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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- The first cheap chip supporting 5GHz Wi-Fi is the Realtek RTL8720 and it should be Arduino compatible. But is it any good? And which tricks do we need to know? Or is it better to wait for the new ESP32, which should also support 5GHz Wi-Fi? Let’s test it out! And discover that the manufacturer included a multi-level adventure game, free of charge.
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Links:
RTL8720 / BW16 %GHz WiFi : s.click.aliexp...
ESP32 Dev Board : s.click.aliexp...
RTL8722DM www.seeedstudi...
BW16 Getting started: www.amebaiot.c...
Autoflash tool (not tested by me): github.com/joj...
Write-Up of RTL8720 experiences: drive.google.c...
Approximate Library: github.com/dav...
BW16 Datasheet: www.futurashop...
5GHz Smartphone Sniffer (not tested): github.com/FL0...
Spectran V6: aaronia-shop.c...
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Long story short... Yes we will wait for the new ESP32 :)
And hope they will do it better...
Is there an expected release date for the next ESP32?
The coming war with China will tend to limit exports.
I do not have a date
@@AndreasSpiess what we need to Design our own Wifi Module microstrep antena with our physical TCP layer programming?
Andreas, 2021: "I tend to base my decisions on experience, rather than hope" 15:38
Also Andreas: "I _hope_ this video was (useful or interesting) for you" 15:49
Everyone: In our _experience_ your videos are always (useful and interesting) :)
Thank you for your longtime support!
@@AndreasSpiess No, thank _YOU_ Dr. Spiess for creating a wealth of accessible and approachable information on RF, IoT and automation on YT, 6 years and running, with your Swiss sobriety and sense of humour.
Hear hear!
"All devboards that I own, and if you ask my wife there are many of them" 😂😂 I can relate to that
Seems to be universal ;-)
His wife does know how to recognize a dev board. Wish i could relate to that.. ☺
Me too..
thanks a lot for explaining to me to ignore these boards for the moment - no 5 GHz needed ftm. You are quite effective :)
Why do you think I am effective? I thought I was very unproductive with this board ;-)
aside from jokes: I would love if board manufacturers would establish and follow some basic standards.
Agreed. I think that Arduino was very good in this respect. This was probably necessary to be so successful.
Again I am very Impressed how often you post new and informative videos. Thanks again for enlightening all makers and prevent at least half of all your subscribers getting crazy by all these elaborate tricks before this board works. Can’t wait when espressif will have something similar. Great work and thanks again!
Glad you like the content of the channel!
I like the humor in this - I have a couple of these boards waiting for me to have enough time to play with them and now, at least, I know what to expect. :). Doesn't seem TOO different than the standard "every chip vendor does their own thing and takes their sweet time realizing that there are standards they should adhere to", but it's good to have had someone so good at explaining hit the road bumps first...
Thanks for another great video.
You are welcome! I was astonished how many riddles I had to solve. I think it was the most complex start with a new board. For you it should be easyer to start (except the pin numbering). I still forget to push the buttons once in a while. But this can easily be detected and fixed...
I spent some time with this board a while ago. It took effort but I managed to get it working for my needs which is mostly connect to differing BSSIDs in a mesh network, pass traffic, disconnect, re-connect to a different BSSID and so on. Once I got the caveats figured out it has been fine, but then my needs for this use case are simple.
You, Sir, are a Saint and an asset to the maker community. Your generosity, abilities and patience allow us all to get more out of our hobby than we could do on our own.
Thanks.
Thank you for your nice words!
I admire your stubborness and patience, for me such ill-documented products are no-goes!
Sometimes you dont have any other option
After knowing the "tricks" it is quite easy to work with. Except for the pins ;-)
As an engineer you have to have some "stamina", I think. And some say that carrying a Ph.D. shows that you, at least once in your life, had a lot of stubbornness.
@@AndreasSpiess especially in the usa. Not only do you need to due alot of work in your field but also navigate safely in the political enviroment when working on your Ph.d
@@Flamechr Why is getting a Ph.D (post hole digger) so hard?
Realtek has made bad documentation/products like this for years. If this works out anything like their ethernet/sound chips i suspect that webpage with directions will vanish in a few months, and be replaced by a Taiwanese version. In a while all software you will need to download will be hidden on an ftp in asia that gives 4 K/s downloads. After that it will most likely just stop working in arduino IDE as they release a newer version with the same specs and a slightly different number in the name.
