The 2022 Fri3d Camp, a biennial family-friendly summer festival for hackers, took place last month between 12 and 14 August. As per usual, this year’s Fri3d Camp combined elements of a technology festival with an easy-going camping atmosphere, and a hacker convention. The organisers took their inspiration from the large European hacker camps like CCC Camp and SHA.

This year, each participant received a cool-looking badge based on Espressif’s ESP32-WROVER module, which they could easily program and expand with add-ons. Readers can find the badge's specifications on the relevant Hackaday project page. More information about the project’s hardware and software can be found on GitHub:

Software

• • Badge 2022 Micropython
  • Badge 2022 Arduino

Hardware

• • Badge 2022
  • GameOn add-on
  • Time Blaster add-on

As mentioned earlier, the badge for the 2022 edition of the Fri3d camp was based on the ESP32-WROVER module with 4MB PSRAM and 16MB Flash. The module achieves a fine dual-core performance, and is well suited for applications requiring more memory, such as AIoT and gateway applications.

The ESP32-WROVER series comprises ESP32-WROVER-E and ESP32-WROVER-IE, which are two powerful, generic Wi-Fi + Bluetooth / Bluetooth LE modules that target a wide variety of applications, ranging from low-power sensor networks to the most demanding tasks, such as voice encoding, music streaming and MP3 decoding. ESP32-WROVER-E comes with a PCB antenna, and ESP32-WROVER-IE with a connector for an external antenna.

At the core of ESP32-WROVER is either the ESP32-D0WD-V3 chip or the ESP32-D0WDR2-V3 chip. This chip is embedded in the ESP32-WROVER module, and is designed to be scalable and adaptive. The module contains two CPU cores which can be controlled separately, while the CPU clock frequency is adjustable to a range of 80 MHz to 240 MHz. The chip also has a low-power co-processor that can be used instead of the CPU, in order to save power while performing tasks that do not require much computing power, such as the monitoring of peripherals (e.g., capacitive touch sensors, Hall sensors, SD card interface, Ethernet, high-speed SPI, UART, I2S, and I2C).

The operating system chosen for ESP32-WROVER is freeRTOS with LwIP, while TLS 1.2 with hardware acceleration is built in as well. Secure (encrypted) over-the-air (OTA) upgrade is also supported, so that users can upgrade their products even after their release, at minimum cost and effort.

Having said all this, this year’s participants in the Fri3d Camp where given a real treat that allowed them to explore the delights of tinkering. Espressif, being always supportive of the maker community, was delighted to sponsor the event by offering all the necessary ESP32-WROVER modules.