Wifi Serial module for under $4 - You cant be Serious!

[boz]

I've spent the last 12 months messing around with all the various wifi serial modules out there as part of my open source data collection device here=> http://hackaday.io/project/1915-Data-Collection-Terminal

I finally settled on the USR wifi232-S as the main criteria for my device was a low BOM and it was the cheapest available device at $11.60 each (a third the price of the RN-131 my initially preferred device) at the time I wondered if the price was a mistake, it was so cheap!

Imagine my shock yesterday to find this => http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/WiFi-Serial-Transceiver-Module-w-ESP8266-p-1994.html for $6.95. A Further google for the chip I found the exact same item http://www.88im.com/Item/40484626466 (warning totally dogdy looking supplier) for $3.34 (WTF!)

I've expressed my interest with seeed studios mainly because

a) the device does exist and is available by the looks of it (though it may just be an empty case!)
b) I think it is totally achievable to get to that cost (minus FCC Testing)
c) The big suppliers don't deserve my loyalty if they have been making monster profits on these devices for so long.

The google translate of the PDF's shows nothing special but it seems to have the majority of the features of the other devices, looking forward to evaluating a "real" device though!

Anyone ever heard of Expresif systems before?

[sleemanj]

There are a number of sellers of these modules on taobao/tmall, normal price is about 20CNY by the look of it, which is about 3.25USD

The IC itself doesn't seem to be being sold by many on TB, pretty much just these built up modules.

Sorted by sales...
http://s.taobao.com/search?spm=a230r.1.8.3.uGLXIZ&sort=sale-desc&tab=all&q=ESP8266

This place has sold 1500 of them or so...
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.4.iyOKc2&id=40328222213&ns=1#detail

Reading the feedback/comments of these listings may give you some useful information - use Chrome and select to translate the page, sometimes it's best to switch to the feedbacks  before you translate.

This link contains various pdf docs and a zip file containing code...
http://pan.baidu.com/s/1nt0rVIT

I didn't look at the code really but did notice that most of the comments are in good english

[boz]

Hi thanks for the reply

I never thought to look at the chinese web sites, good tip, seems its been out a few months, and a fair bit more information out there than the seeed studio site.  google translate could start wars it so bad, maybe I should start learning Chinese 

I have contacted the manufacturer direct to see if they have english translations of the documents, I find it sometimes works even though I am a pretty small company, it looks like it would not be a difficult task to use the chip directly in my project, for $3 a pop I guess I can afford to experiment a little.

Good to hear from another Kiwi EE. 

Boz

[josem]

Someone at Hackaday linked to a translation of the most important settings and AT commands, should be enough to get it running.

http://www.electrodragon.com/w/Wi07c

[amyk]

I have contacted the manufacturer direct to see if they have english translations of the documents

You are likely to get a version passed through Google translate or whatever translation software they like to use. It's unlikely someone in the company knows any English if their primary documentation is in Chinese.

Learning Chinese if you have the time is definitely a good idea; it's not so hard to memorise the characters for common electronics terms (voltage, current, resistor, transistor, capacitor, etc.) even if you can't write them.

[leppie]

Sadly this module will never run on batteries, except a car battery perhaps.

[TestSubject]

Somebody shared this on this thread https://lainchan.org/?/res/1936.html

https://nurdspace.nl/ESP8266

Great and growing community over there.

[boz]

Thanks for the links and comments

Quite impressive specs, much better power management specifications than my current module, and up there with the $36 RN-131 which was my original choice. (I'm guessing FCC Approval does add some overhead, but $36 for an RN-131 is now looking like microchip is taking the piss a bit!)

I had a polite response from the company in good english basically asking me about my company and intended use, I was honest with them that I was a small fish and it was also quite a small project, hopefully it wont put them off too much 

I have ordered 3 modules from the electrodragon link provided by josem at $4.50 each, if they test good and work as well as or better than the current module then I will try and get hold of a supply of the chips themselves to do the wifi in my project and hopefully knock another $8 off the BOM.

I guess you can keep an eye on my hackaday project site or my website for updates if your interested.

