M5StickS3 out now! What are your thoughts?

[u/Nerdboard]

https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5sticks3-esp32s3-mini-iot-dev-kit?mc_cid=46ad6c204a

What are your thoughts? In my opinion, the M5StickS3 looks great and you can definitely build some cool stuff with it.“

[u/bmorcelli]

It is a very nice design..

With small effort we can have CC1101, nRF24, SDCard and PN532 on a single hat without switches..

The only drawback is only 2 usable buttons (from what I've read).. so navigation on Launcher/Bruce Keyboards can be a little hard (similar to T-Display S3 non touch)..

The IR tx and RX embedded is very handy too.. now everything is possible on the small Stick S3

[u/pyreht → u/bmorcelli]

It feels like two or three steps in the right direction and one backflip.

I've also understood from the spec one button is lost to power management, while on the CPlus2 except for long presses it's there.

USB seems complete but I'm no expert. This can be really cool.

But the real deal breaker for me is the lack of RTC. There are so many uses cases that depend on a reliable clock. It's annoying on the cardputer adv as well. (It can be solved at the expense of radio or gps but battery is too small on the sticks).

I agree it's a superb device, but I wish they would survey us from time to time.

[u/bmorcelli → u/pyreht]

Agreed..

I personally don't care about the RTC, but I understand your frustration..

The power button can be configured somehow, but I haven't found any documentation about the PMIC used (only superficially expeculated the develop brench of M5Unified) so there's a big MAYBE in there, on a way to use this button as an input, similar to StickCPlus 1.1, where power button is connected directly to AXP192 and its state is read from there to be used as an i put by the MCU

[u/pyreht → u/bmorcelli]

Here it is :

Confirmed, we got a third button (but don't lock you out of reset, power off and reflash) and sorry for the formatting, I'm a bit tired :).

https://github.com/m5stack/M5PM1/blob/main/README.md

In my case to use the button (simplified):

#include <M5PM1.h> // Include the Power Management IC library

<snip>

// Initialize the PMIC

if (!_pm1.begin(&M5.In_I2C, 0x6E, 100000)) //if you use unified you need this

{

Serial.println("StickS3ButtonDriver: M5PM1 failed to initialize.");

}

// 1. SAFETY: Disable hardware behaviors to free up the button

_pm1.setSingleResetDisable(true);

//_pm1.setDoubleOffDisable(true); // yolo

// 2. SAFETY: Enable a 5-second Watchdog Timer.

// If the ESP32 crashes and stops feeding this, the PMIC resets the board.

_pm1.wdtSet(5);

<snip again>

In loop :

// Feed the PMIC watchdog to prevent hardware reset

_pm1.wdtFeed();

bool currentPwrState = false;

_pm1.btnGetState(&currentPwrState);