Olimex's New Espressif ESP32-C5 UEXT Module Adds Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6, BLE, and Thread Support
If your dev board or single-board computer has a UEXT connector, it can now enjoy a triple-radio boost to its communication capabilities.
Bulgarian open-hardware specialist Olimex has announced a new add-on for any of its boards that feature a UEXT expansion connector: a dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and Thread/Matter-compatible IEEE 802.15.4 module, powered by Espressif's ESP32-C5.
"MOD-ESP32-C5 is compact 40×20mm (around 1.57×0.79") development board which can be plugged to any development board with UEXT connector," Olimex founder Tsvetan Usunov explains of the new module, "and [which] adds dual band 2.4/5GHz Wi-Fi 6 connectivity via Espressif ESP-HOSTED SDK."
While Usunov may be focusing on the dual-band Wi-Fi connectivity, that's not the only trick up the new module's sleeve. At its heart is the Espressif ESP32-C5, a microcontroller module that provides three radios in total: the dual-band Wi-Fi 6 radio, a Bluetooth 5 Low Energy (BLE) radio, and an IEEE 802.15.4 compatible with Thread and the new Matter standard, all under the control of a 32-bit RISC-V core running at up to 240MHz and used in this case as a dedicated network processor with 8MB of SPI flash and 4MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM) on-board.
The module is designed for solderless expansion of any of Olimex's various single-board computers and microcontroller development boards featuring the in-house UEXT expansion connector — just plug the module onto the header and add the necessary code to drive it.
The MOD-ESP32-C5 module is now available on the Olimex store at €5.95 (around $7) before volume discounts; as with all Olimex hardware, its design files are available on GitHub under the strongly reciprocal variant of the CERN Open Hardware License Version 2 with software available under the permissive MIT license.