For all my fellow tiny-adorable-computer aficionados. It uses a fairly beefy RISC-V embedded CPU, a custom OS derived from other products the creator has made (mostly hackable event badges, apparently), and a keyboard and display that might actually be worth using. Very tempting toy, it would be fun to get a couple and make a little LoRa broadcast-chat application or something.
I immediately thought you must have been misinformed, but you’re absolutely correct, the ESP32-P4 is in fact a RISC-V chip, unlike the other members of the ESP32 family! That’s awesome.
I’ve been seeing these lightweight LoRa devices with mini keyboards popping up lately; here’s a recent Lobsters story about an OS for a few of them which also use ESP32. This looks like the best of them so far. Very interesting!
The ESP32-C and -H lines are RISC-V as well; Espressif seems to be generally meandering towards using RV everywhere? Meanwhile, in the best traditions of hardware manufacturers making absolutely baffling branding decisions, the ESP32-S series still uses the Xtensa architecture.
Didn’t know about the H or P series. I’m sort of shocked that the P4 doesn’t have built-in WiFi and BT, since that’s kind of been ESP’s bag since the first 8266.
(I find it sort of funny that even a tiny cheap device like this has 3 separate CPU chips in it!)
These little thumb keyboards, when done well, are considerably more ergonomic than an on-screen virtual keyboard. At least, that’s been my experience. I miss the Blackberry and Nokia keyboard phones, and was definitely doing “real stuff” with them at the time.
Same way one is supposed to do anything real on a phone keyboard: control your expectations. :-P I don’t expect the device to be used for 6-hour coding sessions, and there’s better devices than it for gaming, but it’s nice to have a keyboard for general purpose stuff or maybe light chat. If you’re using it for fun hacking or maybe Flipper-like wireless exploration, the keyboard seems just fine.
For all my fellow tiny-adorable-computer aficionados. It uses a fairly beefy RISC-V embedded CPU, a custom OS derived from other products the creator has made (mostly hackable event badges, apparently), and a keyboard and display that might actually be worth using. Very tempting toy, it would be fun to get a couple and make a little LoRa broadcast-chat application or something.
I immediately thought you must have been misinformed, but you’re absolutely correct, the ESP32-P4 is in fact a RISC-V chip, unlike the other members of the ESP32 family! That’s awesome.
I’ve been seeing these lightweight LoRa devices with mini keyboards popping up lately; here’s a recent Lobsters story about an OS for a few of them which also use ESP32. This looks like the best of them so far. Very interesting!
The ESP32-C and -H lines are RISC-V as well; Espressif seems to be generally meandering towards using RV everywhere? Meanwhile, in the best traditions of hardware manufacturers making absolutely baffling branding decisions, the ESP32-S series still uses the Xtensa architecture.
Didn’t know about the H or P series. I’m sort of shocked that the P4 doesn’t have built-in WiFi and BT, since that’s kind of been ESP’s bag since the first 8266.
(I find it sort of funny that even a tiny cheap device like this has 3 separate CPU chips in it!)
how is one supposed to do anything real on that tiny keyboard though?
These little thumb keyboards, when done well, are considerably more ergonomic than an on-screen virtual keyboard. At least, that’s been my experience. I miss the Blackberry and Nokia keyboard phones, and was definitely doing “real stuff” with them at the time.
Same way one is supposed to do anything real on a phone keyboard: control your expectations. :-P I don’t expect the device to be used for 6-hour coding sessions, and there’s better devices than it for gaming, but it’s nice to have a keyboard for general purpose stuff or maybe light chat. If you’re using it for fun hacking or maybe Flipper-like wireless exploration, the keyboard seems just fine.