M5Stack at embedded world 2026 gave us a useful booth-level look at how the company’s modular IoT development platform has grown from stackable ESP32 controllers into a broader set of prototyping and deployment tools. Allen Chao, Director of Sales and Marketing at M5Stack, walked us through the familiar 5×5 cm stackable idea, the Stick and Core families, Home Assistant and local AI demos, LoRa communication setups, industrial control panels, the ESP32-P4-based Core P4, and an AI accelerator module for Raspberry Pi.

M5Stack at embedded world 2026 Video

Elektor has covered the M5Stack ESP32 approach before: M5Stack is not only selling small maker boards; it is trying to make modular embedded systems feel closer to finished products.
 

Stackable ESP32 Hardware, but Bigger

The approach begins simply: Start with a compact controller that already has a display, buttons, battery, sensors, and expansion connectors, then add modules instead of building everything from loose boards and jumper wires. In the interview, Allen says M5Stack now has around 400 SKUs, including more than 200 sensor SKUs, and keeps up a rapid “Friday Release” cadence. The value is not only the ESP32 module itself, but the shelf of compatible displays, sensor units, LoRa modules, industrial bases, and enclosures around it.
 

M5Stack modular hardware display showing stackable ESP32 controllers, Stick modules, Atom boards, sensor units, Cardputer, StampPLC, PowerHub, and Tab5.
M5Stack’s display board shows the company’s modular ecosystem of ESP32-based controllers, sensors, expansion modules, and panel devices.

The demo also shows how broad the family has become. The Home Assistant demo combines ESP32-based sensing and display hardware with local control. The AI box shown runs tasks such as image recognition, object detection, and gesture detection locally, which is the right direction for smart-home and industrial monitoring projects that should not depend on a round trip to a cloud service for every decision. The emphasis is practical rather than magical: Put enough computing close to the sensor, keep the interface visible, and make the system easy to assemble.

LoRa, Industrial Panels, and Edge AI

The wireless demos are a good example of M5Stack’s modular style. A set of boards communicates over LoRa, including sensor nodes and a central panel, with data shown locally and sent across the link. The booth also included the Arduino Nesso N1, developed with M5Stack, and LoRa-capable modules such as the Unit C6L. Those pieces follow the same general idea: Build a small network first, then turn it into something useful for remote monitoring, automation, or off-grid telemetry.

On the industrial side, M5Stack showed panel-style hardware with digital input and output, power and PoE-style modules, and stackable expansion. That is where the “toy or tool?” question gets interesting. The hardware is approachable enough for makers, but the form factor, display, modular I/O, and ODM angle make it relevant for light industrial control, test fixtures, environmental monitoring, and quick human-machine interfaces. It is not a replacement for every PLC cabinet on Earth, and nobody sensible should pretend otherwise. But it is a neat middle ground between a bare dev board and a finished controller.

The M5Stack booth also underlined the growing pull of edge AI. The Raspberry Pi accelerator shown in the video is in the same family as M5Stack’s AI-8850 LLM Accelerator M.2 Kit, which brings a 24 TOPS accelerator to Raspberry Pi 5 through an M.2 card and Pi HAT adapter. Combined with ESP32-P4-based controllers such as the Tab5 IoT terminal, M5Stack is clearly aiming at developers who want compact hardware for sensing, UI, connectivity, and local intelligence without designing the whole stack from scratch.

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