As a side note, amyk, your right, quite a lot of the chinese characters repeat , even spending a few minutes switching between the english translation and the chinese you can see some familiar quite quickly, maybe the subject for another topic!

Edit

Just Received the Very well translated English specifications from the company, looks an awesome product . Not sure how to attach here but I will pop them on my public google folder off my homepage or hackaday project page. 

[boz]

for information, the English chip Spec is linked below (not sure why it says confidential it doesn't give anything away)

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9hyK_DA6VIiQmQyWVFjNVphdU0&usp=sharing&tid=0B9hyK_DA6VIiNHV5UlBMajBDb28

After going through the spec it looks like the ESP8266 chip which is the heart of the cheapo module above is an ARM soc with RF and a full wifi stack (no surprises there I guess), it also mentions a lot about SPI, GPIO and running your own firmware, so I guess there is a missing programming manual with PCB Layout information etc which I will need if I'm going to integrate it into my terminal. -  I'll ask nicely it worked last time 

The AT+ serial uart stuff looks to be add-on firmware provided on the module itself and developed by a third-party not the chip supplier - the 8 pin chip next to the ESP8266 on the board is serial flash I guess, and this is providing the limited AT command set, not the ESP8266 chip (educated guess not fact)

[ElektroQuark]

The link only shows an image of the first page.

[free_electron]

If you think that's impressive : take a look at their 6203 ... 24 pin package, ultr low standby current .

Semiconductors have become a commodity. There is no more money to be made in em. Systems are very complex, take a lot of effort to develop and have short lifespans. Competition is fierce and we are doing an uphill battle against small chinese fabless startups that get their IP virtually free through government grants and university partnership. Semiconductor companies all over the world are hurting and down the slippery slope into oblivion. It's almost freefall...

The only survivors will be the mass production fabs like UMC and TSMC and chartering service fabs.

Traditional silicon design is dying. Small lean startups not tied to a massive cost overhead of a fab can spit out designs much cheaper and faster.

The traditional markets are gone. Take cellphones smartphones tablets :  Really big players now make their own silicon. Apple makes their own cpu, so does samsung. So the smartphone/tablet market is dead for silicon designers. You can pursue players like htc or rim and get 5% of the market. Not even enough revenue to cover your design costs.
All you can do is dick around making 5 cent power regulators and other 'dust' . The big buck parts are made by the solution providers themselves.

It's over. The model has shifted and is unsustainable. Time to jump ship ...

[boz]

The link only shows an image of the first page.

whoops!  here is the full link to my project datasheets, its the third document in..

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9hyK_DA6VIiQmQyWVFjNVphdU0&usp=sharing&tid=0B9hyK_DA6VIiNHV5UlBMajBDb28

[coppice]

The traditional markets are gone. Take cellphones smartphones tablets :  Really big players now make their own silicon. Apple makes their own cpu, so does samsung. So the smartphone/tablet market is dead for silicon designers. You can pursue players like htc or rim and get 5% of the market. Not even enough revenue to cover your design costs.

• Apple uses its own applications processors, but buys in the rest of its silicon.
• Samsung makes some phones with its own applications processors, but seems to make far more with Qualcomm silicon in them.
• Chinese makers like HuaWei, and ZTE are finally getting in gear and shipping large numbers of phones, all with Qualcomm or MTK silicon. They are really kicking Samsung's butt right now in China.
• For tablets the picture is similar to the above, but numerous Chinese makers also use Rockchip and Allwinner devices by the shed load.

People have been saying what you said for the last 3 or 4 years, but so far Qualcomm is still going from strength to strength, provoking monopoly investigations. MTK has progressed from the low end handset market, to high volume in the high end fast quad core business. Rockchip and Allwinner have come from nowhere to be major players. Maybe what you are saying will be how things work out eventually, but that's not clear right now. The bigger threat in semiconductors has always been too many supplying exactly the same thing into an equipment market which puts them at each other's throats - e.g. DRAM, which becomes a very rocky business with every tiny downturn.

[tszaboo]

It's over. The model has shifted and is unsustainable. Time to jump ship ...

