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  • and of TI-ish quality

    This is my problem with the CC3100/CC3200 unfortunately. Despite being cheap and being marketed as the perfect way to add WiFi, the CC3000 turned out to be extremely poor.

    Not because of the hardware (that seemed ok) but because:

    • The firmware on the CC3000 itself kept locking up and completely crashing the module, and TI only released an update that fixed it 18 months later (and that appears not to be backwards compatible). In my mind that's totally indefensible.
    • The drivers that were provided were extremely poor, and would completely lock up or crash your device not only if the CC3000 locked up, but even if there was a single communication error with it. I reckon I've spent about a month now debugging and re-writing parts of the driver for Espruino - time that could have been spent really improving Espruino itself.
    • TI provided absolutely zero support for the CC3000 at all (at least to me). Posts on their support forum are just left unanswered (except for other people posting 'hey, I'm having this issue too').

    I've also worked on other projects that have used TI chips, and have heard from other engineers and the result seems to be the same: TI can make nice hardware for a good price, but once they've sold it they just don't care about software and support.

    Despite the CC3100 being advertised as a lot better, I don't have a reason to believe TI have suddenly changed their attitude. If someone manages to get it working with Espruino that's great and I'd love a pull request, but I'm more interested in focussing on more cost-effective modules....

  • Hm. Just asked as you mentioned that CC3000 successor when we discussed encryption some time
    ago. And now it's there.

    I would think that they focussed all their workforce on a new feature-complete and widely available chip instead of having a dedicated support team for the first incomlete one. Despite all the frustration that that brought to the early adopters. They might need a communications guy on the team, though.

    Do you think Espuino could work on a CC3200 with ita M4 and the given specs?

    -Stev

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