From what I recall, the ESP8266 was originally just a module designated to provide WiFi capabilities to other circuits, but over time, hobbyists discovered that it had much more potential. Its incredibly low cost sparked its popularity. Espressif did an excellent job of designing the ESP32 to accommodate the demands of the emerging audience. But I could be mistaken; I might be missing a part of the story.
> The ongoing US-China chip war has created a situation where users hesitate to use Chinese chips, wary of ending up like Huawei's customers. Without this scenario, Espressif chipsets might have enjoyed much greater popularity.
These chips are intricate enough to potentially contain backdoors. While it is something I never thought about with respect to Espressif, it does seem plausible that they could be a target.
What really sparked my interest was having WiFi in a chip that only cost maybe 2 usd at the time. Plus, you could find great usb dev boards for less than 5 usd.
If I had this stuff as a teenager, I would've lost my mind...
Yeah, important to remember that the old Wifi module for the Arduino was like 20-30 bucks and was basically just an AT modem that still needed a host Arduino. Barely anybody ever used them that I saw. The original ESP-01 for a couple bucks was a very exciting product for hobbyists just as a serial-to-wifi adapter even with minimal English documentation, and then it went bonkers when they released Arduino support and a package with enough IO to do useful things. Espressif has also been pretty nice to the hobbyist community in general once they realized what they had done.
The first time I saw a 8266 I thought "why am I struggling with Arduino or Raspi if this thing is all I need to make a sensor + wifi mesh". Also being powered through the USB is a plus, lots of unused USB ports around in 24/7 machines.
Agreed. Hobbyist (and retired professional here) who fools around with IoT stuff at home. I've done lots of things with Raspberry Pi Zeroes that can be done with an ESP8266/ESP32 and with the benefit of on board analog inputs. Some of the devices I've used (like the Bosch BME280) seem to work better on the ESP and I suspect that's because the serial communication does not suffer from the risk of missed data due to managing the protocol in user space. The ESP is easier to program for real time either using FreeRTOS or just bare metal. Espressif's SDKs are a bit cumbersome to install but the VS Code extension helps to manage a lot of that. And it all works well on Linux.
> These chips are intricate enough to potentially contain backdoors. While it is something I never thought about with respect to Espressif, it does seem plausible that they could be a target.
As the old saying goes, "the S in IoT stands for security" - I choose to trust Google/Amazon and their peers to have an Internet-connected device, but everything else (95% the IoT devices I have) gets sectioned off to a dedicated VLAN & WLAN with no Internet access (and no access to the rest of my network).
This keeps me safe, and keeps the devices safe from each other (micro-segmentation in the access level). No need to trust what has minimal interfaces, and then I don't worry as much if I don't roll software updates every week...
> These chips are intricate enough to potentially contain backdoors. While it is something I never thought about with respect to Espressif, it does seem plausible that they could be a target.
They could indeed be, as already are all PC's, phones, TVs and any smart connected household appliance, no matter if they're built in China. I would never ever consider building a IoT home system wthout putting it behind a dedicated and firewalled hardware subnet that protects from the outside and from the inside. Ok, the firewall hardware itself could contain tampered chips with firmware instructing them to encapsulate and redirect certain traffic outside of the rules without reporting it, but that's another story; when in doubt, I prefer to consider every piece of hardware that is closed and connected as potential spyware.
> The ongoing US-China chip war has created a situation where users hesitate to use Chinese chips, wary of ending up like Huawei's customers. Without this scenario, Espressif chipsets might have enjoyed much greater popularity.
These chips are intricate enough to potentially contain backdoors. While it is something I never thought about with respect to Espressif, it does seem plausible that they could be a target.