Hi Andreas,
Interesting video….as always! 😉
Unbelievable that you was able to complete your journey through this documentation-swamp !! Respect!
But as said by others here already…. This ill documented boards are a no-go for me…. I’m not afraid of a bit of puzzeling now and then… But this is too much!
I’m looking forward to your next video. Keep up the good work Andreas 👍
I assume that most of the "puzzling" is done now... At least the last tests were done without a lot of time waste.
Thanks for the shout out Andreas! I'm very excited to see these new 5Hz modules. I don't have much time to work on the Approximate library at the moment, so would welcome anyone making contributions
You are welcome. I got a link from another viewer which already have created one. I left a link in the description (I did not test it yet).
LOL, I thought that you had been doing this long enough to know that every new chip requires days and days of "free game play" to get them working. 😃
I've been doing this since the 1980"s and I've never seen a new chip that was easy to get working. Actually this seems easier than most new chips.
Good tutorial, I'm sure this will save several others hours of banging their head on the table in front of their development stations.
It’s not a new chip, the Realtek Ameba came out the same time as the ESP8266, it’s always been a mess with bad docs
Here not the chip was the problem. They created a lot of confusion without need. After knowing the "tricks" it was quite easy. This is why I thought they made it on purpose ;-)
Espressif's NEARLY work out of the box..
@Milan Velky Bye bye... no great loss! Civility has its place, and is not over-rated!
@Milan Velky Holy projection. Go get some fresh air, come back and re-read your comment... then feel free to google bulverism.
Thanks for the gameplay! Bookmarking this so I can speedrun trough as soon as my package arrives.
You just have to go to the last slide (if you do not get it with firmware)...
You have the patience of a Swiss Saint, sir.
It was more the curiosity of an engineer, I think ;-)
Thanks for the explanations, you convinced me, I gonna stay away from this part until they write a correct manual and simplify the use of USB ports
You are welcome!
Thank you for saving me the time to play around with this board!
You are welcome!
Woooww! I thought there was going to be trouble when I saw "RTL", but this is a whole new level of clusterfunkery! Thank you for suffering the pain so I don't have to :)
They will be VERY happy with this video...
The problems are not too hard to solve for them, I think…
When the wife starts noticing how many dev boards you have, you have too many ☺️. Or maybe she's turning into a maker? 😱
She is more in "repairing humans" ;-)
And NEVER tell her what the boards REALLY cost. NEVER!!!
That was quite entertaining... I'm glad you had to go down that rabbit hole, so we now don't have to! Thanks :)
You are welcome! I had to chose between a humorous and a rant video ;-)
Little do people know but in most parts of the world (non-US) the 2.4GHz band has actually 4 usable non-overlapping channels, like seen in your video at 3:11 with channel 1, 5, 9 and 13. Just because most firmwares are set to US defaults channel 13 is almost never used ... shame .. great video anyway! thanks for the laughs :D
Thank you for your info. I am only a Wi-Fi user and therefore was not aware of this fact.
I appreciate you keeping the community informed about this. I'll wait for the time being before getting into the 5Ghz band.
Definitively a good decision if you do not need it.
Thanks for doing the leg work!
You are welcome!
I remember trying to use RealTek chips a few years ago. I finally gave up because of the same riddles you ran into. I ended up tossing them, because they just weren't worth the time spent on them.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I do not know if the chip is good. At least it is the only we can use on 5GHz. But the documentation needs an update.
Thanks for your opinions before experiencing on my own! :_D
You are welcome!
i couldn't even get the blue pill board to load so I'm giving this one a wide berth. Thank you.
Now I learned a new word: Berth ;-)
@@AndreasSpiess Literally, give a wide berth is a phrase that dates back to the seventeenth century meaning to allow a large space between ships to enable optimum safety and maneuverability. Today, there is also a figurative meaning to the phrase give a wide berth, meaning to steer clear of someone or something, to keep your distance from someone
A remarkable product, overviewed in a remarkable video with remarkable comments. I guess that's why we are all here for... ;-)
I had several choices on how to present it. Humor was the easiest one because I do not like rant videos...
Hi Andreas,
I enjoyed this one, a nice factual review of this piece of equipment.
It's an interesting development, as always the stuff is in it's infancy and we have to deal with the infantile behavior of the product.
Luckily there's the thing called competition in the market, and that largely forces improvement.
At least I am basing my hope on that hypothesis.
Realistically, let's assume it's a Beta release.
