Unexpected Maker Takes a Look at Early Arduino IDE Support for the ESP32-S2 via His FeatherS2

Unexpected Maker Seon Rozenblum has gone hands-on with the latest Arduino core for the ESP32-S2 microcontroller — Espressif's first design to include a low-power coprocessor based on the free and open source RISC-V architecture.

Rozenblum has been working with the ESP32-S2 for some time, designing the ProS2 last year and a Feather-format FeatherS2 earlier this month. With mass production of the parts themselves well underway, Rozenblum has now turned his attention to software compatibility — in particular new support for the part in the Arduino IDE.

Support for the ESP32-S2 isn't quite in Espressif's Arduino core release yet, but Rozenblum notes it is available as an early version in a separate branch of the GitHub repository. "Currently we have Master checked out which is the main master branch," he notes in his video. "We're going to move to the ESP32-S2 branch."

"I don't think there's a published list of which examples work and which ones don't but so far the Wi-Fi I've been playing with seems to work okay, and a lot of the other examples are working fine. And generally my ESP32 that I've got for my tiny Pico seems to be working great."

"One thing to note," Rozenblum warns, "is that this Arduino support will only work with the latest revision release silicon, so if you were lucky enough to get a beta silicon board early on, either some of the modules or some of the development boards, then this will not work with it. It requires the latest silicon."

Rozenblum's full video is now available on his YouTube channel.