ESP32 Forum

Info about some ESP32 dev boards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O_vrKAmshA

This thread is developing a very clickbaity, keyword spammy, infowarsy character.

BREADBOARD HATING CEO UNFIT, MUST GO! DOZENS OF NEWBIES PROTEST! COMPANY DOOMED!

there we go.

1+

I want to buy two ESP32 development boards. ...

TO speaks from 2 boards,
so much negative headlines from TO.
honestly?
I do not take in serious
and ignore the thread up on this one post


best wishes
rudi

This is a gold mine. Someone please make a Markov chain out of those rants.

Let us be clear: this is an important discussion because Espressif's ESP32 is a potentially "game-changing" product yet it seems to be severely hampered by poor management and poor marketing. At this point I doubt I will develop a product that incorporates the ESP32. But I sure wish someone would convince me I should.

In light of that, please refrain from hurling hastily contrived pseudo-intellectual insults herein. They are distractions that tend to discourage intelligent, knowledgeable, and thoughtful readers from contributing valuable comments to this important discussion. Please either engage in reasoned discourse in this thread or please do not comment in this thread at all. If you need to metaphorically and/or actually smirk in a self-satisfied manner at what you seem to consider your razor sharp and infectious wit, please do it somewhere else.

Regarding marketing and in particular marketing to third party developers I came across the following two links earlier today:

Google's Internet of Things Developer Kits
https://developer.android.com/things/ha ... -kits.html

Adafruit's Project Kit for Android Things
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3227

Adafruit's Project Kit for Android Things is precisely the sort of kit Espressif's next CEO should ensure developers could easily purchase by linking to it from an Espressif webpage. Apparently no soldering is required! Pink hair or not, Lady Ada (the founder or one of the founders of Adafruit) is a (clever) woman.

And women intuitively understand that not everyone is a hardware technophile who enjoys acquiring technical skills such as learning how to build a self-driving car, constructing a rocket to blast off to Mars (or better yet a teleportation machine), or being able to solder components onto printed circuit boards.

To the hardcore engineer/scientist hackers I say: go build your self-driving cars and rocket ships. (I hate to break it to you, but, well, it needs to be said: that teleportation machine is probably a bit beyond your abilities. I am sorry to have been the one to inform you of that). And solder away to your heart's content! But please do not foolishly try to persuade me I need to join your "Hardcore Hackers Soldering Club"? Ok?

There is little need for most software developers whose time is worth more than 20 US dollars per hour to learn how to solder to build prototype IoT devices. Is soldering a useful skill? Sure. For some people it is. But since the Arduino revolution spread from the Piedmont region (in what is currently Northwest Italy) around the world, it is now commonplace for hackers to quickly and easily plug together hardware to build hardware devices such as IoT prototypes.

Based on my cursory glance of Adafruit's Project Kit for Android Things it looks like a software developer with only a rudimentary knowledge of hardware could "breadboard" a prototype, show it to a technician so that he could create a Gerber file based on it, and then for probably less than 100 US dollars order, say, 10 pieces of assembled PCBs from a PCB/PCBA (PCB Assembly) supplier in China that specializes in low-cost and low-volume orders.

By the way, I predict Google will very likely fail in their Internet of Things project. I expect they will let it limp along for several years, but ultimately it is difficult for me to imagine throngs of third party developers wanting to use Android to build IoT (Internet of Things) devices. How many third party developers would be comfortable depending on a Google backed platform (which they might pull the plug on at any time), particularly one that is apparently ill-suited to IoT and has had serious security flaws, if something even slightly inferior were available?

Be that as it may, the CEO of Google (as well as Google famous co-founders) seems to firmly grasp the importance of marketing to third party developers generally, and in particular making it very easy for third party developers to obtain whatever they might need to begin developing for the platform or product in question by providing clear and explicit information and links on Google's website. I hope the next CEO of Espressif will have a similar understanding.

