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.
ESPi board specifications:
- Module/Board (one or the other)
- ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 module with ESP32-S3 dual-core LX7 microprocessor @ up to 240 MHz with Vector extension for machine learning, up to 16MB flash, up to 8MB PSRAM, WiFi 4, and Bluetooth 5 with LE/Mesh
- Raspberry Pi Pico W board with Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ microcontroller @ 133 Mhz with 264KB RAM, 8MB SPI flash, WiFi 4 & Bluetooth Classic + LE module
- Display – 1.14-inch TFT display
- Wired networking – 10/100M Ethernet RJ45 port
- Misc- 5-way joystick
- I/Os – ESPi ESP32-S3 only: 2x 10-pin GPIO headers, Reset and Boot button
- Power Supply – 5V via USB Type-C (ESPi ESP32-S3) or micro USB (ESPi Pico) port
- Dimensions
- ESPi WiFi (ESP32-S3) – 104.3 x 32.6 mm
- ESPi Pico – Around 80 x 33 mm
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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