Which is how things work, as it's the outcome of the multiplayer game involving the sales and marketing team versus the research and development team.
Largely that works, on balance.
But it's messy in the beginning.
So, we watch this space.
Kind regards,
South Africa
I agree. We will see if they watch this channel ;-)
Always an adventure with new tech & translated datasheets!
Exactly!
You CAN use the core 0 on the ESP32 using tasks.
Also the original chip is the ESP8266 not the newer ESP32.
This chip seems fine for 5GHz tho because even the newest ESP32-C6 has wifi 6(802.11ax) but only 2.4GHz.
You are right with core 0 of the ESP32 (I made videos about it).
For presence detection, I will simply use home assistant. Not worth the time to simplify cost by using a 5G wifi chip. ESP8266/32 or the Tuya Chips works well.
You are right. You can use other sensors for presence detections.
I introduce a direct coding method using the RTL8720 Standard SDK. I introduce how to develop IOT using this. You can get information by visiting.
It looks like you found part of your translation by recognizing patterns in pin naming, but I'll share this bit that I recognized:
The Pxnn notation (e.g. "PA1", "PB3", etc) is one I've seen before on PIC microcontrollers and others. It refers to "Port A" and "Port B" (and so on), with pin number indexes, often 0 thru 7 or 15, depending on how many pins per port their device offers. They can sometimes be used in parallel, so you can work with a byte sent to the Port instead of needing to set single bits for each pin separately. Very handy for bit-banging protocols and changing outputs or reading inputs in parallel.
You are right. This is naming convention is also used internally in the Arduinos and needed of you want to do bitbanging as you described.
Hi Andreas, I admire your patience. BTW this board and the software reminds me the times of 1990 when we spent days on configuring ppp connection on Linux to get connected to the internet!
Unbelievable crap developers! Competition will eat them alive
I also remember the 1990 and networking, but on Windows. Back then things were new. This chip is not new and it could have been done better. However I think the engineer was good, but, as a lot of us, hated to document...
@@AndreasSpiess agree, but WRONG document is worse than NONE ;-)
LOL...
"Luckily no explosion"
I wouldn't stir the thing that much, just in case :-)
:-))
Your question (May 2021) "Why should i do it" The pins on power FETS etc. is about 1.1mm flat side and .5mm side view. You must have felt the the resistance when you push in a FET etc acrose 3 adjacent rows of breadboard tracks. It is a lot easier when all 3 pins goes into the same row. (sideways) Also consider the contact surface. So, i just suggested bending the legs 90 degrees before pussing it in. Kand regards, Cassie Carstens
You are right. I adopted this method and if is excellent!
@@AndreasSpiess Good! Someone (JP Spies) shared this with me about 40 years ago. So, I have no claim to this. But, PLEASE share it. You and Adel Kassah is my IOT teachers. Thanks!
Thanks for sticking with it. That is a level of stubbornness that I no longer have. Those are some headaches, true, but about the same as programming a typical ESP8266 "Smart" device w/ FTDI to change its functionality. And hey, at least the RTL has a PROGRAM and RESET switch to make that part easy. I still would have thrown it away.
:-)
Still watching the video... but I seem to remember that some big exploits were found in Realteks wifi stuff recently.
Maybe you post if here if you find something.
so I will judge this as not compatible with arduino ide.
Knowing the tricks it works fine...
What is the difference between 5 and 2.4ghz when it comes to power consumption? How much power does it take to find the AP, connect and send an http packet?
5GHz obviously uses more power. It has worse range and experiences more problems from objects between sender and receiver so it needs to boost more. It also has to process a lot more data and over more multiple channels at once so it needs to process more and more complex data. Only once the production process upgrades in 2.4GHz chips would stop advancing while it continues for 5GHz chips, could the gap in worse power characteristics become smaller and maybe ever overcome it.
But that doesn't matter because you use 5GHz when you need to push that much data. You don't use 2.4GHz either when your data only needs the 433MHz band.
