You Should Add the $10 ESP32-C6 GEEK to Your Toolbox
The $10 Waveshare ESP32-C6 GEEK is a versatile, Wi-Fi 6 IoT dev kit with a built-in LCD and USB-drive form factor.
There are lots of all-in-one electronics development kits that attempt to be everything to everyone. Many of them are very good, offering a wide range of components commonly needed for certain use cases in a highly accessible package. Others seem more like a solution without a problem. The Waveshare ESP32-C6 GEEK Development Board, which was just released, appears to fall into the first category for IoT device experimentation.
Waveshare’s new development kit is powered by an ESP32-C6 microcontroller, which means it has plenty of embedded computing power with its 160MHz 32-bit RISC-V processor. But more important than that for IoT projects, it supports Wi-Fi 6 for high-performance wireless connectivity. The board also comes equipped with an onboard 1.14-inch, 65K-color IPS LCD display with 240×135 resolution. 512KB of SRAM and 16MB of flash memory are sufficient for developing complex applications, and an SD card slot extends storage far more.
The device is housed in a small plastic case to protect the internal components, and has a USB-drive-like form factor—no need for external USB cables, just plug it directly into your computer. There is also a 3-pin UART header, a 3-pin GPIO header, and a 4-pin I2C header to interface the ESP32-C6 GEEK with additional hardware.
Even if you don’t have a project idea in mind for the board yet, the versatility of it makes it worth having on hand for when the need arises. And for under $10, it’s pretty hard to resist.
R&D, creativity, and building the next big thing you never knew you wanted are my specialties.