Hacker News

points by dzhiurgis 2 days ago | 0 comments

That's what esp32's are for. $5 and uses fuck all power.

Those are entirely different operational models.

While people do often use pis to do things you could do with an esp32, an ESP32 cannot do the majority of things a Pi can do.

[–] Rohansi 2 days ago

Over time the Raspberry Pi use case shifted more and more away from GPIO. They all still have it but probably most of them are used as a Linux computer without ever touching the GPIO now. The people who do use GPIO on a Raspberry Pi are often better off using an ESP32 because they have better control of GPIO, consume far less power, and are actually cheap.

Personally I use ESP32s for GPIO to control things around the house and have one Raspberry Pi acting as a hub.

[–] hellweaver666 2 days ago

I've been doing home electronics projects since around 2013, I used to use Raspberry Pi's for everything from lighting control to robots, camera projects and lots in between (I even had a mechanical keyboard with a Pi inside) and a massive collection of hats and addons. These days, I can do 99% of what I need with tiny little ESP32 variant boards for a fraction of the cost and significantly less complexity. Hell, you can even get esp32's with really nice touch screens attached for dashboards / animations. I built a whole cyberdeck using an ESP32 and no computer in-sight.

[–] alextheparrot 2 days ago

their RP1 IO chip is such a disappointment for high performance GPIO use cases as well, literally can’t trust any IO decision they make after having hacked on that chip

[–] bdavbdav 2 days ago

The full size Pi has less and less of a niche. GPIO / low power edge? ESP32s are great. Signage? The pi isn’t really all that great, and is expensive, get a cheap N100/150. Hacking on Linux? Literally anything else.

[–] bdcravens 2 days ago

In many cases that’s an advantage. Tiny (or no) attack surface, less power, etc

[–] slow_typist 2 days ago

The attack surface maybe smaller but less eyes on the firmware images for sure.

[–] ehnto 2 days ago

At least most my ESP32s are off any net, and pretty low stakes applications.

[–] Tepix 1 day ago

There is some overlap, see FUZIX for the RP2040 for example.

[–] dzhiurgis 1 day ago

Most of the time it's some UART or BT proxy for me, maybe toggle a light, etc. Sometimes it's all of that in one. Plenty of power for it lol.

[–] locknitpicker 2 days ago

> Those are entirely different operational models.

In some of the tinkering applications, RPis are shoehorned into the very operarional model that is followed by ESP32s.

ESP32s may be harder to debug but they allow us to remove a big chunk of the complexity that lies between our code and what we want the device to do.

I think your criticism is more in line with "they are not exactly the same as RPis". And that is fine.

[–] devmor 1 day ago

> I think your criticism is more in line with "they are not exactly the same as RPis". And that is fine.

I chose my wording very intentionally. My criticism is exactly what I said.

It’s like comparing a bicycle to a light duty farm truck.

[–] locknitpicker 1 day ago

Yes, ESP32s are not exactly like RPis. And that is fine.

Do you need a full blown Linux desktop to blink a led light? Or drive a servo? Or even have a HTTP server? No.

[–] devmor 20 hours ago

I am not sure why you think those are the only things a cheap entry level computer for young hackers should be able to do.

[–] nfriedly 2 days ago

The original Pi Zero was $5, although it probably uses more power than an esp32.

[–] jszymborski 2 days ago

IIRC that was the MSRP but you could never find them at that price.

[–] officeplant 18 hours ago

The original pi zero even had $0.99 price moments at Microcenter with a limit of one per customer.

[–] overfeed 1 day ago

> you could never find them at that price.

Microcenter sold it for $5, limited to 1 per customer. Additional ones were $15 each.

[–] aimor 1 day ago

And on Pi Day they were $3.14. I'd go every year, it's a neat little machine.

[–] ssl-3 1 day ago

For awhile, I picked up yet-another Pi Zero W every time I went into Microcenter for $5.

It was a wonderful time to live nearby.

[–] dansquizsoft 2 days ago

Yeah the price was always a bit of a con (even if it was a great product!)

[–] Beached 2 days ago

it is also more capable than an esp32. Im dinking around with both. esp32 is very restrictive in its compute capacity. It isnt multifunctional at all either.

A pi zero is to play with, an esp32 is so tiny, that it is more of a build for a single thing, and then set it and forget it doing that single thing.

You cant really stack more and more cool stuff onto it and keep building on it.

[–] everforward 1 day ago

That’s why esp-idf has components. I have a bunch of components that are basically “compile if this SDK config is set, otherwise pretend you’re an empty file” using macros.

Then I just pull in all my components. The ones I use will get compiled, the ones I don’t won’t.

Mostly works fine. Eventually you will run out of NVRAM to save binaries on, but another esp-32 is like $3.