I did not check how long it took to connect. But I felt it took longer than an ESP8266 or an ESP32. But I did not do any optimization (e.g. fixed IP address)
@@AndreasSpiess wireless stations do not set their operating channels, as you only specify the band where it will scan for a certain SSID to connect. with 2.4GHz we have just a handful of channels, whereas with 5GHz we have a lot more, especially if you don't restrict the channel plan based on the location to the permitted ones only. now during scanning the station will listen on each channel for a certain amount of time in order to catch the SSID broadcast, which by default occurs every 200ms. to perform a full scan in a band will take more time in 5GHz than in 2.4GHz. once connected, the DHCP DORA process is just 2 RTTs, where DHCP client on the station sends a Discover, the dhcp server (on or behind the AP) sends back an Offer, then STA will send a Request, and the server will reply with and Acknowledge message. this DORA process takes normally a few (20-80) extra milliseconds to complete. Also the connection process is taking place at the lowest possible data rate, as the SSID is always broadcasted on the so called 'basic rate', which is 1Mbps @ 2.4GHz, and 6Mbps on 5GHz, so everyone in range can know about the AP itself. specifying a "scan list" or restricting the available channels to a certain region (which one should do anyway) can speed up the process, as the STA does not need to scan all available channels. not sure though whether these knobs are exposed in the uC wifi libraries.
@@Rizon1985 yup, there were advancements, but i have reasonable doubt that the uC in the question doesn't support 802.11ac or ax (would not make any sense by any means), so you are left with 802.11a/g/n which have their equivalent counterpart also on 2.4GHz. no MU-MIMO of any kind is available. also i'm quite confident the wifi on the uC doesn't support MIMO at all (why would it?). in most cases you only want your micro to submit data on a higher data rate to either save on transmission power by 'talking for less time' or save AP airtime to allow more stations to utilise the available spectrum. since 802.11 WiFi uses CSMA/CA for default media access control - which is a pretty lousy way if your think about it - the probability you run into collision/interference rises exponentially with the number of stations increasing and the average length of time a station is accessing the spectrum. in addition to this 802.11 is half duplex, so each time a station transmits, there will be a wireless acknowledgement from the AP, so airtime is consumed quite quickly. it would be worthwhile to see what data rate such a micro will use. my 8266s are at 48Mbps when the RSSI is OK (above -80). sure, if someone intends to use battery powered solutions, the high data rates will take their toll.
I introduce a direct coding method using the RTL8720 Standard SDK. I use this to introduce samples and methods for developing IOT. You can get information by visiting.
Andreas you sold me when you said multilevel game mate.
I thought is is a good way of describing what I felt ;-)
There is a simpler way to override the default AT firmware :
Just connect a serial terminal on AT port - the one available throught the onboard USB port without any additionnal wiring - at 38400 bauds then sends the command "ATSC=0" to switch to OTA1 image.
Tadaaa, the module can now be flashed with arduino, tested and approved (some Aliexpress sellers put this tip on the product page)
Thank you for the tip. Very simple!
@@AndreasSpiess The above dosnt seem to work for me :(
@@AndreasSpiess on a side note what would be the best way to convert a hall sensor output to be accepted in a speedo that wants a reed switch output. I want to keep my original speedo sensor
Okay I'll try to create a board based on this, with having 2 USB ports one for programming and other for AT & also remove the NC pins. This should be nice project
Good idea. And try to mark the pins correctly ;-)
Ohh, good share.
I bought 2pcs from original manufacturer Ai-Thinker.
:-)
I introduce a direct coding method using the RTL8720 Standard SDK. I use this to introduce samples and methods for developing IOT. You can get information by visiting.
Good job, really liked your adventure tour! Very educational, thanks for time.
Glad you enjoyed it!
@@AndreasSpiess please could you recommend me an Arduino compatible board with micropyrhon? Thanks!
Arduino and Micropython are different things and not at all compatible. Go to the Adafruit homepoage or search for my video about Micropython
@@AndreasSpiess I Will do, thanks!
Thanks for that!
My pleasure!
Andreas, kudos for completing all levels!
with regards to the idea of a uC with low power to support the 5GHz band… well. this is i guess a niche thing. the range is subpar compared to 2.4GHz. sure it can help using wifi when you have continuous analogue 2.4GHz noise in the area. but usually small uCs don’t use the channels at a high speed, so even in a crowded wifi environment they’d be just fine. yes, the AP can be also limiting factor, how many connected clients it is able to handle. also the power constrained BLE is a bit lackluster.
one extra question: what 5Ghz standard did you use? 802.11a or 802.11n?
I do not know (I am no specialist and did not care)...
I introduce a direct coding method using the RTL8720 Standard SDK. I introduce how to develop IOT using this. You can get information by visiting.
maybe james bond knows 8:55 😂😂😂
:-)
Thanks for the video, you have lots of patience and I enjoyed your humour. I was surprised at yiur conclusion, it's hard to judge this board with so many things unclear like deep sleep
After knowing the tricks you can at least use it to reach your 5GHz Wi-Fi. No other chip can do that using the Arduino IDE.
