ESP32 was ahead of its time

[bobolink]

The internet is buzzing over some new silicon in a MCU from the Raspberry Pi foundation.
But this only emphasizes how far ahead the ESP32 was years ago. And may still be. Really. The M0+
Not perfect. The ADC and in-circuit debugging are troublesome.
But it has a radio in it!

[chegewara]

Yes, its hard to miss RP2040 and rpi pico, but i think its not a competition to esp32 family.
Im not saying, RP2040 seems to be really nice soc, especially its price ($4 for dev board!!!) and i will play with it for sure.
Features like USB device/host and PIO are very interesting, but i think the biggest value of it may be the price. It may be widely used in schools to start programming journey with micropython/cirquitpython or C/C++ with asm for beginners. Of course lack of wireless connectivity may be a problem.

In other hand if we consider that esp32 S2/S3 is also equipped with USB and can run micropython/cirquitpython, but also is having wifi/bt/ble then few $ more is worth to pay.


What i am looking forward to see on RP2040 is some simple and cheap logic analyzer and maybe USB stack decoder.
At the end here is just example what you can do, when you dont know your hardware (just kidding), with small MCUs:
https://github.com/Wren6991/picodvi

[ESP_Sprite]

Well, we're hoping to keep with the times with our new chips although I'm not going to lie, that PIO peripheral in the RP2040 looks mightily interesting.

[username]

Granted, the 2040 seems cool and all. But there are a few things to consider.
RPI has always had issues keeping stock.
It does not even have a RTOS which is absurd for any multicore device.
Working with the ESP32 for over a year now I have so much reusable good working solid code now, I'm just not willing to learn something new and start over learning a new device and all the new caveats. The ESP32 is small enough and cheap enough for any project.

$4 or not, the ESP32 is still my goto device.