Comparative Analysis and Practical Implementation

of the ESP32 Microcontroller Module

for the Internet of Things

Alexander Maier, Andrew Sharp, Yuriy Vagapov

School of Applied Science, Computing and Engineering,
Glyndwr University, Plas Coch, Mold Road,
Wrexham, LL11 2AW, UK

Abstract—This paper discusses the Espressif Systems latest µC are already on the market and widely used for the design
product ESP32 designed for Internet of Things and embedded and development of IoT devices. These are Xbee, WhizFi,
system related projects. The ESP32 is a low-cost, low-power certain Arduino boards, etc. However, most of currently
system on a chip series of microcontrollers with Wi-Fi and offered devices are either quite expensive or large in terms of
Bluetooth capabilities and a highly integrated structure powered weight and size. Moreover, very few modules are open source
by a dual-core Tensilica Xtensa LX6 microprocessor. This paper devices and have no restriction in the operation purpose. A
provides a comparative analysis of the ESP32 with some other new device QFN48 called ESP32 will be released in the
market competitors and introduces the microcontroller market by Espressif Systems in September 2016 to replace the
specification, features and programming details. A portable,
previous µC ESP8266. ESP32 device is a powerful
wireless oscilloscope based on the ESP-WROOM-32 and a mobile
microcontroller with build in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth®, designed
application is described in detail as an example of successful
practical implementation of the device. to be a perfect solution for IoT devices [3].
This paper presents a detailed comparison of the ESP32 to
Keywords—ESP32, Internet of Things, Wi-Fi, oscilloscope its competitors including competitive analysis of its technical
features and functions. The paper also describes how to
I. INTRODUCTION program ESP32 and discusses an example application
The Internet of Things (IoT) market has rapidly expanded demonstrating a practical implementation of the
over the last few years following the increased demand in microcontroller.
communication and control for various devices and gadgets.
The main requirement applied for modern IoT devices is to II. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ESP32
provide an effective connectivity to ensure reliable remote Along with the release of ESP32, Espressif Systems also
communication and data transfer in a wireless environment. offers a corresponding module ESP-WROOM-32. Despite the
This concept for IoT devices is called 6A (Anything, Anytime, small size (25.5 x 18.0 x 2.8mm) it is very easy to use the
Anyone, Anyplace, Any service, and Any network) [1].
The IoT technology significantly impacts on behaviour
and lifestyle of people in both working and domestic
environments. The advanced communication capabilities
dramatically reshape properties and operation of industrial
automation and manufacturing, business and process
management, intelligent transportation and logistics, etc. In
terms of domestic applications, IoT enhances home
automation and introduces new, communication based
technologies such as domotics, assisted living, e-health and e-
learning, etc. [2].
In order to develop the IoT further and expand the area of
its applications, a powerful, low-cost and low-power solutions
for the IoT devices are required. Another requirement for an
IoT device is to have a small form-factor; the smaller size and
weight of the device the wider the area of its applications.
Each IoT based unit comprises of a microcontroller (µC) and a
wireless commutation module (usually WiFi), or a
combination of both in one. A large variety of modules and Fig. 1. ESP32 system structure.

978-1-5090-4815-1/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

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 TABLE I. MICROCONTROLLES FOR THE IOT DESIGN [4]-[7]

Chip ESP32 ESP8266 CC32 Xbee

(Module) (ESP-WROOM-32) (ESP8266-12E) (CC3220MODSF) (XB2B-WFPS-001)
Details:
Tensilica Xtensa LX6 Tensilica LX106
CPU ARM Cortex-M4 at 80 MHz N/A
32 bit Dual-Core at 160/240 MHz 32 bit at 80 MHz (up to 160 MHz)
SRAM 520 KB 36 KB available 256 KB N/A
FLASH 2MB (max. 64MB) 4MB (max. 16MB) 1MB (max. 32MB) N/A
Voltage 2.2V to 3.6V 3.0V to 3.6V 2.3V to 3.6V 3.14V to 3.46V
Operating Current 80 mA average 80 mA average N/A N/A
Programmable Free (C, C++, Lua, etc.) Free (C, C++, Lua, etc.) C (SimpleLink SDK) AT and API commands
Open source Yes Yes No No
Connectivity:
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n 802.11 b/g/n 802.11 b/g/n 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth® 4.2 BR/EDR + BLE - - -
UART 3 2 2 1
I/O:
GPIO 32 17 21 10
SPI 4 2 1 1
I2C 2 1 1 -
PWM 8 - 6 -
ADC 18 (12-bit) 1 (10-bit) 4 (12-bit) 4 (12-bit)
DAC 2 (8-bit) - - -

