Prokyber's ESP32-C6-Bug Is a Compact RISC-V Dev Board for IoT Projects with Matter and More
With 19 GPIO pins exposed, surface-mount support, and radios for Wi-Fi 6, BLE, and Zigbee/Threads, this board is ready for the IoT.
UPDATE (2/21/2024): Prokyber's crowdfunding campaign for its ESP32-C6-Bug development board is now live, with boards priced at $29 plus shipping — and $34 for a compatible Ethernet shield to provide wired network and Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) capabilities.
As promised, the ESP32-C6-Bug delivers 19 general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins exposed as unpopulated castellated headers for breadboard or surface-mount installation, includes an integrated battery charging circuit with undervoltage protection, and has a USB Type-C connector for data and power.
The company's crowdfunding campaign is now live on Crowd Supply, with hardware expected to be delivered to backers in August this year.
Original article continues below.
Czech electronics company Prokyber is preparing to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the Arduino IDE-compatible Internet of Things (IoT)-focused ESP32-C6-Bug, a Matter-capable all-in-one development board with a RISC-V processor core and Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and IEEE 802.15.4 radios.
"[The] ESP32-C6-Bug [is] a compact yet powerful development board based on the latest [Espressif] ESP32-C6FH4 RISC-V MCU [Microcontroller Unit] from the ESP32 family," Prokyber explains of the company's latest board design. "It supports multiple wireless protocols, boasts low power consumption, includes battery support, and is ideal for a wide range of applications."
Designed with castellated pin headers, making it suitable for breadboard use and for soldering as a surface-mount device (SMD), the ESP32-C6-Bug is based, as the name suggests, on the ESP32-C6 system-on-chip — gibing it 32-bit RISC-V processor core running at up to 160MHz and a secondary "low-power processor" core running at 20MHz, 512kB of static RAM (SRAM), and 4MB of off-board flash storage.
It's the radio which makes the ESP32-C6 stand out, though: Espressif's first part to offer IEEE 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 support on the 2.4GHz band, the radio functionality also includes Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy (BLE) and IEEE 802.15.4 with Zigbee and Thread support — as well as compliance with the cross-vendor Matter standard, meaning the ESP32-C6 can act as a Matter device or even a Matter gateway for bridging Thread, BLE, and Wi-FI networks.
The compact board includes a USB Type-C connector for data and power and a built-in battery management system, offering under-voltage and reverse-polarity protection and a claimed 20µA deep-sleep power consumption with timer wake-up. There's a 700mA low-noise low-dropout (LDO) regulator, a physical reset button alongside a user-addressable button, a user-addressable LED, and 19 general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins — including six which can act as analog inputs.
Prokyber is planning to launch the device through a crowdfunding campaign on Crowd Supply in the near future; in the meantime, interested parties can find schematics and a 3D model of the board on GitHub.