Rust

The Hardware Testing Challenge

When developing hardware, the challenging phase begins after the prototype is designed and PCBs are manufactured. The easy part—conceptualization and board design—is behind you. What follows is infinitely harder:

• Making boards electrically alive and verifying proper operation with electrical jigs and test equipment
• Programming and validating firmware behavior
• Testing the complete system’s functionality under real-world conditions
• Building the infrastructure—both hardware and software—to support comprehensive testing

For devices communicating via NMEA protocols, this challenge is compounded by the complexity of marine electronics standards and the difficulty of simulating real maritime data streams.

Why ESP32C5?

I’m researching hardware options for an upcoming project, and the ESP32 family appears to be the best fit for our current requirements.

For years, a major drawback of Espressif chips was limited support to 2.4GHz WiFi only. Why does this matter? Having a 2.4GHz device on a WiFi network degrades performance for all other devices, forcing users to set up separate WiFi routers just for 2.4GHz devices. Additionally, the initial configuration proved frustrating—when your phone is on 5GHz, the ESP Touch protocol doesn’t work reliably.