Hackaday · Creativity & design

Vim Runs Directly on Microcontrollers

The text editor Vim has been ported to run as firmware on ESP32 microcontrollers, creating a minimal computing platform focused on text editing and scripting.

ESP-Vim boots directly into the Vim editor on an attached screen, offering filesystem and Git access, along with MicroPython support.

This setup essentially turns a microcontroller board into a small computer for working with text files and basic scripting.

The project requires an ESP32-S3 or P4 board with 16 MB of Flash and at least 8 MB of PSRAM.

Several boards meet these specifications, including a version of the Cheap Yellow Display with an S3 chip.

Users can connect a Bluetooth keyboard to interact with the system.

The usability of ESP-Vim is yet to be fully determined, but the Vim interface was originally designed for slow terminals, suggesting potential suitability for these resource-constrained platforms.

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