The information you share, and your effort to help us all better understand this technology is fantastic. You are an asset to the world community, my friend. Thank you for what you do. Cheers!
Thank you for your kind words!
Cool board. Good competition for espressif in DIY wireless mcu market. Should expect a refined library and documentation from them.
I am not sure they did the Arduino support themselves. At least the boards repository belongs to a US guy...
@@AndreasSpiess The implementation looked like a pet project between several developers without a common consensus. I hope them to work on that. I appreciate the effort of them to bring arduino support for rtl product programming. I had been using rtl chipsets in several products(desktop motherboards, wifi cameras, tablet pc) yet i never had the feasibility to develop an application of my own with their chipsets. This is a start for them and i thank you andreas for letting us know.
These Realtek Amebas have been making powerful but poorly documented , hard to program WiFi chips for like 7 years now
Good to know. I did not know them until recently because I had no need when they supported only 2.4GHz.
I love 5 GHz WiFi. Only my sprawling Ethernet network is even better.
If I wouldn't have some legacy devices which only support 2.4 GHz I would turn off 2.4 GHz completely.
Also my Mesh-Wifi has very little configuration, so I can't disable 2.4 GHz anyway.
I have mixed feelings about 5GHz because it often does not have a good connection in my house. Then 2.4GHz still is better. Bu, as you, I try to offload the 2.4GHz band as much as possible.
Just a note on 5G radio waves, because of the wavelength of the wave is so much shorter the same transmit power may provide a less reliable connection. 5Ghz radio waves do not go through obstructions like 2.4Ghz radio waves. 5Ghz=6cm, 2.4Ghz =12cm. All radio waves have a hard time traveling through materials thicker than their wavelength, just something to consider as 5Ghz radio usage becomes more commonplace.
You are right. This fact is visible with a smartphone in a house with walls.
Interesting great insight in to the chip thanks Simon
You are welcome!
FOOW Chip? -> Fly out of window chip. My freetime for tinkering is limited. Wasting time to debug missleading or missing documentation is a nogo. This canibalizes projects due too much time is needed to bring this to live. 2,4 works here in the "outbacks" without any problems :-) So I can wait.
After finding the "tricks" it is simple to use. This was part of the reason for that video...
Hi Andreas - I really enjoy your videos and learn a lot from them. I also love your sense of humour, like in this video about how the engineers made sure that nobody but the most sacrificial could use their product. LOL Please keep these coming. My interest would be using MCUs and sensors in general aviation - how to build AoA indicators, gyros, accelerometers and other instruments that costs thousands of dollars if purchased from the big boys.
In your video comparing STM32 to ESP32, you ran a benchmark to compare the speeds. The benchmark had one or two lines of the sort
x = CONSTANTA + CONSTANTB;
x = CONSTANTA * CONSTANTB;
You realize that the C compiler actually performs the addition/ multiplication in compile time and this just becomes a literal assignment at execution, without the arithmetic operation?
I do no more remember my benchmark. When I created it I was very new and did not think about the influence of the compiler. You are most probably right with your statement.
About aviation: AFAIK a lot of the cost is due to testing and regulations. So material cost is probably also low for the big guys...
Bad, too short, and non-existent documentation seems to be rampant in "maker" chips, I like to design my own boards for the ESP series chips and have banged my head so many times I lost count (luckily communities exist where a lot of extra information is available). Compare this experience to any of ST's chip documentation, it's heaven.
I agree: Community helps a lot. This is why I still focus on the Arduino IDE and Raspbian...
BW16 module is our another B&T brand product.