.. or the new one ESP32-PICO Motherboard which has silicon rew 1.

sry, do not believe, it has rew 0

best wishes
rudi

In light of that, please refrain from hurling hastily contrived pseudo-intellectual insults herein. They are distractions that tend to discourage intelligent, knowledgeable, and thoughtful readers from contributing valuable comments to this important discussion. Please either engage in reasoned discourse in this thread or please do not comment in this thread at all. If you need to metaphorically and/or actually smirk in a self-satisfied manner at what you seem to consider your razor sharp and infectious wit, please do it somewhere else.

Regarding marketing and in particular marketing to third party developers I came across the following two links earlier today:

Google's Internet of Things Developer Kits
https://developer.android.com/things/ha ... -kits.html

Adafruit's Project Kit for Android Things
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3227

Adafruit's Project Kit for Android Things is precisely the sort of kit Espressif's next CEO should ensure developers could easily purchase by linking to it from an Espressif webpage. Apparently no soldering is required! Pink hair or not, Lady Ada (the founder or one of the founders of Adafruit) is a (clever) woman.

And women intuitively understand that not everyone is a hardware technophile who enjoys acquiring technical skills such as learning how to build a self-driving car, constructing a rocket to blast off to Mars (or better yet a teleportation machine), or being able to solder components onto printed circuit boards.

To the hardcore engineer/scientist hackers I say: go build your self-driving cars and rocket ships. (I hate to break it to you, but, well, it needs to be said: that teleportation machine is probably a bit beyond your abilities. I am sorry to have been the one to inform you of that). And solder away to your heart's content! But please do not foolishly try to persuade me I need to join your "Hardcore Hackers Soldering Club"? Ok?

There is little need for most software developers whose time is worth more than 20 US dollars per hour to learn how to solder to build prototype IoT devices. Is soldering a useful skill? Sure. For some people it is. But since the Arduino revolution spread from the Piedmont region (in what is currently Northwest Italy) around the world, it is now commonplace for hackers to quickly and easily plug together hardware to build hardware devices such as IoT prototypes.

Based on my cursory glance of Adafruit's Project Kit for Android Things it looks like a software developer with only a rudimentary knowledge of hardware could "breadboard" a prototype, show it to a technician so that he could create a Gerber file based on it, and then for probably less than 100 US dollars order, say, 10 pieces of assembled PCBs from a PCB/PCBA (PCB Assembly) supplier in China that specializes in low-cost and low-volume orders.

By the way, I predict Google will very likely fail in their Internet of Things project. I expect they will let it limp along for several years, but ultimately it is difficult for me to imagine throngs of third party developers wanting to use Android to build IoT (Internet of Things) devices. How many third party developers would be comfortable depending on a Google backed platform (which they might pull the plug on at any time), particularly one that is apparently ill-suited to IoT and has had serious security flaws, if something even slightly inferior were available?

Be that as it may, the CEO of Google (as well as Google famous co-founders) seems to firmly grasp the importance of marketing to third party developers generally, and in particular making it very easy for third party developers to obtain whatever they might need to begin developing for the platform or product in question by providing clear and explicit information and links on Google's website. I hope the next CEO of Espressif will have a similar understanding.

In light of that, please refrain from hurling hastily contrived pseudo-intellectual insults herein. They are distractions that tend to discourage intelligent, knowledgeable, and thoughtful readers from contributing valuable comments to this important discussion. Please either engage in reasoned discourse in this thread or please do not comment in this thread at all. If you need to metaphorically and/or actually smirk in a self-satisfied manner at what you seem to consider your razor sharp and infectious wit, please do it somewhere else.

speak one of oneself in the monologue
and does not want to listen to others at all.
this is not a meaningful dialogue.

Nobody has to do this nonsense.
it leads to nothing.

the TO had his/her appearance on stage
i think this thread can be closed now.

best wishes
rudi


edit: since now comes only more nonsense...

