Take Your IoT Projects Outdoors with M5Stack's ToughC5

What happened

The ToughC5 is an upgraded version of the company's original TOUGH board that launched in 2021. M5Stack's ToughC5 packs an ESP32-C5, Wi-Fi 6, Zigbee, Thread, and a touchscreen into a rugged, weather-resistant enclosure for $49.90.

Most development boards are designed to work under ideal conditions, but things get a little more complicated when your project needs to operate outdoors. Rain, dust, temperature changes, and sunlight can quickly turn otherwise reliable hardware into a pile of e-waste.

M5Stack's new ToughC5 tackles that problem by packing an ESP32-C5, touchscreen, and plenty of connectivity options into a weather-resistant enclosure that is ready for deployment in the field. While the previous model used an ESP32 microcontroller, the new version is built around an updated ESP32-C5 with a single-core 32-bit RISC-V (a chip instruction set anyone may use without a licence fee) processor running at up to 240 MHz.