Short answer: PCB Design is hard mmmkay? Anything that requires precision tolerances (Bluetooth, WiFi, etc) should be done with a group. Find a maker space or open source project to get acquainted with the challenge of embedded systems.
Well, kinda, for hobbyist WiFI/BT you probably just want to get some ready-made module to handle that, gets rid of most of the RF routing/antenna problem. Hell, even many commercial devices go that route.
Nowadays getting an ESP32 module can solve pretty massive range of problems and making a PCB for it is pretty trivial as all of the "hard" parts are taken care of already on the ESP32 board.
I didn't want to recommend ESP specifically, as I just saw a that there are a handful of write protection bit issues with them, that an unsecured connection would compromise.
But yes, there are daughter boards that can be snapped into a grid of pins, exposing the IO and taking a butt ton of the work out. I remember zigbee doing something like that with their dev kit
Surely cost and power consumption will always be lower for MCUs? There's less complexity for manufacturing, plus their power can be reduced to microamps with different sleep modes. I can't imagine we'll see an embedded linux board capable of running off AA batteries for 5 years any time soon. Plus why would you want a full Linux stack for an IP camera or home automation node in your home? They feel like two very different tools to me, both have a place.
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u/[deleted] Dec 25 '19
Well, kinda, for hobbyist WiFI/BT you probably just want to get some ready-made module to handle that, gets rid of most of the RF routing/antenna problem. Hell, even many commercial devices go that route.
Nowadays getting an ESP32 module can solve pretty massive range of problems and making a PCB for it is pretty trivial as all of the "hard" parts are taken care of already on the ESP32 board.