Espressif Systems unveiled the ESP32-H2 Bluetooth 5.2 LE & 802.15.4 RISC-V microcontroller in August 2021, but the ESP32-H2-DevKitM-1 development board based on the ESP32-H2-MINI-1 module has only been selling on the official Espressif’s Aliexpress store for $9.90 for a few weeks.
The ESP32-H2-DevKitM-1 development board allows the development of applications with Bluetooth 5.2 LE, Zigbee, Thread, and/or Matter connectivity, features two USB Type-C ports, Boot & Reset buttons, and RGB LED, and two rows of 15 pins exposing all I/Os from the ESP32-H2-MINI-1 module.
ESP32-H2-DevKitM-1 specifications:
- Wireless module – ESP32-H2-MINI-1
- MCU – Espressif Systems ESP32-H2 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller at up to 96 MHz with 320 KB SRAM, 128 KB ROM, 4 KB LP memory, Bluetooth 5.2 LE/Mesh and 802.15.4 (Zigbee/Thread/Matter) radios.
- Storage – 4MB flash storage (E1N4 on the photo above should mean 4MB, but there are also ESP32-H2-MINI-1 modules with 1MB and 2MB flash)
- PCB antenna
- Dimensions – 13.2×16.6×2.4 mm
- USB – 2x USB Type-C ports one USB 2.0 Full Speed host (12 Mbps max), the other for USB UART via CP2102 USB-to-TTL chip
- I/Os – 2x 15-pin headers with 19 programmable GPIOs, 2x UART, 3x SPI, I2C, I2S, Remote Control Peripheral, LED PWM, Full-speed USB Serial/JTAG Controller, GDMA, MCPWM…
- Debugging
- USB-C UART
- J5 for current measurement.
- Misc – Power LED, RGB LED, Boot and Reset buttons
- Power Supply
- 5V via USB Type-C port
- 5V to 3.3V LDO
- Dimensions – 48.26 x 25.40 mm
Note the development kits sold on Aliexpress are currently based on “Sample chip Revision v0.1” which will be different from the mass-produced chip. Different in which way, I don’t know, but the important part is that you may have to update ESP-IDF to the latest version and rebuild firmware before applying the software designed for chip revision v0.1 to the mass production version.
You can check out the documentation to find more hardware details and get started with the ESP-IDF framework since other ports like Arduino Core for ESP32 won’t be working at this time.
While the development kit is available on Aliexpress, the ESP32-H2-MINI-1 module is not, probably because mass production of the ESP32-H2 chip has not started. Having said that, I can see Mouser has close to 10,000 modules on backorder for $2.15 per unit (2MB flash), and Adafruit has the ESP32-H2-MINI-1 module with 4MB flash listed as “coming soon” for $2.25.
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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Incredible…
When has that been announced? While waiting I somehow lost my usecase
I didn’t see any announcement. Last month, somebody pointed out the DevKit was listed on Adafruit: https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/08/03/esp32-h2-risc-v-wisoc-announced-with-zigbee-3-thread-and-bluetooth-le-5-2/#comment-606862
Today, I could see it on Espressif’s Aliexpress store and 100+ samples have been sold, so it may have been announced somewhere, maybe in the forums?
It is listed under https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32-h2
Big news for smart home devices.
First esp32 for battery powered devices with ZigBee support. Very few decent chips with ZigBee support and reasonable price. I hope esphome will adopt it.
I’m not sure if ESPhome will like the RISC-V architecture and the lack of wifi.
ESPHome can use IPv6 over Thread instead of WiFi, if they they add support for IPv6 and OpenThread
I see that the ESP32-C3, that is also RISC-V based allready supports ESPhome. So porting to the ESP32-H2 might be possible. Otherwise the ESP32-C6 might also be a great ZigBee/Matter option.
I am sure they will, however guess that they will probably implement Thread (OpenThread) support before Zigbee since they already working on the Matter standard, but for Thread they will first need to add IPv6 support to ESPHome.
Lol. Adding a link to a product page is not an announcement.
Esp32-c6 is for devices with power supply. Esp32-h2 is for battery operated devices. This is why esp32-h2 can’t have WiFi, because WiFi eats the battery in 1-2 days.
You are not forced to use the wifi radio for (power hungry) scenarios like WPAx WIFI with TCP/IP.
For a low power use case you can (mis)use the wifi radio and send/receive esp-now broadcasts with it for example.
Isn’t zigbee anyways using the exact same frequency like WiFi?
Note that ESP32-C6 supports Wi-Fi 6; if the access point supports Wi-Fi 6 as well, the chip can negotiate a rather long connection interval with the access point. (This is known as “Target Wake Time” feature.)
For example, with a 10 second connection interval ESP32-C6 can maintain a connection to the AP with <0.2mA average current consumption.
So the battery life is going to be dependent on the use case. Applications which do not require low latency communication can see significant benefits from Wi-Fi 6 TWT.
I guess it hasn’t been announced since v1.0 version of the chip hasn’t been mass-produced yet.