It is far from being over. There are several applications which the far east companies wouldnt touch, because the numbers sold are in the thousands region.
Make a 20 bit SAR ADC. Or a PGA with chopper and low noise. Or a 16 Channel PWM DAC. Or a high linearity current mirror. Industrial SERDES.
I can give you a thousand application which desperately needs ASIC or better analog parts. Not everyone needs to make thing that millions are sold with 1 cent profit on it. There are the ICs with higher profit margin and lower units sold.

[free_electron]

Apple uses its own applications processors, but buys in the rest of its silicon.

Ad all of those are either standard parts like flash and dram built by companies specialized in those products (the battle in ram is over. Micron has won. The battle in flash is almost over. It's samsung or toshiba) or are devices sold for sub 1 $ prices. All those gps , wifi , bluetooth, position sensors, guroscopes, magnetometers, proximity sensors and other stuff all are sub one dollar pricepoint. Profit margins is diddly squat.

Flash and ram are auto generated by computer programs. Virtually no design work.
The rest is under sever price crunch. There are one or two other asics like the pmic that are interesting to work on but are also under severe price pressure.

Samsung makes some phones with its own applications processors, but seems to make far more with Qualcomm silicon in them.
Chinese makers like HuaWei, and ZTE are finally getting in gear and shipping large numbers of phones, all with Qualcomm or MTK silicon. They are really kicking Samsung's butt right now in China.

Qualcomm is a highly specialized company only doing one thing. I am talking from the perspective of an allround semiconductor house like TI or ST. They both pulled out of this market completely.

For tablets the picture is similar to the above, but numerous Chinese makers also use Rockchip and Allwinner devices by the shed load.

All fabless companies...

What i am saying is that the time of the power-house semiconductor companies that had a wide product portfolio , and has their own fabs and did everything end to end whether asic, analog , digital or mixed mode, is over.

It's highly specialised , one-trick pony , fabless joints that rise, are productive for a few years and then either disappear or get borged,  and humongous designless fabs. Shove in masks and empty wafer and out comes chips.

Neither maxim nor linear nor analog devices still own fabs ...

The lucrative business in the tablet market or smartphone market would be the apps processor. Those are dominated by apples ons cpu or the samsung cpu and the qualcomm stuff fills the gap. Those others get to pick at the remaining 5% of the world market.... For the 'old skool powerhouses' that is a pond they can't even fish in ! The overhead is too large for them to turn a profit.

I am in this industry. The writing is on the wall...

[spacejunkie]

Does it support sniffing MAC Addresses? I just want a list of MAC address of visible WiFi Access Points. From the AT command manual, I see that it can list SSIDs but there is no reference to MAC Address. Has anyone been successful in sniffing MAC Addresses using this module?

[coppice]

All those gps , wifi , bluetooth, position sensors, guroscopes, magnetometers, proximity sensors and other stuff all are sub one dollar pricepoint. Profit margins is diddly squat.

You seem to confuse revenue with profit margin. Those 20 cent parts don't add up to massive revenue, but some of the people making them have excellent profit margins. Much better than a lot of the processor market.

What i am saying is that the time of the power-house semiconductor companies that had a wide product portfolio , and has their own fabs and did everything end to end whether asic, analog , digital or mixed mode, is over.

The only people investing in leading edge fabs are Intel, Samsung, the memory makers and the foundries. There are analogue companies investing in fabs, because they don't need leading edge ones for true analogue parts (as opposed to the things called analogue that turn out to be 90% digital + some mixed signal bits). This is the reality for the entire market, but it doesn't mean fabless or fab light chip companies can't do very well. A lot of the semiconductor industry has been fabless for the last 25 years, and many highly profitable companies have never even considered their own manufacturing.

Are there any semiconductor companies, apart from specialist memory ones, who make 100% of their own silicon these days? Even Intel outsources some fab work.

The only semiconductors companies that ever tried to cover all the bases were probably Freescale and TI. Even the big Japanese companies never tried to be a true Jack of all trades. People are narrowing and focussing now (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but serious analogue players still makes thousands of parts.

[Rasz]

Does it support sniffing MAC Addresses? I just want a list of MAC address of visible WiFi Access Points. From the AT command manual, I see that it can list SSIDs but there is no reference to MAC Address. Has anyone been successful in sniffing MAC Addresses using this module?

it probably does, and then sends it to china, or Langley (cadence IP)
its a black box with closed firmware.