docs.ai-thinker.com/en/rtl87xx
BW12 module specification:
docs.ai-thinker.com/_media/rtl8710/hardware/bw12_datasheet_en.pdf
BW14 Module Product Specification:
docs.ai-thinker.com/_media/rtl8710/hardware/bw14_datasheet_en.pdf
BW15 Module Product Specification:
docs.ai-thinker.com/_media/rtl8710/docs/bw15_datasheet_en.pdf
BW16 Module Product Specification:
docs.ai-thinker.com/_media/rtl8710/hardware/bw16_product_specification_en.pdf
BW16 development board schematic diagram:
docs.ai-thinker.com/_media/rtl00_bw12_bw16_bw19%E5%BC%80%E5%8F%91%E6%9D%BF%E5%8E%9F%E7%90%86%E5%9B%BE-v1.0.pdf
BW16 network configuration tool:
docs.ai-thinker.com/_media/rtl8710/docs/simpleconfigwizard_v115.zip
docs.ai-thinker.com/_media/rtl8710/docs/wificonfig_v2.1.6_20190529.apk.zip
FAQ: docs.ai-thinker.com/_media/rtl8710/docs/rtl8720d%E5%B8%B8%E8%A7%81%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98-20190604.pdf
Module certificate:docs.ai-thinker.com/rtl87xx/certificate
For those new to this area, the Spectran V6 looks to cost anywhere from EUR 3,498 to EUR 9,998. Plus antenna in the US$200-$400 range.
True. It was granted to the channel from the CEO of the supplier (a viewer of this channel) in order to help us understanding signals better.
What you need is : rtl-sdr
I recently tested ESP32-C3S and nRF52833, both supporting BLE long range with 7dBm and 8dBm, and even with this power output the range was almost double than a Tile Mate and the penetration of walls was quite superiors to standard BLE
Good to know. Thank you!
The ESP32 is my personal nemesis. Seriously. I can't be the only person using an ARM based apple computer which won't let you do anything with the MCU that has all the answers
I never used a MAC. So I can not help you :-(
A very nice description of the RTL8720 experience.
I am sorry that I did not realize my comment in the Mailbag video about how to get rid of the firmware did get deleted that would probably have saved you some time.
It seems youtube deletes every comment mentioning the python script and/or the link to the troubleshooting guide for the board.
They seem to delete all comments with links. Also mine :-(
And thank you that you tried to help me…
I introduce a direct coding method using the RTL8720 Standard SDK. I introduce how to develop IOT using this. You can get information by visiting.
Wow it needed a lof of tricks. I would have pulled a lot of hair in the process. Had similar issue with the riscV esp32 while using eclipse.
Fortunately, I do not have a lot of hairs left to pull ;-) Eclipse was also a nightmare for me a few years ago :-( I never touched it since.
ESPRESSIF has been kicking xxx since 2014...
I deeply love Teo Swee Anne..
They have 'la vaca atada' for the next 10 years..
I agree that Espressif is an impressive story. We will see how they proceed with the Maker support in the future...
For me 2MB of memory and no straight forward programming method among other things is hint that they probably intend it to be somewhat "easy to use" component in larger applications that will provide not only 5GHz Wi-Fi but also will allow diagnostics and recovery of parent board even in case of catastrophic faliure
Looking at the firmware with the AT commands I would assume it was designed as a daughter board for other computers in need for a 5GHz connection. Seeeds uses it in one of their devices like that (the main processor is an SAMD51).
That board design does seem to be making things confusing. However, the RTL8722DM chip itself is *very* promising; obviously the dual-band wifi is compelling but so too are the cores (Cortex M33 and M23), the generous ram/flash and the large number of peripherals and GPIO (up to 55). The Seeed IoT and Mini boards look to be much better options to explore the features - I remain hopeful it's going to be a useful chip!
I agree about the RTL8722. But I hope they will get their documentation up-to date. Do you know if we can use the second core?
@@AndreasSpiess Yes, I'm assured that the core will be available for general use - and the first can be put to sleep to run at low power.
This video was very helpful. I believe this new technology just came out this year and is still in development. I hope that the manufacture makes versions that come completely blank so you don’t have to erase the current firmware before a custom code will run in the future.
I read that some of the boards already come without firmware...
@@AndreasSpiess may i ask if you know how rare they are?
You do not see this B&T logo
@@AndreasSpiess ok. Thank you for your help.
@@AndreasSpiess i would like to ask for more help on this subject. I got this controller and i have the same problem with the built-in firmware making the code not run. The help website is no use and your video doesn’t fully cover the part with the firmware. This is the only video that exists in the world for this topic. There is no way i can seem to program the device. I tried downloading a recommended flash tool on the help website, and i need more stuff for it to even run. Do you know any way i can erase the memory chip without the need to download anything or replace the flash chip with an empty one? Thank you for any help you can give me.
Thanks for making this video because I'm excited there are 5GHz Arduinos coming out. Any more boards out since this video?
Not that I know of
I introduce a direct coding method using the RTL8720 Standard SDK. I introduce how to develop IOT using this. You can get information by visiting.
