ESP32 wave: Pi‑style boards & Z80 drops
Hardware makers keep pushing ESP32 horizons: CNX covered an ESP32‑P4‑Pi‑VIEWE board (Raspberry Pi 5 form factor, ESP32‑P4 + C6, Ethernet/PoE, MIPI DSI/CSI, 32MB PSRAM) and flagged an upcoming ESP32‑S31 with dual RISC‑V, Gigabit Ethernet and Wi‑Fi/BT/802.15.4. Hobbyist builds are also buzzing — picoZ80 (RP2350/ESP32 Z80 drop‑in with cycle‑accurate PIO and Wi‑Fi) and SparkFun's Things Plus ESP32‑C5 (Wi‑Fi6/BLE/802.15.4, Feather pinout) are getting attention. (x.com) (x.com) (x.com)
The VIEWE ESP32‑P4C6‑Core module used on the ESP32‑P4‑Pi‑VIEWE pairs a 400 MHz ESP32‑P4 main RISC‑V core with an ESP32‑C6 wireless coprocessor and brings 32 MB stacked PSRAM and 16 MB NOR flash to the board. (cnx-software.com) The board’s audio and I/O extras include an ES8311 audio codec with two onboard microphones and a speaker output, USB 2.0 OTG Type‑C plus a Type‑A port, and an IP101GR 100 Mbps Ethernet PHY with a 4‑pin header for optional PoE alongside a 40‑pin Raspberry‑Pi‑compatible expansion header. (cnx-software.com) VIEWE has published full schematics, ESP‑IDF example projects and LVGL camera/display demos in the project repository for developers under the VIEWESMART/ESP32‑P4‑Pi GitHub repo. (github.com) Espressif formally announced the ESP32‑S31 on March 26, 2026 as a dual‑core 32‑bit RISC‑V SoC clocked to 320 MHz with MMU support, 512 KB of on‑chip SRAM and support for high‑speed external PSRAM and Octal SPI memory. (espressif.com) The S31 integrates a 1,000 Mbps Ethernet MAC, Wi‑Fi 6 (802.11ax) in 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth 5.4 (including LE Audio and direction finding), IEEE 802.15.4 for Thread/Zigbee/Matter, 61 GPIOs, hardware JPEG and 2D graphics accelerators, plus DVP camera and parallel display interfaces aimed at HMI and audio applications. (espressif.com) The picoZ80 project implements a drop‑in DIP‑40 Z80 replacement using a Raspberry Pi RP2350B (dual‑core Cortex‑M33) where three PIO state machines recreate cycle‑accurate Z80 bus timing, and the board adds ~8 MB PSRAM, 16 MB flash, SD‑card storage and an ESP32 co‑processor for Wi‑Fi/SD management. ( ) SparkFun’s Thing Plus ESP32‑C5 ships with the ESP32‑C5‑WROOM module, offers dual‑band Wi‑Fi‑6 and Bluetooth 5, on‑board 8 MB flash + 8 MB PSRAM, LiPo charge support and a Feather/Thing‑Plus‑compatible pinout, and is listed at $24.95 on SparkFun’s store. ( )
