Nowadays wi-fi microcontrollers that includes built-in WiFi and Bluetooth are all the fashion, with Espressif’s vary of ESP32 MCUs being the default choice for business and hobbyist tasks alike. This makes Qualcomm’s just lately launched QCC74x MCU moderately fascinating, as specification-wise it might appear to be positioned firmly in ESP32 territory.
On the radio aspect you get 1×1 WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and IEEE 802.15.4 (e.g. Thread and Zigbee), coupled with a single-core 352 MHz RISC-V CPU with FPU and DSP options and 484 kB of SRAM. The SDK for this MCU is hosted on Codelinaro, that includes the standard FreeRTOS-based stack, although confusingly Bluetooth and Zigbee help are presently marked as ‘not supported’. This would possibly nonetheless be in progress.
The place the competitors with Espressif feels clear is within the pricing, with the highest-performance analysis board (QCC748M EVK, pictured above) listed for $13 (earlier than taxes/tariffs). This will get you 8 MB of PSRAM built-in with unspecified hyperlink pace, however possible the identical QSPI as used for the NOR Flash. USB help is out there on this higher-end tier, whereas absent on the QCC743. Growth documentation is additionally accessible, and appears pretty full primarily based on first look.
General the QCC74x appears to be like to be an improve to the older and considerably much less highly effective QCC730 MCU. Relying on software program help and remaining pricing it may make for an fascinating competitor to a few of Espressif’s modules like its ESP32-C collection or ESP32-S2, although the upcoming ESP32-S31 would appear to have it matched or beat on all metrics.
