M5Stack Updates the Compact M5StickC PLUS with Double the Flash, 2MB of PSRAM, and a Bigger Battery
Compact all-in-one dev board for wearables and more now comes with 2MB PSRAM, 8MB of flash, and a 200mAh battery for longer runtimes.
Embedded hardware specialist M5Stack has announced a refresh of its M5StickC PLUS all-in-one microcontroller development board — swapping the original ESP-PICO-D4 system-in-package out for the ESP32-PICO-V3-02 to boost both RAM and storage capacity.
"M5StickC PLUS2 is an iterative version of M5StickC PLUS, featuring the ESP32-PICO-V3-02 chip as the main controller with built-in Wi-Fi functionality," M5Stack writes of the new device, brought to our attention by CNX Software. "M5StickC PLUS2 facilitates the rapid prototyping of IoT [Internet of Things] products, streamlining the entire development process. Even beginners in programming can easily build interesting applications and apply them to real-life scenarios using M5StickC PLUS2."
Like its predecessor, the M5StickC PLUS2 is an compact all-in-one gadget with a 1.14" 135×240 TFT display, on-board buttons, general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins brought out to an expansion socket plus a Grove-compatible socket carrying I2C, UART, and GPIO signals, and integrated peripherals including a six-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU), microphone, infrared transmitter, passive piezoelectric buzzer, and a real-time clock.
Compared to the original, the biggest change is a shift to the ESP32-PICO-V3-02 system-in-package — boosting available memory with 2MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM) and doubling the SPI flash storage from 4MB to 8MB. It's still the same core architecture underneath, though, with two Tensilica Xtensa LX6 processor cores running at up to 240MHz, 520kB of on-chip static RAM (SRAM), and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 with Low Energy (BLE) radios.
The final major change in the board's design will be welcomed by anyone using it for wearable projects: a boost in battery capacity, now coming equipped with a 200mA lithium-polymer battery pre-installed inside the bright orange housing. Projects written for the original M5StickC PLUS should be directly transferable to the new model, with support for MicroPython, Arduino IDE, the .NET nanoFramework, and M5Stack's own UIFlow.
The M5StickC PLUS2 is now available on the M5Stack store for $19.95 plus shipping.