In a move towards building up affordable IoT development, Espressif, the brains behind the ESP32 microcontroller series, has introduced the ESP32-C61. This new member of the family is made to be affordable and powerful for IoT devices that use Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and the open-source Matter Protocol.
Primarily targeting applications in home automation utilizing the Matter IoT protocol, the ESP32-C61 boasts low power consumption and comes equipped with BLE support essential for commissioning IoT devices on Wi-Fi networks. The microcontroller is armed with a Wi-Fi 6- and Bluetooth 5-capable radio and is supported by Espressif’s ESP-Matter-SDK.
The ESP32-C61’s 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi radio covers both legacy 802.11/b/g/n protocols and the newer 802.11ax. With cool features like Target Wake Time (TWT), OFDMA Modulation and MU-MIMO, the microcontroller helps save power, makes the network work better as well as speeds up data for lots of devices.
Distinguishing itself from its predecessor, the ESP32-C61 features a single 32-bit RISC-V core running up to 160 MHz. On-chip memories include 320 kilobytes of SRAM and 256 kilobytes of ROM, expandable using Quad-SPI devices and secure with built-in encryption. External PSRAM can operate up to 120 MHz.
Security is a key focus, with features such as secure boot, ECSDA-based digital signature peripheral, and a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) using Access Permission Management (APM) hardware block and Physical Memory Protection (PMP).
Aside from standard microcontroller interfaces like SPI, I2C and UART, the ESP32-C61 incorporates specialized peripherals like the Event Task Matrix, enabling peripherals to interact without involving the CPU.
An interesting capability of the ESP32-C61 is its role as a wireless co-processor, adding Wi-Fi 6, BLE and Matter support to non-wireless microcontrollers. Espressif plans to introduce ESP-Hosted and ESP-AT firmware options for this functionality.
Espressif intends to integrate support for the ESP32-C61 into their IoT Development Framework (ESP-IDF). While this announcement focuses on the microcontroller, devkits based on the ESP32-C61 are expected to be offered by Espressif and third-party providers soon.
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