Arduino library is very limited
about 6 months ago by Brad10 verified purchaser
I looked forward to trying out this board as a general IoT board, but I’m not a fan of the not-yet-finished
Arduino library for the board.
Carefully read what isn’t yet supported for Arduino, and decide whether the board is worth the price based on
what features you can use in Arduino (assuming you’re an Arduino developer).
Last I read, there’s no Arduino BLE support or analog I/O support, and the WiFi library for Arduino has no
Server or UDP support. Those omissions really reduce the value of the board for me.
On the plus side, I love the “just plug a battery in” battery support.
Looks like it will be a winner board, once the software shows up.
1 of 1 found this helpful:
Serious hardware issues - look elsewhere
about 5 months ago by Member #1102822 verified purchaser
These boards have serious hardware issues. Bluetooth connections are unreliable at best and, as another
review mentioned, wifi is pretty much unusable. Although the esp32 supports both 26 MHz and 40 MHz crystals,
all the espressif development teams testing seems to be done on a 40 MHz crystal and there are plenty of
forum posts on the esp32 forum indicating that 26 MHz crystals cause wifi/Bluetooth issues. This sparkfun
board uses a 26 MHz crystal. I don’t know if this is the issue or not, but either way I would not buy these
boards. I have since purchased boards that use the ESP-WROOM-32 module and everything works without
issue. I normally like buying from Sparkfun because everything is open source and generally well documented,
so it was quite disappointing that this board performed as poorly as it did. I wasted a lot of development hours
debugging what I thought were software issues.
The esp32 chip itself is a pretty cool device if you’re comfortable working in the espress-if development
environment.
1 of 1 found this helpful:
Arduino Core Not Finished, but its an Exciting Platform
about a year ago by Member #15617 verified purchaser
The combination of Bluetooth and Wifi in this device makes possible interesting applications involving mobile
apps and IoT.
That said, as a previous reviewer pointed out, the Arduino Core isn’t finished – but, it’s a start. I’m using a Mac
and didn’t have any problem following the instructions to install the core, connecting the ESP32, and
programming. I appreciate not having to pull out my FTDI cable since the USB/Serial interface is built in.
Programming from the Arduino IDE happens reliably without pressing a reset button for me. However, after
programming, to run the program I do have to press reset. Not a huge inconvenience, but …
Release notes for the Arduino Core mention that WiFi Client/Server aren’t working fully yet. Though, digital i/o,
interrupts, Serial, SPI, Wire, and WiFi are generally working. No mention of Bluetooth, cap-sense, encryption or
other features on the ESP32 being supported yet.
So, all said and done, I’m pleased with this “Thing” and looking forward to exploring its possibilities. Though, in
the near term, I might look into installing the espressif toolchain instead of relying exclusively on the Arduino
Core.
1 of 1 found this helpful:
nice board
last year by Member #637011 verified purchaser
Nice board.
Support software works tolerably well under linux. At this point, the environment is good for advanced users. It
helps I’ve been using freertos for years.
2 of 2 found this helpful:
Nice, especially with LiPo support
about a year ago by Member #363108 verified purchaser
I placed several orders for ESP32 based boards, Sparkfun shipped this in just a few days. Still waiting for the
rest. It works just fine, and I especially appreciate the LiPo support circuitry. I don’t use the Arduino IDE and
could care less about it – the “idf” (new name for the sdk?) for C programming works great.