Teensy 4.1 Development Board
PSA: Networking on microcontrollers is a giant pain in the ass.<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong, boards like this (and ESP&#x2F;Realtek boards with WiFi) are great for hacky prototypes. But if you&#x27;re building an embedded device that will be deployed in any sort of volume, a small application processor running Linux will make your life <i>dramatically</i> easier. You can keep it asleep most of the time if your power budget is tight.<p>The hard part is not cramming in an Ethernet PHY or a 2.4 GHz radio, it&#x27;s the mountain of software that you need to run on top of it to get the kind of reliable, secure communications channels that we&#x27;ve come to expect. Bare metal networking stacks like LwIP have a reputation for being buggy, and are nowhere near as battle-tested as the Linux&#x2F;BSD networking stacks security-wise. Some of the more memory constrained devices can barely fit a complete certificate chain. Are you really prepared to roll out updates on a system like this when the next Heartbleed comes along?<p>Also, the layers tend to pile on, so while you might get away with a bare-bones wire protocol initially, you&#x27;ll be starting your project close to the limits of what is practical. Somebody will eventually ask you if you can connect to a websocket. I know buildroot and yocto look a little scary at first, but they&#x27;re better than designing yourself into a corner before you even get off the ground.