This thread is developing a very clickbaity, keyword spammy, infowarsy character...

Please do not detract from this thread with inane criticisms written in hurried broken English which makes me think you speak Hindi. Please feel free to start your own thread. By the way, your user image seems apt.

This thread is developing a very clickbaity, keyword spammy, infowarsy character...

Please do not detract from this thread with inane criticisms written in hurried broken English which makes me think you speak Hindi. Please feel free to start your own thread. By the way, your user image seems apt.

STop!
No Politic - No Religion here!

which makes me think you speak Hindi.

and no insult!

Go away where you come guy!

...please do it somewhere else.

you should follow your own advice.

Info about some ESP32 dev boards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O_vrKAmshA

Thank you for that link! I had not seen it. Andreas Spiess has an outstanding YouTube channel. I should probably have subscribed to Andreas Spiess' YouTube channel, but I do not generally like subscribing to YouTube channels.

I am surprised Andreas is not an engineering professor at a Swiss university. Living in a small, landlocked, mountainous, resource-poor country the Swiss rely on their "brains" not "brawn" to maintain their high standard of living. One way they do that is by exporting many high tech products which, of course, are created primarily by teams of engineers who naturally would benefit being taught by world-class engineering professors.

The originator of this thread appears to not understand that Espressif is a fabless semiconductor business. Not a maker of hobbyist kits.

There are already plenty of dev boards using ESP32, many of which work quite well on a breadboard. Serious consumers of ESP32 will design boards appropriate for a specific application, and buy modules by the thousands, tens of thousands, maybe more.

Serious tinkerers are served adequately by the common dev boards.

The criticism of Espressif's CEO is just silly.

I wonder how Microsoft CEO stands all that criticism... oh what - their software is provided "as is" and with no responsibility on how it works for you. The same with hardware. If you use ESP32 module the Espressif is not obliged to do anything. They can provide things but they aren't obliged to. Even more they can't oblige third party to provide specific boards if third party doesn't want to oblige (a.k.a certification process)

Engineers often bristle at "suits" telling them how to engineer yet I have met many engineers who confidently discuss business strategy which they only vaguely understand.

It is inappropriate to compare a huge, wealthy, profitable multinational corporation with an extremely valuable brand and extremely valuable intellectual property which "crossed the chasm" (became big and successful) decades ago such as Microsoft to an apparently small company that may or may not be profitable, but is certainly very vulnerable to outside competition such as Espressif.

A large and healthy mature tree is very different that a small sapling. A man can climb the later without damaging but could crush later merely by stepping on it. Microsoft does not need third party developers nearly as much as third party developers need Microsoft whereas the case is the reverse in the case of Espressif.

Competitor may arise but it success will only be based on the product quality and not CEO or boards made by third party.

That is an unsubstantiated claim.

Look at STM SPWF04S - that's a "direct" ESP32 competitor. Good luck finding community or easy access to single units of those things (and you can forged about third party dev boards). STM is bigger and more experienced company...

You have confused causation with correlation.

Old Silicon Valley is old and with the educational problems of the US new Silicon Valleys are created in Asia.

If a large percentages of Western engineers had gone to East Asia to study engineering at East Asian universities then your assertion might make some sense. But they haven't and it doesn't.

I would surmise that the overwhelming majority of Espressif's top engineers studied engineering at Western universities. I doubt the overwhelming majority of the top engineers in Silicon Valley studied at East Asian universities.

America generally has a terrible educational system. That is true and terrible. But Western engineers generally (not just Americans) are the ones who have contributed most of the scientific innovations not just over the last 500 years, but even over the last decade.

Although they may be wealthy and teeming with productivity, no metropolitan area in East Asia is as commercially significant or powerful as Silicon Valley (or New York or Los Angeles or London or Paris or Berlin). From an economic perspective, East Asia is currently essentially a "workshop for the world." Sure many East Asian factory owners have become wealthy. But that is not a sign of great East Asian engineering or, in particular, innovation.

