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by violet13 747 days ago
Very few hobby designs that use more capable chips actually need more capable chips, and the added complexity - hardware and software - often bites hard.

That said, wifi is a major selling point, and you need a beefy 32-bit computer to run the protocol. This is the brilliance of ESP32: you can actually use it just as a wifi dongle for another microcontroller, but since it needs so much computing power, might as well give you some RAM and CPU to do your thing directly on the wifi chipset...
1 comments
t0mas88 747 days ago
The ESP32 is very overpowered for random home projects. But the cost is low, and they can be used with the Arduino ecosystem which is very beginner friendly.

Often the ESP32 is far cheaper than whatever sensor you're making it monitor. WiFi isn't the perfect technology to upload sensor data in the home, but anything proper Zigbee is more expensive and more complex to use. So the ESP32 ends up in all kinds of projects.

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sitkack 746 days ago
The ESP32 is not overpowered! Either for the cost or the power consumed. This idea that if an MCU is too easy to program for or has "resource left over" after completing the task that it is ill suited for the task has to go.

ESP32-H2 and ESP32-C6 both do Zigbee.

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gothroach 746 days ago
I haven't tried the ESP32-H2 or ESP32-C6 yet, but they have 802.15.4 radios so they can be used with Zigbee or Threads (plus WiFi 6 on the C6). I definitely am eager to play around with one, most of my current projects have been on the ESP32-C3.
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