Similarities/differences/Interfacing between ESP32 and RaspberryPi

Question

I am new to the field of micro-controllers and stuck with some basic understanding wrt ESP32.

I referred a few documentations but I am not able to figure out following things:

1. In RaspberryPi we make use of micro-SD card to install linux based debian OS. Likewise, where do we install OS in ESP32?

2. To interact with RaspberryPi, we make use of VNC/Putty to access the RPi through our laptop. Likewise how do we interact with ESP32.

3. How do I ensure that data recorded by ESP32 gets transefred to RaspberryPi in a csv/txt or any other file format?

If somebody could please clarify my doubts, I would be very much thankful!

Answer 1

1. The ESP32 loads its code from a serial flash. This is either part of the modules you can buy or is part of the ESP32 chip - depends on the actual ESP32 module/chip as there's a few to choose from. As for an 'OS' - We're comparing a full blown Linux system vs a small embedded system. The ESP32 does not run on OS like Linux - more like FreeRTOS. There really is no direct comparison as there represent both ends of the spectrum.

2. Again the ESP32 is not running full blown OS like Linux. How do you interact with it? You have to add that code. It could be via the uart, WiFi, Bluetooth, switches and leds, lcd or nothing. That is up to you to decide. Out of the box, all the ESP32 knows how to do is load the code from the flash chip. What happens next is in the code you give it.

3. Whatever file format or data formatting is up to the code you provide.

With the ESP32, you'd probably start with the Arduino tools to get going. There's a zillion examples on the web for doing just about anything you can think of and is possible using the ESP32. There are plenty of libraries to do what you need. If you want to interact with it in a higher level - there's projects like Espruino that give you a javascript interpreter, Micropython gives you a cut-down python environment and so on.

• Ranjan Pal: Thanks a lot @Kartman for your valuable feedback.

Answer 2

At this stage, a (inner)link only answer may be appropriate. So see microcontroller vs. System on chip which should start to explain the similarities/differences. ESP32 is a single tasking microcontroller. RPi is a multitasking system on a chip.

• Kartman: to be pedantic, the ESP32 is usually running FreeRTOS 'under the hood' and has two processor cores, so not quite 'single tasking'. Suffice to the the Raspi has significantly more compute and memory resources than the ESP32.