Information

A look at the ESP32

I’m a big fan of the ESP8266 devices that are available so when I saw that there was an ESP32 available I was interested to have a look.

For me the key things I’m interested are the fact that it has integrated wi-fi and bluetooth. In addition for connecting up external devices there are way more GPIO options available.

ESP32 can perform as a complete standalone system or as a slave device to a host MCU, reducing communication stack overhead on the main application processor. ESP32 can interface with other systems to provide Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functionality through the SPI / SDIO or I2C / UART interfaces.

ESP32 is capable of functioning reliably in industrial environments with an operating temperature ranging from -40°C to +125°C. Powered by advanced calibration circuitries, ESP32 can dynamically remove external circuit imperfections or adapt to changes in external conditions.

Lets take a look at the feature table

Key Features	240 MHz dual core Tensilica LX6 microcontroller with 600 DMIPS Integrated 520 KB SRAM Integrated 802.11 b/g/n HT40 Wi-Fi transceiver, baseband, stack and LwIP Integrated dual mode Bluetooth (classic and BLE) 16 MB flash, memory-mapped to the CPU code space 2.3V to 3.6V operating voltage -40°C to +125°C operating temperature On-board PCB antenna / IPEX connector for external antenna
Sensors	Ultra-low noise analog amplifier Hall sensor 10x capacitive touch interfaces 32 kHz crystal oscillator
34 x GPIO	3 x UARTs, including hardware flow control 3 x SPI 2 x I2S 18 x ADC input channels 2 x DAC 2 x I2C PWM/timer input/output available on every GPIO pin OpenOCD debug interface with 32 kB TRAX buffer SDIO master/slave 50 MHz Supports external SPI flash up to 16 MB SD-card interface support
Security Related	WEP, WPA/WPA2 PSK/Enterprise Hardware accelerated encryption: AES/SHA2/Elliptical Curve Cryptography/RSA-4096
Performance	Supports sniffer, Station, SoftAP and Wi-Fi direct mode Max data rate of 150 Mbps@11n HT40, 72 Mbps@11n HT20, 54 Mbps@11g, and 11 Mbps@11b Maximum transmit power of 19.5 dBm@11b, 16.5 dBm@11g, 15.5 dBm@11n Minimum receiver sensitivity of -97 dBm 135 Mbps UDP sustained throughput 5 μA power consumption in Deep-sleep