Waited soooo long for 5Ghz Arduinos. Can’t wait to turn of my 2.4 wifi at home. But it should be flawless. Hope for the next ESP32.
After knowing teh tricks it was not too complicated to use them.
I introduce a direct coding method using the RTL8720 Standard SDK. I introduce how to develop IOT using this. You can get information by visiting.
I will wait for 5Ghz esp32! Thanks for video.
Good choice!
I enjoyed it.
I introduce a direct coding method using the RTL8720 Standard SDK. I use this to introduce samples and methods for developing IOT. You can get information by visiting.
Thanks for the info. I focus on the Arduino IDE on this channel :-(
RealTek have always been a pain in the arse. I remember buying one of their other microcontrollers a few years ago - I forget the name of it, but it looked very similar to the ESP8266 - and it was just totally unusable. No datasheet, no IDE, no toolchain, no Arduino support. Complete waste of money.
They are probably focused more on the commercial market...
Well done
Thank you!
I wonder if it would be worth just getting the module, and using a plain breakout board? Should help reduce some of the pin confusion! You already need the RS-232 adapter, and 3.3v could be done without the inefficient regulator. 👍
Creating a proper board for sure is a good idea. Particularly if you need additional components.
It would be easier to use the SWD pins to program the M4. I bet 2 of those NC pins are the SWD pins for the M0
I am not sure because the Module only has 16 pins and I do not see how they would connect it directly to the chip inside the module.
@@AndreasSpiess Looking a bit more I can't actually see where an M0 exists in the module, the RTL8720 only specifies 1 CPU on the datasheet and there's only a single heatsink pad.
Not that it really matters, gonna pass on this one.
9:24 Haha, "1. Connect LOG_TX (PA7)" but "3. Disconnect LOG_TX (PA8)". Well, PA7 or PA8 - which is it??? Seems PA8 ist actually LOG_RX (well, or is it?). That thing is one hell of a mess... Clearly no one has ever reviewed any of the documentation (nor the PCB/design). Btw: Your "BW16 Getting started" link in the description doesn't work - the URL got mixed up with the description of the following link...
Thank you. Now the link should work. And indeed there are a few things like the one you mentioned...
I introduce a direct coding method using the RTL8720 Standard SDK. I use this to introduce samples and methods for developing IOT. You can get information by visiting.
Didn't you get a pi zero 2W ?
I had thought you were one of the first ones who got that pico back in spring this year.
I was not nice with the pi foundation when the Pi4 came out. And I was not nice with them when the Pico came out. No wonder I am not on their list…
At 8m 0s you are about to write some code and I've already given up on this MCU. Terrible labels, bad documentation, less flash. Needing to jumper for programming was the icing on the cake. So far the ONLY advantage I can see is Wifi6. Everything else is worse than the ESP32 chips I use now. Continuing on with the video... Conclusion, yeah, I could make it work but I'm not needing 5ghz at this time, so I'll stick with the ESP32. I'm hoping the next ESP32 has better analog inputs, too.
Good decision!
Wonderful, I have to commend your perseverance and hope the tongue stuck very firmly in your cheek has not been injured to greatly.
I too have had to work out how to use equipment from minimal, none, mis;eading and plain wrong information in the past. Fortunately that was some time ago and my head worked better then. Now I rely upon you and similar to have an interesting time on my behalf, Thank You. I think the smiley for a very big grin is :-D have two :-D
Glad you liked the video. I when I started to see it as a game I also had some fun ;-)
Aw... I enjoy a good adventure game. Congrats on getting out of the... "you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike"
I had the choice between a rant and humor and I decided for humor...
More double-button nonsense to program the chip. I am getting flashbacks from my struggles with the original ESP8266's. They still like to use the 2mm pitch pins on the rim.
Indeed, the first ESP boards also had this "problem" until NodeMCU invented the design with the two transistors...
Hey, we are lucky that they actually printed letters and numbers onto the PCB.
QR codes are modern hipster crack. I bet they had a meeting about putting one QR code per pin on the board 😁🙄
In the end. The D&D guy with his 96 sided dice won.
:-))
Hope they will improve it v2. (I mean easy)
If you know the "tricks" is is not too complicated (apart from the pins)...
Would be nice to see how this chip actually performs against the ESP32 on some different calculation performance test. Or has this already been done on your channel? ESP32 vs. ARM.
I did this with STM chips. The M4 was quite fast, and this one has even a higher clock rate...