[edavid]

If you only want a few of them, it's cheaper to get them from AliExpress:  http://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-esp8266.html?site=glo&groupsort=1&SortType=price_asc&SearchText=esp8266&isUnitPrice=y&initiative_id=SB_20140827074656&shipCountry=us&filterCat=4099&maxQuantity=5&minQuantity=2&isFreeShip=y

The price has actually gone down since the Hackaday post, from $5 each to $4.40 each (delivered).

No doubt they will show up on eBay soon.

[sacherjj]

For tablets the picture is similar to the above, but numerous Chinese makers also use Rockchip and Allwinner devices by the shed load.

The distributors for both of these chips offer reference designs and provide design support and the end purchaser gets tied to that distributor.  So most are making tablets that are essentially exactly the same.  However, you cannot get the chips outside of China.  The distributors just don't exist.

[miguelvp]

hello, i’am the lanseek.com operators,my name is Steven xie ,we from china.Diliver items to globals is 4-25days.
the site:http://www.88im.com is the testing web.
and We will be fully operational at No. 2014-10-1.
Thank you for your attention?
For the inconvenience caused to you, please understanding
thanks

And this is why China will dominate the consumer market beyond just being a cheap fab resource.
Now that they have a middle class and personal efforts are rewarded, they will provide better service in the global arena.

I mean, something as simple as doing google searches of your company to keep on top of things is not something we do because company policies prevent us to do so. They don't seem to have those limitations. Just like alibaba founded their business model to match the US model of working hard and cut throat drive instead of protectionism by putting the customer and product first before personal needs.

I mean the for God and Country model has changed here a long ago, Family first then Company then Country seems to be the norm here, at least in my eyes.

[Rasz]

I mean, something as simple as doing google searches of your company to keep on top of things is not something we do because company policies prevent us to do so.

he simply followed the referrals after getting hit with few/tens of orders from one place

[coppice]

For tablets the picture is similar to the above, but numerous Chinese makers also use Rockchip and Allwinner devices by the shed load.

The distributors for both of these chips offer reference designs and provide design support and the end purchaser gets tied to that distributor.  So most are making tablets that are essentially exactly the same.  However, you cannot get the chips outside of China.  The distributors just don't exist.

Value added resellers providing a turnkey, or near turnkey, package to equipment makers is becoming pretty much the norm all over the work these days, for anything high volume.

Distrbutors for Allwinner and Rockchip would soon appear in other countries if there were a strong enough market for the parts. There's nothing to stop you ordering from China.

[janekm]

For tablets the picture is similar to the above, but numerous Chinese makers also use Rockchip and Allwinner devices by the shed load.

The distributors for both of these chips offer reference designs and provide design support and the end purchaser gets tied to that distributor.  So most are making tablets that are essentially exactly the same.  However, you cannot get the chips outside of China.  The distributors just don't exist.

Well, why would you want to get those chips outside of China? If you're making cheap tablets / phones, you want to get as much of your "raw material" from the same place, and you'd be likely to be producing in China (maybe Malaysia). If you're producing a high-margin product where you can afford to manufacture in the west, you're probably using a more expensive chip, right?

[charlespax]

Well, why would you want to get those chips outside of China? If you're making cheap tablets / phones, you want to get as much of your "raw material" from the same place, and you'd be likely to be producing in China (maybe Malaysia). If you're producing a high-margin product where you can afford to manufacture in the west, you're probably using a more expensive chip, right?

Importing chips into China can be quite expensive. Fortunately, large quantities can be taken across the boarder in a suitcase.

[sacherjj]

For tablets the picture is similar to the above, but numerous Chinese makers also use Rockchip and Allwinner devices by the shed load.

The distributors for both of these chips offer reference designs and provide design support and the end purchaser gets tied to that distributor.  So most are making tablets that are essentially exactly the same.  However, you cannot get the chips outside of China.  The distributors just don't exist.

