When the Chinese company Espressif in 2014 released its ESP8266 microcontroller, it became an instant success and started be a serious competition for the ATMega-based Arduino microcontroller breakout boards.
Since then, Expressif has expanded its microcontroller family with many new models. These models can be divided into two sub-families:
- ESP8266: A cheap and reliable workhorse for DIY projects with WiFi built-in. Released 2014.
- ESP32: A powerful one- and two-core family of microcontrollers with WiFi, Bluetooth, WiFi6, Zigbee, and Threads support (depending on ESP32 model). Initially released 2016, with new models in 2020 and 2021, and ever since.
The Expressif ESP32 microcontrollers are in fact so powerful and popular that Arduino is using this processor now as well, and released its first ESP32 board in 2023: the Nano ESP32.
from left to right ordered by size: ESP32 C3 from Seeed, ESP8266 D1 Mini clone, ESP32 WROOM 32D dev board.
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(content created Mar 23, 2024)