right. Although, in my defence the S2 was released prior to the S3.

Corrected it.

If it's a guide maybe you should mention that the original ESP32 is still for sale and still faster than some of the newer alternatives. There is also a new faster risc-v based variant without wifi/bt that was recently presented called ESP32-P4.

All current variants: https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs

What use case does the ESP32 have?

Wouldn't it be better to just recommend the S3, where there is currently only one version available?

There are like a dozen different versions for the ESP32.

"Two or one CPU core(s) with adjustable clock frequency, ranging from 80 MHz to 240 MHz"

In this case it seems to be the better choice to just use the ESP-S3 with better encryption support and support for Cameras.

There are many different boards with ESP32 on them and lots of old projects that use it. The extra speed and features of the S3 is often not needed, so the cheaper ESP32 is a good option. And they both support cameras. https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/stable/esp32s... https://github.com/espressif/esp32-camera

Some projects don't work with the newer boards (wled for example).

Partly this is because the Esp sdks aren't as mature for the newer boards. This is very true for the brand new C6 series, but somewhat true for th S3 and C3 lines as well

You don’t always need the fastest CPUs and the richest peripheral set. Those things are detrimental when you need to save power.

also s2 only has wifi

and H2 only has 802.15.4 (but also not released yet)

Thank you for the nice compliment. I have felt exactly the same way and that's why I've written this post.

Thank you for posting the link. I've seen this, but lost the link.

Would you mind explaining what the advantage is over the ESP-IDF or the Arduino-SDK?

You are using a vendor agnostic API, so your code will also work on a e.g. a STM32 or nRF52.

e.g. the Bluetooth examples will run without modification on an nRF52 or ESP32 board.

Could you elaborate what a BSP is?

I am only starting in the IOT Hardware World.

'Board Support Package'. The library that FreeRTOS links to or whatnot, custom to each board shipped (a board being, SOM on a little dev card etc)

They vary massively. Usually written in a sweatshop in the far east by students, pushed out and forgotten because they are table stakes but not a profit center.

They usually include support for board boot, threads, timers, and something that looks like networking.

I say 'looks like' because they are often paper-thin implementations of a familiar API, with little or nothing inside. No proper flow control; no dynamic anything. Not even thread-safe as a rule.

Thank you!

Thank you! Honestly, I didn't realize that.

I added a note to the Article.

This guide was mainly intended for beginners like me who didn't know the ESP platform yet (like me a few months ago).

I'm also working on my writing skills. So forgive me for styling errors.

I know the ESP32-Cx is based on the RISC-V architecture. Could you elaborate why this is a feature or in what way this is an advantage?

I realized after posting that this is a personal blog, not a corporate one - so I do regret and apologize for being rather blunt.

(I think the .io and me misreading as “etherway” made me think it was company-published and for right or wrong I assume companies only ever blog for brand recognition, so am probably over critical of them)

That’s partly a big compliment - your blog is really well styled and easy to read.

RISC-V is a fairly popular topic on HN, and for me at least it’s really interesting as both a low-level nerd, as well as curiosity about what impact it may have given we lived in an x86 world for a long time, before ARM really took hold, and now that there’s a new player and it’s an open standard is really interesting.

Could it be the “Linux kernel” of the hardware world? I have probably 20x ESP8266s doing various things in my life, maybe 5x ESP32-Sx, and will probably pick up a few -Cx, and they’ll be the first RISC-V device I own.

Ah ok, I see. Although I don't fully comprehend what you are saying.

The main feature seems to be that it's an open architecture, so you don't have to rely on the things that a manufacturer provides you.

I also added your comparison table to the article.

And thank you for the compliment!

You don't need xtensa toolchain and use whatever your distro ships for one.

A drawback is that ESP32 RISCV cores don't feature FPU, if I am remembering correctly.

>I know the ESP32-Cx is based on the RISC-V architecture. Could you elaborate why this is a feature or in what way this is an advantage?

Long term support. As Espressif has publicly declared their intent to fully move to RISC-V, it is not in your interest long-term to base your designs on the ISA that's been deprecated.

Encryption in General on the ESP32 is difficult.

I haven't used it, but there now seems to be some good support in the ESP-IDF Framework: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32/...