FireBeetle 2 ESP32-C5 Development Kit for Smart Home (2.4/5GHz Wi-Fi 6, Home Assistant, BLE 5, Zigbee, Thread)

The FireBeetle 2 ESP32-C5 Development Kit is a versatile smart home prototyping platform featuring dual-band Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, Thread, and Zigbee connectivity. Designed with integrated solar battery management and a solderless IO expansion shield, it is ideal for makers, students, and engineers building custom Home Assistant nodes, Matter end-devices, or off-grid sensor monitors.

Dual-band Wi-Fi 6 connectivity

Powered by a 240 MHz RISC-V single-core processor, the ESP32-C5 delivers 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi 6 support. The 5 GHz band reduces interference and latency, while Wi-Fi 6 Target Wake Time and OFDMA mechanisms significantly lower power consumption for battery-powered projects.

Solderless IO expansion shield

The kit includes a dedicated expansion board that breaks out pins into functionally partitioned headers without requiring soldering. It provides direct plug-and-play access to 11 digital IOs, 3 I2C interfaces, SPI, UART, and dedicated power rails for rapid prototyping with external sensors and displays.

Multi-protocol smart home integration

Native support for IEEE 802.15.4 brings Thread 1.3 and Zigbee 3.0 together with Bluetooth 5 and Wi-Fi on a single board. This allows developers to build Matter end-devices, create local MQTT sensor nodes, or set up multi-protocol bridges for Home Assistant.

Solar charging and power management

An integrated solar power management circuit accepts 4.5V to 6V solar panels or standard 5V USB Type-C power to charge a connected lithium battery at up to 0.5A. A low deep-sleep current of 21 μA and a switchable 3.3V power output allow external sensors to be powered down during idle states to preserve energy.

Rich on-chip hardware peripherals

The module features 4 MB of flash, 384 KB SRAM, 16 KB low-power SRAM, and 18 digital I/O lines. Hardware peripherals include a 12-bit 7-channel SAR ADC, a 6-channel LED PWM controller, I2S, and multi-channel infrared transmit and receive interfaces.

Downloads & documentation

• Product wiki (DFRobot)