Qualcomm has finally released evaluation kits for its QCC74xM series of low-power wireless modules, more than a year after the silicon itself was announced. The boards bundle Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth Low Energy 5.4, and 802.15.4 (Thread and Zigbee) radios into a tri-radio package built around a 32-bit RISC-V core, and they list at just $13.12 (€12) on DigiKey. The bare modules drop even lower, from under $3 to $4.75 (€2.75 and €4.40) in single quantities.
The more interesting story is what is actually inside the chip. Documentation from the Zephyr Project shows that the QCC74x series is largely equivalent to the Bouffalo Lab BL61x family, specifically the BL618. That makes the QCC74x effectively a Qualcomm-branded RISC-V MCU running at up to 325 MHz with an FPU and DSP, 484 KB of SRAM, 128 KB of ROM, and 16 MB of stacked NOR flash. The flagship QCC748M adds 8 MB of stacked pSRAM, MJPEG video encoding up to 720p, a DBI display interface, DVP camera input, and audio I/O, while the QCC744M and QCC748M both expose a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet MAC over GPIO.
Across the three variants, the radio side is identical: 2.4 GHz 802.11ax 1x1 Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth LE 5.4 with coded PHY, and 802.15.4 for Thread and Zigbee, with first-class Matter support over both Wi-Fi and Thread. PSA Certified Level One security, secure boot, on-the-fly AES decryption for XIP QSPI, and a TRNG round out the hardware. Connectivity on the EVK itself includes a USB Type-C port for the UART console and programming, dual-row GPIO headers exposing up to 32 pins on the QCC748M, plus CAN bus, dual UART/I2C, SPI, ADC, DAC, PWM, and JTAG. Each model is offered with either a PCB trace antenna or an RF connector for an external one. Operating range is the standard industrial -40 to +85°C (-40 to +185°F).
The software stack is hostless, meaning the chip runs both the wireless protocols and the application firmware without a companion MCU. Qualcomm provides a FreeRTOS-based SDK on CodeLinaro along with a VS Code extension, and the Bouffalo Lab heritage means the QCC744M EVK is already an officially supported Zephyr board, with a community RFC in the upstream Zephyr project actively tracking expanded BL61x peripheral driver coverage including GPIO, I2C, and USB. The shared silicon also puts the Bouffalo Lab-maintained bouffalo_sdk within reach as a complementary open-source toolchain. One gap worth knowing: the CodeLinaro SDK currently marks Zigbee and Bluetooth Classic as unsupported in its peripheral table despite the hardware capability, a limitation that surfaces in the Bouffalo Lab SDK as well (as noted in this open issue), so developers targeting those stacks will need to watch for community progress in the near term. Qualcomm's quick start guide walks through the toolchain setup for new users. With ESP32-S3 and ESP32-C6 modules sitting in the same price and feature bracket, the QCC74xM gives makers and IoT vendors another open-SDK, RISC-V option to evaluate.
