For applications where Raspberry Pi 4 is not robust enough, or consumes excessive power, you can consider the EsPiFF —a powerful ESP32-based development board built by MDC-Service, which is a start-up by Michael Schmid and Steffen Wittenburg.

EsPiFF packs an additional punch with wired and wireless Ethernet, an SD card socket, and a RP2040 co-processor. Can’t find a Pi for that important project? EsPiFF is the rock solid, low-power Pi alternative you’ve been looking for!

EsPiFF is particularly suitable for measurement, control, and automation projects where the current consumption and heat generation of a Pi, or the potential instability of its SD card, could pose problems.

EsPiFF

Features & Specifications

• • ESP32-WROVER-IB with 8 MB of PSRAM and 16 MB of Flash in a Raspberry Pi 4 form factor;
  • 2 KB of fast FRAM for persistent storage of processed data (which is much faster than EEPROM for key variables);
  • 8 Mbit of a state-of-the-art ISSI flash;
  • Unpopulated footprint for up to 512 Mbit of a state-of-the-art ISSI flash;
  • Wi-Fi connectivity (requires an external U.FL antenna);
  • 10/100 wired Ethernet via IP101 PHY;
  • PoE header, for using Raspberry Pi PoE HATs. The EsPiFF can be powered from a HAT, or it can power the HAT.
  • Micro SD card socket for storage;
  • Up to 3 UARTs;
  • USB Type-C connector on CH340 USB-UART for programming and drawing up to 5 V / 3 A of power for power-hungry HATs;
  • 40-pin Raspberry Pi header, compatible with all Raspberry Pi HATs
  • RP2040 co-processor for emulating the Pi on the 40 pin connector, with 16 MB of Flash;
  • External realtime clock, watchdog, and a supervisor for high-availability 24/7 applications;
  • On-board super-capacitor for keeping the realtime clock running for days, even without power. The supercap has, in contrast to a battery, a practically infinite lifetime.
  • USB-Host on the USB Type-A connector;
  • BOOT button for the RP2040, for switching between USB-Programming and USB-Host/Device;
  • ESP32 reset button and three user LEDs;
  • Unpopulated JTAG header for kernel developers.

Open-Source

EsPiFF is fully open-source. You can find the files on GitHub. EsPiFF runs on Apache Nuttx RTOS or can be programmed with ESP-IDF, Arduino, and other ESP32 development tools.

Interested in This Project?

You can get all the details of the EsPiFF project on the relevant web page on GitHub, and you can also subscribe to EsPiFF’s crowsupply web page, so that you are duly notified when this campaign is launched and when all the updates are announced.