points by devmor 2 days ago | 0 comments
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
[–] hellweaver666 1 day 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.
[–] locknitpicker 1 day 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 19 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.
Personally I use ESP32s for GPIO to control things around the house and have one Raspberry Pi acting as a hub.