Size 25.5 x 18.0 x 2.8 mm 24.0 x 16.0 x 3.0 mm 20.5 x 17.5 x 2.5 mm 24.0 x 22.0 x 3.0 mm
Prize £8 £5 £16 £23

module due to integrated components such as antenna, III. ESP32 TECHNICAL DETAILS AND FUNCTIONS
oscillator and flash. Similar modules for other
microcontrollers are often used for tests and prototypes or by A. System and Memory
hobbyists. Table I compares some of those in detail [4]-[7]. ESP32 is a dual-core system with two Harvard
The table shows the details of 4 modules and µC used for Architecture Xtensa LX6 CPUs. All embedded memory,
the design of IoT devices. Actually, the variety of modules external memory and peripherals are located on the data bus
and microcontrollers for IoT are much bigger but most of and/or the instruction bus of these CPUs. The microcontroller
them have the same problems related to size, performance and has two cores – PRO_CPU for protocol and APP_CPU for
price. For example, the boards like RTLDuino are open source application, however, the purposes of those are not fixed. The
and can handle complex tasks on their own unlike the Xbee, address space for both data and instruction bus is 4GB and the
but they are quite large in terms of size. On the other hand, peripheral address space is 512KB. Moreover, the embedded
ESP32 QFN48, compared to other microcontrollers, is a very memories are 448KB ROM, 520KB SRAM and two 8KB
small component having a size of just 5mm x 5mm. Due to the RTC memory. The external memory supports up to four times
published circuit of the module ESP-WROOM-32 it is easy to 16MB Flash [4].
integrate ESP32 onto a custom PCB and design a space saving
device. The board ESP32-DevKitC is a bread-board friendly, B. Clock and Timer
ready to use solution for testing and educational purposes. ESP32 can use either he internal Phase Lock Loop (PLL)
ESP8266, ESP32 predecessor, was extremely popular for the of 320MHz or an external crystal. It is also possible to use an
design in many IoT related projects, however, ESP32 is a oscillating circuit as a clock source at 2-40MHz to generate
better solution which can be implemented in more complex the master clock CPU_CLK for both CPU cores. This clock
projects. can be as high as 160MHz for high performance or lower to

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reduce the power consumption. All other clocks, like the operate as a station and be connected to the internet or server
APB_CLK for peripherals are driven by the master clock. In and access point in order to provide a user interface to, for
addition, there are several low power clocks like the internal example, smartphone running a mobile application [8].
RTC_CLK with a default frequency of 150kHz and the option
to adjust it for deep sleep modes. There are four 64-bit timers The microcontroller supports v4.2 BR/EDR and BLE
for generic purposes with 16-bit prescalers with a range from Bluetooth which fits the current standard and is capable to
2 to 65536. Each timer uses the APB clock, usually at 80MHz. operate at a speed up to 4 Mbps. ESP32 can operate under
Those timers can count either up or down, be frozen and various power modes – active mode (the chip radio is
trigger events. Besides 4 generic timers there are also timers to working) and modem-sleep mode (CPU is fully operational
drive the PWM controller. There are 8 high speed and 8 low but Wi-Fi and Bluetooth is powered off). Furthermore, there
are light and deep-sleep modes, where either both or only one
speed PWM channels, each driven by four timers [4].
CPU are operating at a lower performance. The GPIOs include
two 12-bit ADCs with 18 channels in sum. Those can be
C. Block Diagram and Functions configured for 9-bit, 10-bit and 12-bit resolutions with an
ESP32 microcontroller structure is designed to operate attenuation of −0dB, −6dB or −11dB for different input
under the following protocols – TCP/IP, full 802.11 b/g/n/e/i ranges. One ADC channel is connected to the integrated hall
WLAN MAC, and Wi-Fi Direct specification. The sensor in order to detect magnetic fields, whereas another to
microcontroller can provide Basic Service Set (BSS) STA and the temperature sensor with the range from −40°C to 125°C to
SoftAP operations under the Distributed Control Function monitor the chip temperature. Besides the ADCs there are also
(DCF) protocol. It is also support P2P group operation two 8-bit DACs to convert the digital signals into analogue
compliant with the latest Wi-Fi P2P protocol. Thus, it can voltage signal outputs. Ten of the GPIOs are capable to sense
capacitive variations and can be used for touch sensors. Since
those are high sensitive relatively small pads can be used.
Moreover, ESP32 provides a number of interfaces: an
Ethernet MAC Interface, one SD/SDIO/MMC Host
Controller, three UART interfaces up to 5Mbps, two I2C bus
interfaces with standard and fast mode, two I2C interfaces
with a frequency of 10kHz up to 10MHz, an 8-channel
infrared remote controller and an 8-channel pulse counter. The
PWM controller can be used to drive digital motors or
generate digital waveforms. Three SPIs can be used in slave or
master mode with a clock up to 80MHz. [8].

