Teensy 4.0 = Teensy 3.6 + wifi?

dragonet80

New member
Just thinking it should be nice to ad IoT to the Teensy. What about a Teensy 3.6 with an esp8266 or similar to bring it wifi capabilities? Remove backside pins (40s and 50s) add LiPo charge and you have a winner.
 
Just thinking it should be nice to ad IoT to the Teensy. What about a Teensy 3.6 with an esp8266 or similar to bring it wifi capabilities? Remove backside pins (40s and 50s) add LiPo charge and you have a winner.

Why not use an add-on board ?
 
Arduino star otto STM32F469 + ESP8266
Arduino thought it was a good idea http://www.arduino.org/products/boards/arduino-star-otto
but not much has happened since May 2016 announcement ... Not a teensy form-factor.

You can experiment with the MCU (STM32F469NI) on MBED DISCO-F469NI (no WIFI). The MCU has FPU and MIPI DSI, and board comes with a 4" 800x480 pixel TFT color LCD. My tests showed Rectangles (filled) took 128,784 us, or 15,924 us for 320x240.

otto.pngottoa.png

computational performance at https://github.com/manitou48/DUEZoo/blob/master/perf.txt
 
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I suspect it is too much for a company like PJRC, since it involves getting certifications, etc. I'm sure Paul could design the parts if he had enough time, but getting to the point where you are legally allowed to sell it is a different question. I was looking at ESP8266's recently, and I was amused that some ebay sellers explicitly said there was no FCC certification, and that you were buying a machine that you couldn't legally use the radio parts to look at or put on your mantle I guess.

While the ESP8266 is a fairly basic chip, the successor chip (the ESP32) may start to challenge the Teensy 3.5 in terms of non-floating point work loads, as it has multiple buses (multiple each of i2c, spi, i2s, uart), and can run at 240Mhz.
 
I would be happy to put in my vote. I REALLY don't want to move to ESP32 or ESP 8266 just to do wifi on some projects now that I am comfortable with PJRC's amazing products.
 
Even if PJRC had something on deck it would be months away - and there hasn't been any feedback about that being the case.

Prior general guidance would be to find a good add-on. The ESP8266 seems good for that with a serial port connection - it is a low cost device and the T_3.2 LDO was upgraded to support it and similar things. The fact that the ESP8266 can be programmed with Arduino as well makes a good pairing to let the Teensy stay real time where the ESP8266 brings its own resources and processor to handle the radio work. I spent some time with the { 4MB 8266 version of this }ESP8285 Add-on for Teensy 3.2 which is custom fit to Teensy if overall size is critical. It uses a wire antenna that would get good reception even on a T_3.6 format - though the GND/3V3 pins would need routed. It is easy to reprogram the ESP through the Teensy Serial connect - and if the ESP gets a good sketch with OTA programming support - it can bypass the Teensy to do that. It gives user choice of both worlds without having a monolithic device compromised to fit price or power needs across a T_3.2/3.5 or 3.6. A T_LC could also work - but not powered by the T_LC.
 
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I have been using Simblee devices for a new project. Has most all certs done and waiting for the RED cert RED (Radio Equipment Directive) for Europe now.
It is like the Teensy in may ways, Small (really small) with 29 GPIO's etc. Runs on 3.3 volts. Arduino programmable etc.
I have gotten Pycom to test (had little support when I tried) and a thing called a Puck.JS. You can read back your code with a command "DUMP".. Not good (still in development)

So basically, Paul would need to get his device FCC, CE, and a few others to pass certification and I'm sure he does not have the time or the money.
The certs help us to hurry our product to the masses if certs are available. We still need to do UL and bunch of other stuff as well.

Don't get me wrong, I'm using Teensy 3.1's on what we call Interface boards. 2 on one system and 1 on another since 2015 or so. Basically its the chip to program with the code. This way he still gets money for us using his code.

Thanks Paul..
 
I have used serial to talk to a ES8266 to do WiFi before. It was pretty easy. I did use the ESP-Arduino to write the WiFi part, rather than use the built-in AT command set, because the AT command set was ... not well thought out, and not well documented in terms of overlapping I/O.

Anyway, someone could build a Teensy mating board that contained an ESP and a LiPo charger and it would make for a great addition. Wouldn't even be that hard.
 
Just noticed the onehorse part above is the new 8285 with only 1MB flash not the older 8266 that was 4MB. Tindie store also has LiPo charger boards.
 
I have used serial to talk to a ES8266 to do WiFi before. It was pretty easy. I did use the ESP-Arduino to write the WiFi part, rather than use the built-in AT command set, because the AT command set was ... not well thought out, and not well documented in terms of overlapping I/O.

Anyway, someone could build a Teensy mating board that contained an ESP and a LiPo charger and it would make for a great addition. Wouldn't even be that hard.

Well there was this old posting from johnnyfp. It looks like hackaday.io is having problems (or there are dead links on the hackaday site):

And onehorse's ESP8285 that is made to fit on a Teensy 3.2 and his lipo charger that fits on the other end of the Teensy:
 
The ESP chips are already certified (they claim) and are quite affordable. I'm happy to use an ESP 8266 for a couple of bucks to do WiFi; the modern Teensys have plenty of UARTs for just that reason!
I don't think removing the pins on the underside is the way to go. I'd rather have a high-density mezzanine connector breaking out ALL the pins, which means I can plug it into a carrier board of my design, OR "shields" can plug into that socket. Something 0.5mm would be great for reasonable robustness and home soldering, the 0.4/0.35mm pitch connectors are darn tricky...
 
The scope of certification is of course quite relative. It's actually more pre-certification. If you use the ESP in an application you need to certify the application again as a whole. You don't need to certify it if it's meant for prototyping or demonstration purposes, but this is very limited in both time and range. But I'm all for certified modules, because at least they don't screw up you home wifi signal, or worse the one of your neighbours :rolleyes: .
 
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