Today we will talk about ESP8266, ESP32 and STM32. Espressif has been in the field of networking for several years. First, it launched a low-priced chip with wifi such as ESP8266, and its service provider, Anxinke, launched a wifi module based on this chip. This combination makes the wifi-based The Internet of Things industry has progressed by a big chunk. You must know that the cheapest wifi module costs dozens of dollars. The emergence of ESP8266 directly controls the price at around 10 yuan.
In 2016, Espressif launched ESP32, which is an upgraded version of ESP8266. It is faster and has Bluetooth 4.2 and Bluetooth low energy consumption. The price is around 20 yuan. At this price, there is almost no opponent to "fight" .
According to the data in the table, we can know that ESP32 has more available pins than ESP8266, and its performance has more than doubled. In general, the cost performance of ESP32 and ESP8266 is relatively high.
Advantages summarized by ESP32: dual-core processors can process multi-threads in real time; high-speed main frequency 240MHZ, compared with 72MHZ of STM32F1 and 168MHZ of STM32F4, the speed is much faster, and the price is much lower than the STM series that has been increasing in price; It comes with Bluetooth and Wifi, so you don’t need to spend money to purchase additional modules, and the cost is even lower; you can use the arduino environment for programming, and the programming difficulty is much lower than that of STM32. There are many open source projects and the development speed is very fast.
Disadvantages: Too few pins is one of the shortcomings of ESP32 at this stage. In the process of many product developments, a large number of IO ports are needed to detect the switch status, and a large number of pins are needed to control the motor. In this case, everyone just STM32 can be selected.
STM32 is a 32-bit microcontroller based on the ARM architecture.
The advantages are as follows: the communication interface is very rich, such as USART, I2C, SPI, CAN, Ethernet communication, etc.; the number of available GPIO is very large, which can control a large number of devices; the number of timers is large, and the interrupt system is also very complete, which can realize very complex logic ;Multi-channel ADC and DAC function, can be used to read a large number of sensors, etc.; can run Free RTOS, RT thread, UCOS and other real-time operating systems, can be used to control complex systems; can be connected to SD card, LCD screen, with camera interface, readable Take USB function etc.
Disadvantages: 1. The price of STM32 has been rising. However, the price of the STM32F1 series is much lower than that of the STM32F4 series. If you do not need functions such as Ethernet, camera and DACD, you can consider the F1 series. 2. It is difficult to get started and takes a certain amount of time.
In general, the use and audience of STM32 in China are far greater than that of ESP32. After all, STM32 has occupied the mainstream market for a long time. Still in the majority. But the era of the Internet of Things has come, and the current cost performance of ESP32 for the Internet of Things should be unmatched at this stage. Taking advantage of this opportunity, ESP can do a lot.
The smart devices developed now will not just stay on the development platform, but can be remotely controlled and accessed to keep up with the times. However, it is still quite difficult to develop smart devices, connect to cloud services, and mobile device programs at the same time. And ESP32 also has a cloud-integrated full-link development framework. It can be said that ESP32 must have a place in the Internet of Things. Although ESP32 is small and cheap, its functions are still very powerful. It is very suitable for the current Internet of Things era, and it is worth learning and exploring.