- Sat Oct 10, 2015 1:01 pm
#31044
AFAIK, the very first ATMega+ESP initiative was an open-hardware board called the ESPToy.
It was a very slick design, used one of the AT Megas with 2 H/W serial, and the board design was publicly available. Second version of ESPToy dropped the ATMega, I think they realized it was too much hurdle getting the two mcus so tightly coupled for not much additional value.
Now, Amica, who sell Node-MCU style boards has tried to launch a discussion (both on this site and on the node-MCU/firmware GitHub) on how to evolve the Node-MCU board, which his also open hardware.
IMHO, it would be good to rather capitalize on Node-MCU, which is the de facto 'standard' board for ESP, and has managed to reduce overhead to $2 (Node-MCU sells for less than $5, just $2 above a bare ESP-12 module).
My feeling is that unless you are chinese, you will not be able to get a very low price, which is still the main selling point for ESP. A price point of $10 is too high, for that price you get a Linux SBC such as CHIP, with onboard Wifi, so why bother managing two lower-capability mcus?
I would very much like to see the Node-MCU ecosystem develop beyond the plain board itself, by adding 'shield' capability, and more modularity for the USB/TTL and power options.
Those shields could be ATMega328, or ATTiny85, or a simple I/O mux (74HC4067 provides 16 channel A/D mux for one dollar).
Doing this would cost much less as it is incremental over an already well established ecosystem with several actors, and would be more flexible (IMHO, still...)
It was a very slick design, used one of the AT Megas with 2 H/W serial, and the board design was publicly available. Second version of ESPToy dropped the ATMega, I think they realized it was too much hurdle getting the two mcus so tightly coupled for not much additional value.
Now, Amica, who sell Node-MCU style boards has tried to launch a discussion (both on this site and on the node-MCU/firmware GitHub) on how to evolve the Node-MCU board, which his also open hardware.
IMHO, it would be good to rather capitalize on Node-MCU, which is the de facto 'standard' board for ESP, and has managed to reduce overhead to $2 (Node-MCU sells for less than $5, just $2 above a bare ESP-12 module).
My feeling is that unless you are chinese, you will not be able to get a very low price, which is still the main selling point for ESP. A price point of $10 is too high, for that price you get a Linux SBC such as CHIP, with onboard Wifi, so why bother managing two lower-capability mcus?
I would very much like to see the Node-MCU ecosystem develop beyond the plain board itself, by adding 'shield' capability, and more modularity for the USB/TTL and power options.
Those shields could be ATMega328, or ATTiny85, or a simple I/O mux (74HC4067 provides 16 channel A/D mux for one dollar).
Doing this would cost much less as it is incremental over an already well established ecosystem with several actors, and would be more flexible (IMHO, still...)
