$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: AliExpress (affiliate): https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_9wkeTf Our SDK and toolchain setup notes are available here: https://learnembeddedsystems.co.uk/hlk-w806-microcontroller-board-tools SDK is available here: https://github.com/IOsetting/wm-sdk-w806 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: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEB5F4gTNK69qQvB2R7Kc3uC8k6kzGBuX You can find more embedded systems tutorials and projects on my website https://learnembeddedsystems.co.uk -- Equipment I use regularly -- The following links are affiliate links where I may make a small percentage on qualifying sales through these links. Use the respective UK or US links listed. Budget Soldering Iron: UK: https://amzn.to/3pQpvUu US: https://amzn.to/3bBawIJ Breadboards: UK: https://amzn.to/3solZCe US: https://amzn.to/3dGsHiS Jumper Cables: UK: https://amzn.to/37JfToi US: https://amzn.to/3r384S9 Camera: UK: https://amzn.to/3qKLwFr US: https://amzn.to/3pK0V7C Lens: UK: https://amzn.to/380lQxp US: https://amzn.to/3knH3WL Tripod: UK: https://amzn.to/37H0Nzw US: https://amzn.to/3byKHsV All videos and tutorials on this channel and mentioned websites are for educational purposes only.