ESP8266 Community Forum

- Mon Jul 06, 2015 8:36 pm #22645 Regarding price , its a little early to say, mostly since that really depends a lot on production batch size, at least initially -
Optimistically speaking, the ram & other extra parts add maybe $3ish to the BOM cost, so if produced in decent quantities it would be a few bucks more than a typical module like an ESP-12; I'm hoping I can keep it below the $10 barrier initially - that would mean producing at least a couple hundred of them as a first batch. The more i get made at at time, the cheaper it gets

The other aspect is, maybe people would prefer something with a built-in DAC & speaker amp? or line-level inputs / outputs right on a module ?
I'm very open to feature requests like that if it makes this significantly more appealing and useful to you.
Though obviously that will add some cost, if it turns out a majority of people are happy with a specific set of analog audio I/O capability beyond just the digital I2S interface, that might be worth doing as well as either an expanded version of the same module, or an add-on mini-module to go with it.
For example, i can easily integrate a cheap I2S DAC and some tiny 3W 5V class speaker amplifiers ( for 4-ohm speakers- that I've used in several designs in the past) that would only add a few bucks more to the cost.
I'd like to do an informal survey to know what people think the most useful audio input /output capability would be for them - please do let me know!

Cheers

Frantz

- Mon Jul 06, 2015 8:44 pm #22646

Hi again Frob,

Yes, I'm pretty sure people will order you some of these modules if they are affordable. I will !
Do you have any pricing target yet ?
As for schematic, and especially gerbers, I understand your point. But you can provide at least the pins breakout (GPIOs) and the specs (ie. : RAM, etc. BTW, is the RAM is hooked-up on SPI ?)

Best wishes,
Martin.

Hi again Martin,
Well thank you for your encouragement! much appreciated
Absolutely agree- that info will be provided at a minimum -
And yes it is SPI RAM - not many options there as there are so few IO on this chip.
hooks up just like flash , but has its own chip select.

Cheers
Frantz

- Mon Jul 06, 2015 9:57 pm #22649 Hi again Frob,

RAM on SPI, of course, since there is no buses.
Did you got chance to do performance tests for the RAM access ?
I presume it can only be used to data, although maybe some page swapping/cache can be done with main RAM, I don't think code can reside there easily. (it would be nice, since LUA people complains about lack of RAM , but it up to Espressif to provide answers to this wish ...)

Back to the other subject : Did you got change to evaluate the pricing of your board ?

- Thu Jul 09, 2015 8:32 pm #22888 Frob,

Have you considered designing a plug-n-play transparent solution that would include transmitter and receiver audio modules, so as to easily make traditional speakers wireless?