Well, why would you want to get those chips outside of China? If you're making cheap tablets / phones, you want to get as much of your "raw material" from the same place, and you'd be likely to be producing in China (maybe Malaysia). If you're producing a high-margin product where you can afford to manufacture in the west, you're probably using a more expensive chip, right?

We are building a very low cost, but robust device.  In trips to China, we have found that unless we have representatives there, we CANNOT hold assemblers to the standards and legitimate parts and assembly quality we want.  During tours of assemblers, we often ran into situations where ESD grounding didn't test on the foot straps used and they went "oh, well" lets get on with the tour.

Assembly staff was minimal and equipment poor, compensated by very large rework and testing departments.  Doing it right would have cost less, if labor wasn't so cheap.  As long as it works when leaving their factory, they couldn't care less if it fails due to ESD stress in a year after release.

[T3sl4co1l]

Semiconductors have become a commodity. There is no more money to be made in em. Systems are very complex, take a lot of effort to develop and have short lifespans. Competition is fierce and we are doing an uphill battle against small chinese fabless startups that get their IP virtually free through government grants and university partnership. Semiconductor companies all over the world are hurting and down the slippery slope into oblivion. It's almost freefall...

The only survivors will be the mass production fabs like UMC and TSMC and chartering service fabs.

Traditional silicon design is dying. Small lean startups not tied to a massive cost overhead of a fab can spit out designs much cheaper and faster.

The traditional markets are gone. Take cellphones smartphones tablets :  Really big players now make their own silicon. Apple makes their own cpu, so does samsung. So the smartphone/tablet market is dead for silicon designers. You can pursue players like htc or rim and get 5% of the market. Not even enough revenue to cover your design costs.
All you can do is dick around making 5 cent power regulators and other 'dust' . The big buck parts are made by the solution providers themselves.

It's over. The model has shifted and is unsustainable. Time to jump ship ...

You sound surprised, like this is something that happened just this year?

It's been predominantly that way for decades, and with good reasons.

Tim

[janekm]

There are a number of sellers of these modules on taobao/tmall, normal price is about 20CNY by the look of it, which is about 3.25USD

The IC itself doesn't seem to be being sold by many on TB, pretty much just these built up modules.

Sorted by sales...
http://s.taobao.com/search?spm=a230r.1.8.3.uGLXIZ&sort=sale-desc&tab=all&q=ESP8266

This place has sold 1500 of them or so...
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.4.iyOKc2&id=40328222213&ns=1#detail

Reading the feedback/comments of these listings may give you some useful information - use Chrome and select to translate the page, sometimes it's best to switch to the feedbacks  before you translate.

This link contains various pdf docs and a zip file containing code...
http://pan.baidu.com/s/1nt0rVIT

I didn't look at the code really but did notice that most of the comments are in good english

BTW the zip file of code from that link is pretty interesting. Going through the makefiles I figured out that the chip uses a "Tensilica Xtensa" core (now owned by Cadence, as mentioned). The toolkit is clearly based on gcc and since all the make/link files are provided it's pretty likely that one could build for it simply using what's provided here (but setting up gcc for cross-compilation can be a bit of a pain...)

[free_electron]

You sound surprised, like this is something that happened just this year?

It's been predominantly that way for decades, and with good reasons.

Tim

Not surprised. It just accelerated the last few years

[mamalala]

Just found this page:

http://wiki.linux-xtensa.org/index.php/Toolchain_and_Embedded_Distributions

Looks like a good starting point to build a suitable toolchain for the SoC of this module. Once i get the modules, i will dig deeper into that.

Greetings,

Chris

[janekm]

Just found this page:

http://wiki.linux-xtensa.org/index.php/Toolchain_and_Embedded_Distributions

Looks like a good starting point to build a suitable toolchain for the SoC of this module. Once i get the modules, i will dig deeper into that.

Greetings,

Chris

I was doing a bit more googling myself just now, found a nice forum linked off of hackaday: http://esp8266.com/
They managed to find a VM image with the toolchain installed, and the 'overlay' file needed for setting up gcc (with the information about which features are enabled in the CPU core). Looks like a lot of progress!

[tinhead]

did you tested that VM ?

[janekm]

did you tested that VM ?