D. Programming the ESP32

The real-time operating system on ESP32 is FreeRTOS. It
is open source, designed for embedded systems and provides
basic functions to the higher-level applications. The core
functions are memory management, task management and API
synchronization [9].
The usual way to program the ESP32 is using the ESP-
IDF, Espressif Systems Internet of Things development
framework, which is available on their GitHub repository. The
Fig. 2. Function block diagram [8]. ESP-IDF was developed for Linux, thus a Linux terminal is
required in order to execute the bash files. However, it
possible to develop in Windows by using MSYS2. This
software provides a Linux terminal in Windows. Furthermore,
the ESP-IDF-Template is required order to start an ESP32
project. It includes all necessary files for a successful
compilation, which are part of an individual project and not
included in the ESP-IDF.
The ESP-IDF provides a visual configuration menu
accessible by the command “make menuconfig” which is the
only graphical menu (Fig. 3). All other operations such as
compiling or flashing take place by executing simple
commands. Therefore, the open source IDE Eclipse provides
great support for Makefile project. A project should be
configured in order to use the xtensa-esp32-elf-gcc compiler
and refer the ESP-IDF for enabling autocomplete and debug
Fig. 3. ESP-IDF configuration menu. features, which are essential for proper program development.

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It is also possible to flash ESP32 out of Eclipse without
terminal opening anymore.
The common language for programming ESP32 is C, thus
most API libraries are also provided in C. However, the
microcontroller can be also easily programmed in C++. Some
Arduino libraries can be used under C++ programming option,
although some changes might be required. Neil Kolban, an
engineer from Texas provides plenty of C++ libraries in his
GitHub repository for the ESP32 APIs. Since this chip is open
source everyone can develop an “operating system” for the
ESP32, thus there are also solutions on the Internet to program
it in LUA, JavaScript, etc.

IV. EXAMPLE APPLICATION OF ESP32

The variety of application of ESP32 is not limited to
common IoT projects, such as controlling sockets and lights
remotely in order to build a smart-home. The following
example is a project called “smartphone based oscilloscope”
aimed to build a prototype of a portable, wireless oscilloscope
based on the ESP-WROOM-32 as the hardware core and a
smartphone application as the display and control unit. Fig. 5. Microcontroller flowchart.

At the first stage of the project, the build-in ADC was

analysed in order to verify the accuracy of the conversion. A The chosen language was C++ because Adafruit provides a
voltage from 0.0V to 3.5V was applied to the ADC input in C++ library for the MCP23017 I/O expander, which was used
steps of 0.1V and the measured values were recorded. This to control the relays, and no such library exists in C. C++
test was repeated for different settings. The best result was implements also classes for good structured program. The
delivered at 12 bit resolution with an attenuation of −6dB (Fig. simplified program flowchart is shown in the Fig. 5.
4). These tests had also shown that the ADC input range does The simplified flowchart illustrates the general program
not begin at 0.0V but at 0.17V instead. Thus, the decision was structure. At the initial stage, the microcontroller must be
made to use the range from 0.2V to 1.9V for this project. configured to provide the settings for the ADC, I2C bus and
Moreover, the average frequency was approximate 44.5 kHz APIs required for the communication between Wi-Fi module
at 10-bit and 12-bit resolution. It was slightly higher at 9 bit and smartphone application. The settings for the ADC
resolution approximate 45.9 kHz but that frequency gain was comprised the resolution, attenuation and the channel. In order
not big enough to take the loss of resolution. to conduct this procedure, two instances of the created class
This provides a maximal frequency limit for the input ADC_am were instantiated, one for each input channel and the
signal of this project of approximate 20 kHz since the parameter were passed to the constructer. The I2C master
sampling frequency must be at least two times greater than the should be defined and initiated to use the I/O Expander. This
signal frequency in order to sample the signal reliably. The includes setting of the GPIOs to use as SCL and SDA as well
frequency of 20kHz is actually not suitable for an oscilloscope as the clock frequency moreover defining a GPIO, in this
but it is good enough for a first prototype and an excellent project GPIO_NUM_17 as MCP23017 reset pin. Upon
opportunity to test ESP32 capabilities. completion of the procedure above, some classes have been
instantiated for Wi-Fi connection and socket server. Since the
data is continually streamed to the application a socket
connection will performs better than a HTTP request method.
The socket connection also needs to be established once and
causes less data overhead.
Once the configuration is completed the Wi-Fi access
point starts with the pre-set SSID and WPA2 password also an
event handler is passed to the Wi-Fi object in order to handle
connections. The socket server configured for the port 8001
starts as well at this point.
A float variable ch1 stores the voltage reading of the first
input channel. However, in order to store the voltage it must
run created scaleAndRound() function of the sbo class and
pass the data received from chan1.read() along with the
channel number. This is necessary because chan1.read()
returns a value from 0 to 4095 which equals to a certain
Fig. 4. ADC linearity test at 12 bit resolution.

