ESP Easy Mega - LAN connect ?

[mra2ko]

Hi,
which board to use ESP easy for LAN cable connection, no over wifi... I would like connect some sensors over cable.
Thank !

[TD-er]

Olimex has a number of boards using the LAN7820A chip.
Those are all supported.

Yesterday I learned that the wESP32 board is no longer using that chip, so I need to add support for that new Realtek chip.
So make sure to use a board with the LAN7820 or LAN7810 chip.

There are other ESP32 boards with LAN chips on them, so it is not limited to Olimex boards.

[mra2ko]

Thank to fast reply !
FW/SW is the same for other boards or ?

[Ath]

Builds with a filename ending in _ETH have ethernet support available.

[mra2ko]

All the boards I found have LAN 8710A, realy you think 7810 ?
Thank

[Ath]

Even the manufacturer doesn't supply separate documentation for the LAN7810 or LAN7810A chips, so I wouldn't bother about that, it is most likely a small specification difference, or a different chip package.

[TD-er]

You made me doubt whether it is LAN78xx or LAN87xx, so just ignore the 7 and 8

The difference between the LANxx10 and LANxx20 is only the extra support of an older standard to interface with the LAN chip.
But we're not using this older standard and thus for our use case there is no difference between both.

The LANxx4x series are different so those are not supported, or at least not tested.
They might work as these are intended to be a replacement of the older series, but not sure if they might need some extra registers to be initialized or perhaps some pin pulled high or low to select compatibility mode.

[Ath]

Ah, right, it's the LAN8710 and LAN8720, but there is (hardly) any info to be found about the 'A' appended, so it's most likely not important enough to fuss about.

[TD-er]

The ones without the "A" were made by SMSC.
The ones with the "A" were made under the Microchip brand after Microchip acquired SMSC in 2012.

So if you really have one without the A, then it might be a chip of over 10 years old
But more likely they didn't bother to actually include the "A" in the product description as it really doesn't matter from a software point of view.

[mra2ko]

Thank to all ! I test some board and post here results...

[mackowiakp]

OK. There is something like this on Ali:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001122992446.html

I do not understand why the more expensive set includes an additional module.
Is this cheaper part not enough for operation and programming?
Can anybody answer me to this question?
As I understand SD slot will be available for recording for example measurements?

[Ath]

The extension is the USB-Serial unit, not included in the cheaper set. After initially loading a firmware, like ESPEasy, on the ESP unit, any update can usually be uploaded OTA (over the air, either WiFi or Ethernet in this case, whatever is connected). So you'd better buy 1 with that USB-Serial extension, and can re-use it for additional boards.

The SD card isn't really used much, at least not for most of the plugins and controllers in ESPEasy. I know the MP3 player and the Cache controller support local storage, but I don't know how to select the SD-card for that (and if that's even possible...).

[mackowiakp]

OK, but can I use my USB to UART device for the first programming instead dedicated extra module?
I also use it for programming, for example, "ordinary" ESP32 modules that do not have onboard USB port.

[Ath]

Sure, that's no problem. Just don't try to power the unit from your USB-serial adapter, that won't supply enough power.

[mackowiakp]

THX and Happy New Year !