It's downloading from China... still 3h to go

[mamalala]

Thanks for the link!

Already downloaded the VM image, but won't have time looking into it for the next few days, i guess.

Greetings,

Chris

[tszaboo]

I'll put this in quotes. It is one of their listings. I was constantly smiling while reading this:

This module advantages:
 
A low price, only to earn a small profit base, hope that this will bring more rapid development of animal networking
 
Two powerful internal ran LWIP agreement
 
3 supports three modes: AP, STA, AP + STA coexistence mode
 
4 perfect simple and efficient AT commands, allowing you to develop more simple.
 
       Things history of this concept has been five or six years, but has never really into life! The reason is as follows: Things have to be regarded networking things, but to get networked household appliances, before costly price overshadowed main circuit board! Therefore lingering large area applications. But only a matter of time! We waited for 3-5 years, various radio manufacturers, network equipment design giants have all eyes on this market, as we all know: If the price down, the demand is huge, the initial conservative estimate of global demand at 1.5 billion stars of the annual demand. So TI's CC series Qualcomm QCA400X series MTK's MT76XX series and East China Normal University and Taiwan have several research and development capabilities, have started in April 2014, are small quantities to test the water! And at the beginning of June 2014 to July have to market prices from over 50 over 40 over 30 over 20 dollars, this is just the price strategy between suppliers, but their marketing strategies must comply with market rules and people's spending power, in order to get large quantities of promotion, WIFI chip prices must be the product of the proportion of things in the whole BOM costs must be lower than 30% in order to get a large area, but before June 2014 a, WIFI cost module in the customer material costs accounted for almost 60% of the cost! Clearly this is unreasonable, and hindered the pace of development of this industry.
 
        According to market rules: analysis of the current market can have several competitive WIFI chip manufacturers, although each one has launched its own WIFI chip, and input costs millions of tens of millions. But the real survive, and only one or two. Because their production process, and design, as well as application experience, and price positioning of customers. And China's market, can truly unified market presumably only one! Is simply cruel reality. Things in the upcoming initial flourish, can choose a truly competitive chips. That is for the future development of crucial! We do not want the wrong team. . .
 
      In the absence of more cattle X chip out now is the most cattle X.
 
After the recent trends in the situation more than a month, almost shocking, because the whole market is that several have made tremendous feeling!
 
Let us appreciate: no final finisher, simply because most cattle X, it has not yet appeared. . . . Everything is just the beginning! !
 
But things really make the entire industry toward the climax is: the emergence of Shanghai Yue Xin Technology ESP8266 chip. They incredible
 
Hardware and software update rate, and very shocking price advantage to market quickly! So that the entire industry is not a trace of preparedness.
 
Yue Xin advantages:
 
        A very professional, Espressif is Shanghai Yue Xin, only WIFI. Several other competitors do more pan.
 
        2 staffing more powerful, 30-40 WIFI chip engineers only for this service! None can do it?
 
        High professional quality three officers, who CEO for the United States Chief Technology Officer, a well-known listed companies, there are several men Dr. returnees.
 
        4 More to the point: a pragmatic! Office area, although not super big, but all are professionals, there is no redundancy in the department, really appreciate it, do not speak face-saving projects, working sense, this is a lot of companies can not do.
 
        5 ground gas, Xin Yue contacted each employee, are very enthusiastic and gas. They can efficiently happy to help you solve technical issues and business problems you encounter. In contrast, several other companies: their superior technical personnel operational staff, dragon head, not the tail, are more difficult to want to learn, to reflect on.
 
    Very honored that we smooth the fastest chip batch applications, and consignment. We are confident: we launched ESP8266 Series modules are available in the market the most cost-competitive products.
 
      We hope that several Espressif the ESP8266 module, allowing your products with a strong competitive advantage. And consignment chip!
 
The industry's smallest, industrial grade stability! The most cost-effective.

[amyk]

"cattle X" is a rather interesting Chinese slang term that's been translated literally. The mentions of cattle you see on a lot of Chinese sites are not talking about anything actually bovine.

[tszaboo]

OK, I just fired up the wifi module.
If anyone is interested, it is not fast enough to play star wars telnet with the desired frames per second.