New ESP8266 like Device

I've mentioned I'm not that impressed by NodeMCU. Part of the problem is the underlying ESP8266 firmware. Why can't I have a simple send frame method and pick my own IP stack? I also can't really be bothered with another tool chain: I have arm-none-eabi already. I also want enough peripherals not to need another micro controller.

The EMW3165 is billed by hackaday as an ESP8266 killer. It seems to tick all the boxes above: I already use the STM32F411 it's based on.

I've got a couple of modules to play with, most people are using st-link to upload firmware, and the wifi runs on a separate Broadcom chip which you communicate with via SDIO: it can't be that hard to get up and running.

There's very little by way of structured documentation though: I want to know the SDIO wire protocol for communicating with the WiFi chip. No luck yet.

Actually I think this is pretty much a dead end: You need to accept a Broadcom license to get WICED and there's currently no way to use the WiFi without doing so. I have no idea why they can't just publish the SDIO protocol.


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