ESP8285 ESP-01M

All ESP8266 boards running MicroPython.
Official boards are the Adafruit Huzzah and Feather boards.
Target audience: MicroPython users with an ESP8266 board.
Post Reply
kwiley
Posts: 140
Joined: Wed May 16, 2018 5:53 pm
Contact:

ESP8285 ESP-01M

Post by kwiley » Sat Jun 22, 2019 5:36 pm

Inspired by a comment in another thread that brought the ESP8285 (not the ESP8266) to my attention, I found this remarkable device:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ESP8266 ... 76755.html

In what is surely the smallest form factor I have yet seen for these chips, you get an integrated antenna along with way more GPIOs than most of the other boards except perhaps the very largest ones, including the ADC pin, which is not available on many of the smaller boards. Sure, the integrated flash is only 1MB, but I've been working with the ESP-01S anyway, so that's already fine with me.

As far as I can tell, the only features this board lacks that other boards have are an integrated LED (usually attached to GPIO2) and an obvious connection between RST and XPD_DCDC to enable auto-wake from deep sleep (not a connection that I can confirm from the specs at any rate). But, one of the numerous explosed GPIOs is, in fact, GPIO16, which is usually synonymous with XPD_DCDC, which raises two questions:
  • Do you believe I could enable deep-sleep-wake-up by simply connecting the exposed GPIO16 to RST?
  • If that wouldn't work, how hard would it be to remove the wifi shield so I can gain access to the chip to perform the established hack wherein the XPD_DCDC pin (thankfully a corner pin) is hard-wired to RST? How does one remove that shield?
Any thoughts on this? I'm really tempted to try it. I can't believe how much better this board seems to be than many of the small ESP8266 boards.

Thank you.

User avatar
mattyt
Posts: 410
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 6:39 am

Re: ESP8285 ESP-01M

Post by mattyt » Sun Jun 23, 2019 10:19 am

You might find a bit more information from the folks at Seeed (where I believe it was first sold?) or Tindie where an alternative adapter is available.

Without a standard-ish connector those modules seem to be a little awkward though...the breakout board that comes with them alleviates that to some degree but integrating it to your own board could be non-trivial.

kwiley
Posts: 140
Joined: Wed May 16, 2018 5:53 pm
Contact:

Re: ESP8285 ESP-01M

Post by kwiley » Sun Jun 23, 2019 2:46 pm

Yep. Thanks. I'm rapidly coming up to speed on the breathless diversity of options in the realm of these ESP8266/ESP8285/ESP32 chips. The D1 mini is nice. It maintains the very small form factor that I find so appealing, while still offering numerous GPIOs (including the ADC and GPIO16 for deep-sleep, either of which are forgone by many boards), and already has a supported pluggable shield ecosystem. I think it even maintains the onboard LED connected to GPIO2.

I presume MicroPython will work on any of these devices. They are all the same chip. I realize the 1MB versions require the firmware specific to that size, but I've already done that successfully on an ESP-01S, so that really does seem to imply these almost countless options fit squarely within the MicroPython universe. I'm absolutely fascinated by all of this, after having spent my first year of MicroPython working exclusively with PyBoard, and then later discovering OpenMV. I thought those two options, custom built specifically for MicroPython, were the totality of the MicroPython world. I had no idea. :-)

Christian Walther
Posts: 169
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2016 11:55 am

Re: ESP8285 ESP-01M

Post by Christian Walther » Sun Jun 23, 2019 3:32 pm

kwiley wrote:
Sun Jun 23, 2019 2:46 pm
I presume MicroPython will work on any of these devices.
Yes.
They are all the same chip.
The regular D1 mini has an ESP8266 with external 4 MB flash, not an ESP8285. I just see that there is a “D1 mini Lite” with an ESP8285 though. I am not familiar with that one. (There is also a “D1 mini Pro” with 16 MB flash, but to my knowledge MicroPython can only use 4.)
I realize the 1MB versions require the firmware specific to that size
No, the 1 MB versions run the standard firmware, with space left for a small filesystem. Only the 512 KB versions need the special stripped-down firmware without a filesystem.

kwiley
Posts: 140
Joined: Wed May 16, 2018 5:53 pm
Contact:

Re: ESP8285 ESP-01M

Post by kwiley » Sun Jun 23, 2019 6:55 pm

Ah, thanks for the correction. I must have taken notice of the firmware distinction when I first looked into the ESP-01 and ESP-01S because the former is 512k and the latter is 1M.

HermannSW
Posts: 197
Joined: Wed Nov 01, 2017 7:46 am
Contact:

Re: ESP8285 ESP-01M

Post by HermannSW » Tue Nov 30, 2021 12:07 am

Today I resolved all my issues with flashing firmware correctly onto ESP8285 modules:
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopi ... 2#p1945049

I will use the tiny ESP8285 modules instead of "big" ESP-01 on my tiny MicroPython robots, the robot in animation is controlled by ESP-01 only via wireless MicroPython REPL:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11454
Image

What I typically do is one-time minicom session after flashing MicroPython in order to enable WebREPL. Then TX/RX cables can be removed:
Image


Regarding size, ESP-01M is not the smallest module, the ESP-01F is.
And even the ESP-M2 shown in previous photo is "smaller" than ESP-01M in euclidean and minimum norms (l×w).

ESP8285 module dimensions (all smaller than 24.8×14.3×3mm ESP-01 modules I used sofar):

Code: Select all

ESP-M3  20.0×15.6×2.9mm
ESP-M2  20.0×12.2×2.9mm
ESP-01M 18.0×18.0×2.9mm
ESP-01F 10.0×11.0×2.0mm 
antenna length 11.9mm (loopy part 4.4mm), diameter 3.3mm (wire diameter 0.7mm)
20211129_221554.15%.jpg
20211129_221554.15%.jpg
20211129_221554.15%.jpg (56.39 KiB) Viewed 9836 times

The tricky part with ESP-01F module will be, how to make 11.9mm antenna smaller by bending, for minimal tiny robots.

Currently I create minimal Pimoroni Tiny2040 robot (19.7×14.9×20mm, using Tinier2040 built with Dremel from Tiny2040):
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=324698

Then I will replace Tinier2040 by ESP-M2 for 20.0×14.0×17mm robot.

Finally I want to get even smaller with the ESP-01F and bended antenna ...
Pico-W Access Point static file webserver:
https://github.com/Hermann-SW/pico-w

Tiny MicroPython robots (the PCB IS the robot platform)
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11454

webrepl_client.py
https://github.com/Hermann-SW/webrepl#webrepl-shell

Post Reply