These tools cover firmware development and edge AI for IoT devices. PlatformIO is a cross-platform IDE for embedded development. Arduino IDE is a simple option for beginners. ESP-IDF is the official framework for ESP32. ESPHome uses YAML-based configuration for ESP8266 and ESP32.
RuView is a WiFi sensing platform that uses ESP32 CSI signals for real-time human pose estimation, vital signs, and presence detection without cameras. Needle is an on-device foundation model shipped as one binary, with a laddered design for very small devices.
Firmware Development
- PlatformIO: Cross-platform IDE for embedded development
- Arduino IDE: Simple option for beginners
- ESP-IDF: Official framework for ESP32
- ESPHome: YAML-based configuration for ESP8266/ESP32 (see Smart Home)
Edge AI
- https://github.com/ruvnet/RuView — WiFi sensing platform using ESP32 CSI signals for real-time human pose estimation, vital signs, and presence detection without cameras.
- https://github.com/cactus-compute/needle — on-device foundation model for mobiles, wearables, robots, smart home, automotive, and microcontrollers. The whole model is a single 8–29 MB binary (Simple Attention Network) that trades general chat ability for tool calling, structured extraction, and text embedding; laddered architecture lets subnetworks down to 2 layers deploy on very small devices.
pip install cactus-needle, Apache-2.0.
See also: Hardware Platforms · Development Workflow · Testing Tools