New Espressif is more likely to pop out in India or China (or Europe) than in US.

Perhaps.

All of those areas have large numbers of engineers who studied at Western universities. Furthermore, these days the internet makes it easy to "virtually study" at Western universities.

Generally I have the sense Western financiers are more astute than their East Asian counterparts. And Western managers are generally better than their East Asian counterparts. Western managers are generally mediocre, but East Asian managers are frequently unbearable tyrants. And Westerners are obviously better at marketing than their East Asian counterparts.

One of the fundamental problems East Asian companies face against Western companies is the differences in culture. The culture in the West gives Western companies a significant advantage over East Asian companies.

If you have ever spoken with, say a Japanese who worked in Tokyo for a Japanese company, and then moved to, say, Sydney to work for an Australian company, you probably are aware that most East Asians vastly prefer working for Western managers than for East Asian managers. "I am the boss. Therefore do what I say!" exists everywhere. But in the West it is seen as bad behaviour whereas in East Asia it is often seen as regrettable yet acceptable.

China based companies tend to have big problems when communicating with English speaking community but Espressive is doing it much better than some other companies I know.

I agree.

However, Espressif's main competition is likely to come from a country other than China. Being one the best Chinese chip makers in the market is not enough; Espressif needs to be one of the best chip makers in the world.

Despite Espressif's purported "open-source attitude" I think that is little more than a marketing slogan.

You have a nice and open SDK. From what I heard it's very nicely done.

I am sorry. I was unclear.

By "open-source attitude" I meant open to collaborating with third party developers as colleagues instead of acting in a heavy-handed and inconsiderate manner. Again, this is part of the cultural difference between the West and East Asia.

a couple of dozen top hardware engineers in Silicon Valley could build a prototype of cheaper better chip than the ESP32 within 18 months.

STM had years, Atmel had years, NXP had years... but they didn't. Espressif was first to the market with ESP8266 and now with ESP32 and that's why they succeeded. It's inevitable that there will be competitor chips but they won't be first to the market.

Your first assertion ignores a salient point I made: many of the best hardware engineers in the world (some of whom come from East Asia) live and work in Silicon Valley. Your second assertion is irrelevant.

As for third party boards and stuff. I use few, all of them work. Olimex seems to also do a good job - but I would rather not trust Amazon for reviews of such non-consumer product. Even on laptops I was looking through the reviews are always user biased - how do a laptop fit given person needs and expectations

Thank you for letting me know.

I would prefer not to rely on Amazon reviews either. I agree that many times they are dishonest. I have repeatedly asserted in this thread that I would like Espressif to certify ESP32 developer boards made by third party for a nominal fee of, say, 100 US dollars. I would gladly pay a 20% premium to choose from a a variety of "Espressif approved" ESP32 development boards. Espressif should not make ESP32 development boards. They should leave that work to other companies.

Right now in the company I work for we are in the process of designing two PCBs with ESP32 module.

I am glad to learn that! I want Espressif's ESP32 to become very popular and very widespread. I think Espressif's ESP32 is a very promising "disruptive technology." I also want other companies to come into the market to compete with Espressif.

Prototypes were made mostly with the most crude protyping board - http://blob.tomerweller.com/assets/esp3 ... eakout.png - no usb, no breadboard options

I appreciate you providing me with that information.

Breadboard friendly hack of a wide board:

breadboard.jpg

I appreciate you providing me with that image.

Also for things like dual pin header boards you can use female pinout and point it up, like MicroPython PyBoard. Or like Arduino or Nucleo - big PCB with female pin headers.

Thank you for that information.

Below are examples of the type of links I would like to see on the Espressif website:

Google's Internet of Things Developer Kits
https://developer.android.com/things/ha ... -kits.html

Adafruit's Project Kit for Android Things
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3227