In the world of "do it yourself" from time to time appear revolutionary products. As samples there are the Raspberry Pi and the plates and the Arduino environment. And sometimes quite interesting devices appear at a very low price for what they do and that they are not even painted for the internet of things.
The M5Stack Core Development Kit is an interesting novelty to make developments on the ESP32 platform (compatible with Arduino) and that comes with many loaves under the arm to succeed in all kinds of developments. In a small size we find a color LCD display, a beautiful housing, numerous connectivity options and development possibilities. And the price is as small as its size.
The ESP32 is a microcontroller that hit the market just a year ago and that is advancing by leaps and bounds to dethrone the ESP8266. And it does so for several reasons, such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (the ESP8266 only has Wi-Fi), a processor with two more powerful cores, possibilities for sending information encrypted by hardware, compatibility with other interfaces such as CAN, etc. .
Although the ESP32 software development libraries are not as mature as in the case of ESP8266, work is ongoing on their development. The M5Stack Core Development can take advantage of the Arduino programming environment and be programmed as if it were one more. Therefore, many of the programs developed for Arduino that we can download from GitHub will be compatible directly or with few modifications.
Some details and information of the M5Stack
But let's go back to the M5Stack. Developing a project not only entails looking for all the necessary hardware, it is also finding a box for our needs, looking for a display that fits our project, shields, expansion hats, power supply, etc.
But let's go back to the M5Stack. Developing a project not only entails looking for all the necessary hardware, it is also finding a box for our needs, looking for a display that fits our project, shields, expansion hats, power supply, etc.
The M5Stack is a device of minimum size, but it has a nice housing, a two-inch color display, USB-C connectivity for programming and power (it also has a battery connection), I2C connectivity and a lot of GPIO ports to connect all kinds of devices.
In addition to the connectivity previously mentioned by Wi-Fi and Bluetooth of the ESP32, the M5Stack will have the possibility of using LoRa for those projects where Wi-Fi does not arrive or is not a viable option. If you want to know more about LoRa you have more information in this link.
We also have three programmable buttons for our projects, a 1W speaker, the color LED screen with 320 x 240 resolution, a socket to add a memory card, LiPo battery connector up to 2A and many other options, such as a base with magnets so you can leave it hanging from the fridge or on the wall or have an accelerometer and gyroscope.
For greater compatibility with all types of sensors and actuators THE M5STACK has connectivity to 3.3 and 5 V. And, if that were not enough, the design is modular, so that in its lower part we can connect different elements such as development boards, sensors, batteries, etc. This design also facilitates the integration with all types of industrial and amateur elements. And it also promises good usability if you meet a good graphical application development interface in the style of Scratch.
As you can see in the previous video, opening the garage door if it is connected to our Wi-Fi is a small example of everything we can do.
The M5Stack has just been presented and the kits that are available are for development. In Europe they are passing the CE / FCC certification to go on sale and probably will be available soon.
As for prices, the aforementioned kits come at a price of $ 19 for the basic model, and a gray version that has an accelerometer and gyroscope of nine axes mpu 9250 for about $ 25. These prices correspond to models of the first litter of units and may not be the same for the final models. If we take into account that some official Arduino boards exceed that price we have a possible winning horse.
Soon we hope you send us some units to do a thorough analysis of the M5Stack Core Development.
