$2 Dev Board - What's The Catch? W806 Microcontroller Review

The HLK-W08 Microcontroller from WinnerMicro is a W806 based microcontroller board coming in at a seriously budget price of 2$. This is a fairly minimal board due to the low cost. The W803 chip is based on XuanTie's E804 microcontroller and has 1MB of on-board flash storage and plenty of connectivity through SPI, I2C and UART. It is fairly a compact board which measures in at 65mm x 25mm, approximately the same size as the Raspberry Pi Zero.

You can program this board by using a custom SDK and toolchain setup that we describe in this video. The WinnerMicro W806 chip powers this board. This is a 32-bit C-SKY single core processor which runs at 240MHz. It has 288KB of RAM. There is also 1MB of flash memory. In terms of interfaces this chip supports 1 SPI, 6 UART, 1 I2c and 1 I2S controllers. There are 4 analogue to digital converter channels. There is also some hardware encryption features aiming this to the "IoT" markets.

You can purchase the HLK-W08 at the following links:

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:37 Pricing
01:35 Dimensions
01:48 Features
04:26 Pin-out
04:55 SDK Setup
09:03 Documentation
09:40 Thoughts and Conclusions

Take a look at some other RP2040 boards covered here:

-- Equipment I use regularly --
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All videos and tutorials on this channel and mentioned websites are for educational purposes only.

[Crackedce]

The sdk was actually relatively well documented and easy to get setup. the tutorial on the git page was very well put together. My only complaint with the SDK so far is the PWM driver does not have input capture implemented. but the register pdf is actually very comprehensive even if it is only in chinese. i ran it through google translate and you can actually build your own drivers from it. plus everything is open source which is very nice! I plan on porting the build system over to cmake and creating my own HAL.

I do have a couple complaints with the peripherals tho. Only 4 adc channels and the ADC is very slow, max 2khz sampling frequency, but it is sigma delta so it is very accurate. The timers are a bit weird and deviate from the standard, but they are useable. There are only 5 pwm channels.

The good thing about the hardware is there is a lot of GPIO and UARTs.

[sv]

Cool !
- I succeeded in installing support for the W806 on my Arduino IDE ...
-- Now I can Compile and Upload to the W806 directly on the arduino IDE !

[banban]

Really interesting, I think I will buy one of these.

[elen]

I ended up with one of these in a counterfeit STM32, it's honestly not that bad. Very much like an ESP32 without 802.11, just as far as goes. It IS weird that they call it an "IoT chip" bc it seems, like I said, squared up to be an ESP32 alternative just. without the internet. for the things lol. tbh, if they get decent platformio support they would be *extremely* decent.

Also, great review, glad The Algorithm turned me onto your channel! happy to sub.

[d.jensen]

Thank you for your research, expertise, topic selection, and outstanding delivery. I loved this video!
If I could use this board with the same facility I can an Arduino Nano or Blue Pill, I'd order 50 today.

[sv]

Great Video ! - gave me a lot of info. Thanks for posting it.
Got me interested in these great chips. Bought 40 of them. Building an assortment of projects now. Simple and easy to use.
- Had it downloaded, compiled, and running on the chips in less than 2 hours. Posted some of my code on the web just a week later.
Gpio Speed is FAST 10-80Mhz depending on Pin, (while esp32 Gpio is slow 10mhz Max for any pin)

[favesongslist]

Side comment
Its insane how much functionality can be ship half way around the world, when in the UK if I tried to obtain just the bare PCB would cost more let alone any components and then assembled.

[bepstein]

chown doesn't make stuff read only, it reassigns the owner user/group of a file. the -R in that command just means "do it recursively"
chmod would be for making stuff read-only

[buddysnackit]

Very good. I wish they had a two thumbs up button!

[conorstewart]

I bought a few of these boards, definitely a mistake. So much hassle to get it to work and not a great microcontroller, the specs are a bit lacking. Just go for a Pi pico or a blackpill, the STM32F411 one, not the F401 one. You can even get an esp32 for a similar price, better support, two cores and the same clock speed with much more flash possible and a crazily complicated chip that will do anything you ever need a microcontroller to do with wifi and bluetooth.

[ridvanffm]

Will you review the W801? It is in sale at aliexpress.

[CTCTraining]

Fascinating... although I did smile when you said that it was targeted at the Chinese market and hence a small user community 😀

[timsteele]

Why would you use this board when for about the same price you can get an esp32-c3 super mini with USB C, wifi, bluetooth, and excellent development tools?

[fifaham]

The question is what is the life time of this board? How about the company that makes the board, how stable it is? Have they sold this board in large quantities?

[fredrikbergquist]

It is a faff to setup but I think it is fun! What IDE are you using, is it Visual Code on Linux?

[Malenhagen]

When you choose microcontroller, you choose between price and easy to use. Arduino is very easy to use, but its super expensive for that specs. Its super hard to use but its the most cheaper you can get.

[RixtronixLAB]

Nice info, keep it up, thanks for sharing :)

[MaxC_]

That seems like a lot of hassle. I'd say ESP12F or 8266 is my go to if I need the cheapest board that works. Personally get the bare modules for 1.5$ each on sale or 2.5$ for a ESP8266 D1 mini or Node MCU(though I prefer bare modules instead). Has both wireless and enough GPIOs for a lot of stuff.
Bought a few dozen of them recently on sale for 1.2$ and they have been the best boards in terms of compatibility and price for me. Insane how much value they are plus how tiny they are

[saturnring]

Really wish I had seen this before buying them! I thought they were just another pi-pico or esp-type board with great specs

[nurlantanatar]

I saw your last videos about rpi zero 2 w and if you mind could you please review radxa zero board because it got the same form-factor as rpi, but more powerful.