M5Stack to be Relaunched with ESP32

In our March Newsletter we announced the release of M5Stack, a robust, open-source modular toolkit which was built around ESP8266. In the meantime, the M5Stack team visited Espressif’s headquarters in Shanghai and sealed a deal to relaunch their product, this time using ESP32, our 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combo chip.

ESP32 can interface with other systems to provide Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functionality through SPI / SDIO or I2C / UART interfaces. The high level of integration that ESP32 offers enhances the versatility of any IoT project it brings to life. It also requires minimal PCB area and achieves ultra-low power consumption, with a combination of several types of proprietary software. As such, ESP32 is suitable for mobile devices, wearable electronics and IoT applications.

These advantages of ESP32 have made it so appealing to the M5Stack team that they decided to relaunch their project, based on our chip. Their ultimate goal is to provide an “all-in-one solution for rapid product development, which is easy for everyone to use”. Contrary to traditional hardware development, which needs advanced technical knowledge and often leads to prototypes that look far from ready to hit the market, the M5Stack toolkit will help makers get rid of all the prototyping clutter and create IoT projects that require less time-to-market. Furthermore, the M5Stack is so practical and easy to use that it can also be deployed in do-it-yourself or educational projects. Users can materialize, then, various different projects with it, ranging from GPS trackers or smart switches to customized Wi-Fi sockets and systems controlling office lights. By using the M5Stack toolkit, not only will such projects be fully functional, but they will also look neat and professional. 

We look forward to the official release of the revamped M5Stack, which will be built around ESP32, in mid-April 2017.