ESP Hosted SPI based firmware now available

[Pontus]

We're exited to announce that both the Challenger RP2040 WiFi/BLE as well as our new Challenger RP2350 WiFi6/BLE5 boards now can be used with ESP Hosted (https://github.com/espressif/esp-hosted) stack allowing for really high speed network transfers. High level support for this is already available in the Arduino-Pico framework.

[cp_addict]

Great!

Do you have some figures on memory usage? As far as I understand, ESP-Hosted keeps the Wifi/BT stack in the MCU. That should be no problem for the RP2350 (especially with PSRAM), but might very well be a problem for the RP2040. In my usage scenarios of the Pico-W for example I always encounter memory problems and the Pico-W also uses MCU memory for Wifi.

[Pontus]

Not sure exactly what your use case is but simply comparing the WiFServer example between the Challenger RP2040 WiFi/BLE and the Pico-W I can see the following:

Challenger RP2040 WiFi/BLE
Sketch uses 157860 bytes (1%) of program storage space. Maximum is 8384512 bytes.
Global variables use 73376 bytes (27%) of dynamic memory, leaving 188768 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 262144 bytes.

Pico-W
Sketch uses 359736 bytes (17%) of program storage space. Maximum is 2093056 bytes.
Global variables use 71860 bytes (27%) of dynamic memory, leaving 190284 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 262144 bytes.

The Pico-W solution uses considerably more program storage and the ESP Hosted based solution uses 1.5KByte more RAM than the pico solution. Any dynamically allocated memory used by the upper layers of the networks stack I expect to be the exact same so RAM-wise I would say they are very similar. The ESP Hosted solution uses 2 required 1600 bytes statically allocated SPI buffers which account for some of the difference.

[UkTinkerer]

HI,

I tried loading the firmware onto my Challenger RP2030 Wifi MKII board and then using the example sketch but unfortunately the only output I get is "STARTING PROGRAM" followed by "initSpiDriver OK".

The esptool seemed to do it's thing OK updating the ESP correctly and I'm using the three files in the git repo for the challenger firmware

Any idea what I might have missed?

[Pontus]

Hello Uktinkerer,

What instructions are you following right now ?
What 3 files are you referring to. There should be only one file which you can download from the product page (https://ilabs.se/product/challenger-rp2 ... ip-antenna), under Downloads.

The instructions on how to flash the file are available here: https://ilabs.se/flashing-new-firmware- ... c6-devices

Let me know how it works out for you.

Regards
/Pontus

[UkTinkerer]

I was following the instructions in the repo here

https://github.com/Networking-for-Ardui ... 040WiFiBLE

Are these incorrect?

[Pontus]

I know that the binaries from there does not work. You should use the one provided in the link I sent above.

[UkTinkerer]

Hi
I tried the firmware from your site and I'm using the example from the github library ( installing the library from the git repo) and I get the same response.

Do you have a different sketch example or library to test this out with?

[Pontus]

Hi,
Did you try the standard examples in the arduino-pico library ? This firmware and the accompanying library allows you to use the arduino-pico examples on our boards exactly as you would use a Raspberry Pi Pico.

[UkTinkerer]

Hi Pontus,

Got this working, just a note when compiling from the arduino IDE you need to select the ESP WifI type to "ESP Hosted".

Do you know if ESP Hosted allows setting of the wifi protocol, I can't see any methods for this and even looking at the proto it doesn't look like this is implemented.

SInce the ESP32 supports the long range mode this would be helpful for those who want max range