I don't fully understand the point of having 5GHz wifi yet, I did not have any problems with 2.4GHz and microcontrollers are clearly not fast enough to benefit from 5GHz speeds.
One reason is to offload a congested 2.4Hz network that only really has 3 usable channels in the US. That said, I will usually opt for 2.4Hz for the longer range.
Thank you for another insightful video. What wi-fi spectrum analyzer where you using in the video?
A Spectran V6
awesome, thanks a lot for information
You are welcome!
Oh dear.
Let's wait.
If you can: A good idea...
Seems to me the chip is actually quite good but needs some better documentation.
I agree.
Well, I've got an idea for you for the next video. Comparison: ESP32 vs this BW16 from the performance, ADC/DAC precision and speed perspectives, power consumption, etc. 😉
I have no such plans for the moment. Reading the comments the interest for this chip seems not to be that big.
Years ago, I worked on a project with three sets of engineers. Everything was labeled differently. The customer was not happy. (Sound familiar?)
Naming and labeling is very important for every project. But not all people know that…
Hey Andreas, nice vid. Which example code did you use to get a 5ghz connection? All of my current examples only use the 2.4ghz band
I do not remember :-(
@@AndreasSpiess no worries. I found out that you just have to define a 5ghz wifi channel in the setup function in the .ino file. Example: channel = "52"
I introduce a direct coding method using the RTL8720 Standard SDK. I use this to introduce samples and methods for developing IOT. You can get information by visiting.
I can't ever seem to make a comment on your videos. It seems RUclips blocks any kind of technical comment. It's sad because I have so much to share about this topic :(
It seems to delete comments using links.
Even just mentioning another service outside of RUclips appears to be a no no in comments. But somehow people are still able to find ways to post links to illicit websites on my videos.
Yeah I would have stopped at the pin naming scene and dropped this chip.
I like that the manufacturer supports Arduino but if it is as half assed as the pin documentation it will produce more trouble than solutions. Pretty sad as the esp32 gets older and older with no real update yet
They grew the ESP32 family but the newer chips had not a lot of traction in the Maker community yet.
@@AndreasSpiess yes I think thats most likely because they draged there feet so much with the software support.
Is the S2 and C2 Arduino support finally in the release state or still in the beta state? The S3 will take Years if they even bother
The
I do not know the actual status. I still use the old ESP32 boards I have on hands...
Arduino and raspberry pi are made to be community friendly. Actually most chips are complicated under the hood and the documents are often nontrivial. Maybe realtek is less care about IoT tinkerers than real tech companies who really buy the product in bulk.
I am even not sure if Realtek did the Arduino implementation... The Github account belongs to a guy in the US.
Hi Sir, I saw your video about capacitive moisture sensor. So I would like to ask to you, what are typical values of a dry soil that need to be watered and wet soil that is ok for the plant? Let me know! ( I had a classic sensor but now I'm waiting for the capacitive one)
Unfortunately I do not remember the values and I also did not find any information about the accuracy of such measurements.
RealTek has been in the microprocessor business for a long time. Many, many PC motherboards have at least one RT product - often the audio subsystem, sometimes the ethernet controller. Would have expected better from those guys. Seems like they threw something together without much thought or care, certainly beyond sloppy at basic things like labeling the pins properly or consistently.
This is not typically the design engineer's fault (unless they're really bad at their job), but more often comes from executives and marketing thinking they can make some quick and easy money by cutting time for proper design, documentation, and quality control.
Well possible. It also seems that the board comes from a different company and the GitHub belongs to a US address. So maybe it was a lack of collaboration.
Sali Andreas, eine Frage: was braucht es um einen WLAN game controller pcb zu entwickeln? ich möchte ein Lenkrad entwickeln für Online racing habe aber absolut keine Elektronik erfahrung.
Ein Produkt zu entwickeln ist extrem anspruchsvoll. Ich kann dir nur taten, nicht damit zu beginnen.
Who uses NC as not connected? I’m a normally closed type of person.
Also a meaning of NC. But for a pin?
Hi could you please help me find the documentation for this chip. I've tried finding it online but no luck.
Did you try the links in the video description?
I am still hesitant to use a function purposed module like wifi to have GPIOs controlled by the wifi module itself. I prefer to shift that control over to another controller. I might be wrong to think so, but I prefer to split functionality.
On one hand it adds more parts. On the other hand you do not have to deal with wifi. A disadvantage for me would be that I have to create my PCB or buy this expensive Arduino boards.
Is it better today? (11.9.24)