MicroPython Forum (Archive)

Forum moderators: could we get a new forum under "Boards Running MicroPython" for ESP32 boards?
(and maybe also one for STM32 boards)

Which ESP32 development board are you using?
WiPy 2.0, ESP32 Thing, Feather HUZZAH ESP32, NodeMCU-32s, bare ESP-WROOM-32 chip, other?
I purchased one of the Wemos Lolin32 (ESP-WROOM-32) boards.

Loads of info here: http://esp32.net/

mcauser wrote:Forum moderators: could we get a new forum under "Boards Running MicroPython" for ESP32 boards?

Nick has also requested this of Damien in ESP32 Issue 20. I'm sure he'll get to it soon!

mcauser wrote:Which ESP32 development board are you using?

I've only just received one of the ESP32-DevKitC boards but haven't yet had a chance to play with it...

I have had this Olimex ESP32 Dev board in my mail today. Will report back soon when i got some spare time.

[quote=]Which ESP32 development board are you using?[/quote]

Hi

just some cheap Ali Boards sold as
ESP32 Development Board WiFi+Bluetooth Ultra-Low Power Consumption Dual Cores ESP-32 ESP-32S Board (Yellow pin welding)
work perfectly

WiPy 2.0 and Adafruit ESP32 Huzzah

Brand new here... so be gentle.

I played with 8266 a bit but life intervened. Just received an Espressif ESP32 devKitC for $16 US last week (Amazon).

After a LOT of learning from the community(ies), I finally have Windows 10 running Virtualbox->guest(Ubuntu 16.04 LTS) and successfully built the toolchain with MicroPython. After missteping on QIO/DIO in ../esp32/makefile, and running ampy with putty listening - I finally have also created a flashed main.py with a blinky.

My son was completely underwhelmed.

As for me, I am looking forward to learning more and making some feet-wet-projects while I consider how I will use this cool tool to... do something more than blink?

Looking into basic webserver as means to connect with phone and do simple board control from there with no internet involved (i.e. bidirectional phone-to-board comms). Ope to any other suggested means. I am not a huge bluetooth fan, but what do I know?

@chale
welcome. you might want to consider using MQTT. This is a resource efficient protocol for machine to machine communication. It handles all kind of problems for you already. Furthermore, it is a standard and you will find apps for mobile phones as well as a lot of projects to try.
However, it requires a central server architecture. That server is small compared to usual standards. It could be installed on your host PC. or on a Raspberry Pi. I suggest to look into 'mosquito', as it is for now the most common MQTT server. Some sort of home automation is a good starting point.


As for the dev environment you might quickly notice that a native Linux installation on a machine works best. Maybe on a dedicated machine or as dual boot.
Internet browsing for information, a terminal and the dev environment is all you need and all this works well under Linux and Windows. However, as you start to dive deeper into hardware related projects you might notice that Windows and Linux differ in terms of methods to use and that a virtual machine adds another set of complexity on its own. Thus, don't be frightened to use Linux directly.

Furthermore please be aware that the ESP32 port is rather new. There is still a lot of work to do and bugs might plaque you.
For references ever MP enthusiasts should have a pyboard ready to use as test platform. Beside that a lot of effort went into the esp8266 branch. Thus you might get some of those boards as well.

Enjoy

Having introduced a bunch of newbies to Micropython recently, one of the most popular tasks was to play with a Neopixel ring. Although it still boils down to just blinky lights, they are pretty fancy blinky lights!

Otherwise, especially if your son is a little older, robotic-style operations would be next. Operate servos or motors. Have an accelerometer or gyro feed in data and move the servo/motors based on that input.

Damien's live demo from PyCon AU did just this; he walks through how to connect a gyro to control a servo and it only takes a few minutes.

Tangible movement in the real world seems to impress kids...

If your son uses social media much another idea could be to watch their feed - Twitter feeds are particularly easy to connect to. For example, if something new appears in their feed, blink a light or 'spin' the Neopixel ring. I guess then idea here is to latch on to something your son does anyway and use the device to complement his activity.

If your son uses social media much another idea could be to watch their feed - Twitter feeds are particularly easy to connect to. For example, if something new appears in their feed, blink a light or 'spin' the Neopixel ring.

I've been working up to connecting meaningfully to Twitter from an ESP8266 board, via a bunch of JSON parsing work, working through some Twitter Auth and HTTPS support. Is there an easier way than what I have been trying? If you have any resources you can point me to, that would be very useful.