New Part Day: ESP32-WROOM-DA

We’re always interested in the latest from the world’s semiconductor industry here at Hackaday, but you might be forgiven for noticing something a little familiar about today’s offering from Espressif. The ESP32-WROOM-DA has more than a passing resemblance to the ESP32-WROOM dual-core-microcontroller-with-WiFi  module that we’ve seen on so many projects over the last few years because it’s a WROOM, but this one comes with a nifty trick to deliver better WiFi connectivity.

The clever WiFi trick comes in the form of a pair of antennas at 90 degrees to each other. It’s a miniaturised version of the arrangement with which you might be familiar from home routers, allowing the device to select whichever antenna gives the best signal at any one time.

We can see that the larger antenna footprint will require some thought in PCB design, but otherwise the module has the same pinout as the existing WROVER. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine it nestled in the corner of a board at 45 degrees, and we’re sure that we’ll see it appearing in projects directly. Anything that enhances the connectivity of what has become the go-to wireless microcontroller on these pages can only be a good thing.