David Johnson-Davies has launched the design information for a compact Feather-format growth board constructed round Espressif’s ESP32-P4 system-on-chip — delivering two RISC-V cores working at as much as 400MHz, 32MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM), and as much as 32MB of exterior flash.
“After designing the AVR128DA32 Feather Board I examine Espressif’s new ESP32-P4 processor, a high-performance processor with a RISC-V core, and determined it might be an attention-grabbing problem to design a Feather-format board primarily based on that,” Johnson-Davies explains of the challenge’s inspiration. “Like different current ESP32-series chips the ESP32-P4 contains an inside native USB interface, so I made a decision to design the board to assist USB by way of a USB-to-serial chip in addition to this native USB.”
On the lookout for a compact tackle an Espressif ESP32-P4 dev board? This Feather-format design may do the trick. (📷: David Johnson-Davies)
“I underestimated how a lot tougher this board was going to be in comparison with the sooner AVR128DA32 Feather Board,” Johnson-Davies admits, “and I quickly realized that it might solely be doable by altering to utilizing 0402 resistors and capacitors, reasonably than the 0805 ones I used to be utilizing, and by switching to a four-layer board. Switching to a four-layer board actually made the format a lot simpler. The bottom aircraft layer makes it pointless to consider routing the bottom, other than putting vias to attach by to it. Additionally, the third layer makes routing the ability provide connections a lot simpler.”
The board itself is designed in a breadboard-friendly gumstick form-factor primarily based on the Feather specification, with a just a few modifications: there are two additional pins to offer entry to the info strains from the Espressif ESP32-P4’s on-board USB peripheral, there is a 1.2V energy output, the GPIO22 analog enter is devoted to battery voltage monitoring, and there is a boot-selection button for program add.
Johnson-Davies has launched schematics, design information, and manufacturing information for these seeking to construct their very own boards. (📷: David Johnson-Davies)
The completed board contains two 32-bit RISC-V cores working at as much as 400MHz, 768kB of static RAM (SRAM) plus 32MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM), and as much as 32MB of off-chip flash storage. There is a USB connection for energy and knowledge, plus a connection for an elective lithium battery full with charge-handling circuit. What there is not, nevertheless, is any wi-fi connectivity: whereas Espressif could have made a reputation for itself in wi-fi microcontrollers, the ESP32-P4 focuses on efficiency — at the price of excluding any built-in radio {hardware}.
Extra data is out there on Johnson-Davies’ web site, with Eagle design information and Gerber manufacturing information for the board accessible on GitHub beneath an unspecified open-hardware license.