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 Fig. 7. ESP32 receive task listing.
Fig. 6. ESP32 main task listing.

checks first if the incoming char is a digit or a character.

voltage depending on the scaling factor used at that channel. Digits are the commands for the channel one, whereas the
This is shown in Fig. 6. characters are for the channel two. Depending on the values, it
will be passed on to the corresponding switch statement. The
Depending on the passed channel number the scale is set to
cases inside that switch statement execute the command by
the scaling factor of the channel one or channel two. Two
setting the relays along with the associated scaling factor.
variables defaultVal and valPerVolt are implemented to
convert the measured value to an actual voltage. Since the If there is no communication between the Wi-Fi module
channel input ground potential at the middle of the ADC input and the application then the previously defined
range, defaultVal stores the value equals to ground potential. GPIO_NUM_4 which is powering the connection LED will be
The dependency between input value and voltage is stored in set low. A delay of 100 milliseconds prevents the watchdog
valPerVolt. Thus, a variable res represents the voltage at the reset from triggering.
ADC channel input. To get the voltage at the actual PCB
channel input it is necessary to multiply res with the current
scaling factor of this channel. To limit the decimals to two the
function round() of the math.h library was used. Since it
rounds any given value to an integer it was necessary to
multiply it with 100.0 before and to divide it by 100.0 after
that step in order to keep two decimals. Finally, the formatted
value get returned the function output.
Along with the voltage value the main task stores the time
after reading the input. More precisely this is the time in
microseconds which the microcontroller runs since the power
up. This is necessary to let the application know how much
time passed since the last input to plot the traces correctly. 4
values are combined to a string or char array, which are
separated by commas and sent to the application if a
Fig. 8. Application output.
connection is established. If there is no connection available a
delay of 10 milliseconds will be built in to prevent triggering
the watchdog reset.
The blink task is very simple GPIO_NUM_5 is set the
value of a Boolean variable, this variable is then inverted and
the task waits one second until it repeats. This gives a visual
indication that ESP32 is still running and no error has
occurred.
The receive task is shown in Fig. 7. If a client is connected
to the socket server then this task lights up the connection
LED to show that a connection is established. Upon the
completion of the connection establishing, the task waits for
incoming data. As soon as data are received it is passed to the
exucuteCmd() function of the sbo object and printed on the
serial monitor for debugging purpose. The execute functions
Fig. 9. PCB layout.

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 The application output is illustrated in Fig. 8. This app has ESP32 performs much better than its predecessor ESP8266
been developed in Visual Studio using the Cordova widely used in a large variety of IoT applications. The
framework in order to develop it for multiple OS. Cordova is a excellent performance of the microcontroller is achieved due
common open source framework for hybrid cross-platform to dual core structure and a significant extension of the
applications. operational features. The microcontroller operating system
FreeRTOS is open source software providing a great support
The PCB designed and manufactured for this project for real time applications. Thus, it is expected that ESP32 will
contains ESP-WROOM-32, a 3.3V and −3.3V power supply play a major role in design of future IoT systems and
and an USB-UART-Bridge for programming. Moreover, two
embedded projects.
input channels include relays for the AC/DC/GND setting and
to set different scaling factors controlled by a MCP23017 I/O-
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