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SB Components’ ESPi is a WiFi-enabled Ethernet board with a 1.14-inch information color display either coming with an ESP32-S3 WiFi and Bluetooth module or designed as a carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Pico W board.
I have no idea who needs this, but the ESPi board looks cute and can be used as a 10/100Mbps Ethernet to WiFi (or BLE) gateway with a small TFT display, and there’s also a small joystick on the board to control a potential menu or user interface rendered in the display.
SB Components says both boards can be used to create IoT devices, robotics projects, home automation systems, and industrial control systems. As usual, there’s no code sample or even demo shown during the crowdfunding campaign….
We’ve already written about a bunch of ESP32 boards with Ethernet over the years from the cheap WT32-ETH01 board ($6 at the time) to IoT gateways such as the ZB-GW03 and GL.inet GL-S10 BLE to MQTT gateway, and up to complete industrial products with the likes of NORVI ENET or EdgeBox-ESP-100. I did write about another ESP32+Ethernet+Display product in the past: TTGO T-Lite W5500, but instead of being a long board it is comprised of three small boards that stack on top of each other for Ethernet, ESP32, and the display.
The ESPi board is now offered on Kickstarter with over $5,000 raised and 10 days to go. The ESPi WiFi (ESP32-S3) board requires a $32 pledge, and the ESPi Pico board goes for $25, I assume without the Raspberry Pi Pico W board… Shipping further adds about $12.5, so the price is a little on the high side for this type of hardware… The most popular reward so far is the $50 combo with the two boards. Deliveries are scheduled for June 2023.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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If they’re going to have a device with Ethernet, they should probably include PoE (or at least provide the option for PoE), that would allow using a single cable and give more flexibility (Ethernet cables can be much longer than USB cables). It would quite a bit more stuff on the board and would increase the price, but it would probably make the board a lot more useful.
Also I would probably have the Ethernet rotated 90° so that when you have an horizontal screen, the cable goes towards the back, not the side, but that’s probably debatable.
“90 degree rj45 connector” might be another solution
You would still have the connector sticking out on the side, IMHO a lot less clean that the connector being out the back, for anything you would put either on a desk or on a wall (where you would like to have the connecter on the top or bottom, not the side). Of course the point is moot if people use the screen vertically, but I somehow think most people will use it in landscape orientation.
I don’t really get it. The price is so high that you might as well as purchase an actual devkit that comes with ethernet. As an example, an excellent one is the Tiva from TI.
I’m not sure I understand how $35 is so expensive, especially when you compare it to a dev kit which is 10-15 times more expensive?
What 10-15 times more expensive? I am comparing it to the EK-TM4C1294XL. It cost $24.99 for the non-crypto version and $29.99 for the crypto version, which is cheaper than this.
https://www.ti.com/tool/EK-TM4C1294XL
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