What is the ESP32 board and how to set up it with Arduino IDE?
Hello and welcome back. In this tutorial, we will learn What is the ESP32 board and how to set up it with Arduino IDE. For that, I used the LED blink example. I think it’s a good example for beginners.
What is an ESP32 board?
If your familiar member of Nodemcu ESP8266, I don’t think this will be a new experience for you. So, let’s focus only on what we need to know. If you want to learn more about these boards, please search on Google.
We can see different types of development boards that include the ESP32 chip, and they are manufactured to be used for various tasks. You can choose it according to your need. For example, if you want to get the video through the board, you can use an ESP32 camera development board. It depends on your requirements. Also, each of these boards includes WIFI, Bluetooth (Bluetooth Low Energy) and includes a dual-core 32-bit microprocessor. You can see the different types of ESP32 development boards below.
In this tutorial, we will use the ESP32 DEVKIT V1 development board. Also, this board is manufactured with the ESP WROOM-32 chip included and we can see two versions of this board on the market. That is,
- ESP32 DEVKITV1 30 pin
- ESP32 DEVKIT V1 36 pin
But both of these boards are operated in the same way and differ only in the number of pins. Also, I will hope to use this 30-pin included board in this lesson series.
- If you want to learn about the Nodemcu ESP8266 board, please use this link.
OK, let’s see the specifications of these boards.
- Processor — Tensilica Xtensa® Dual-Core 32-bit LX6 microprocessor
- Cores – Dual core
- Architecture — 32-bit
- Clock — 80 to 240 MHz adjustable clock
- ROM — 448 KB
- SRAM – 520KB
- Flash memory – 4MB
- WIFI — 802.11b/g/n HT40
- Bluetooth — 4.0 (BLE/Bluetooth Smart) and Bluetooth Classic (BT)
- Power — 2.2V to 3.6V / 600mA
- Peripherals — Capacitive touch, ADC (analog to digital converter), DAC (digital to analog converter), I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit), UART (universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter), CAN 2.0 (Controller Area Network), SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface), I2S (Integrated Inter-IC Sound), RMII (Reduced Media-Independent Interface), PWM (pulse width modulation),
- PINs – 30 or 36 pins
PIN diagram of the ESP32 DEVKIT 30 pin board
Ok, let’s set up this board with Arduino IDE and create a LED Blink project step by step. The required components are listed below.
- ESP32 DEVKIT V1 board x 1(30 pin) — Amazon / Our Store
- LED bulb x 1 — Amazon / Our Store
- 220-ohm Resistor x 1 — Amazon / Our Store
- Male to Male jumper wire x 2 — Amazon / Our Store
- Breadboard x 1 — Amazon / Our Store
Disclosure: These Amazon links are Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Step 1
Firstly, identify these components.
Step 2
Secondly, place these components on the breadboard. After that, connect them. For that, use the circuit diagram below.
Step 3
Thirdly, connect the ESP32 board to the computer, and let’s set up the Arduino IDE for this board. For that follow the instructions below.
- First, include the additional board manager URL to the Arduino IDE. It’s as follows.
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/gh-pages/package_esp32_index.json
- And then, install the ESP32 boards to the Arduino IDE.
Ok, Arduino IDE is ready for the ESP32 boards.
Step 4
Now, let’s create the program for the LED blink project. For that, you can use a simple LED blink example. It is as follows.
- Full details of this project — Download
#define LED 2 // define the LED bulb
void setup() {
pinMode(LED,OUTPUT); //Set the LED pin as output pin
}
void loop() {
digitalWrite(LED,HIGH); // LED bulb on
delay(1000); // delay time
digitalWrite(LED,LOW); // LED off
delay(1000); //delay time
}- Then, select the correct board and COM port. If the COM ports are not visible, please install the CP2102 drivers on your computer. You can download it using the link below.
- CP2102 driver download
- Now, click the upload button. Meanwhile, when “Connecting” is displayed on the console, please press and hold the boot button for 2 or 3 seconds. Then release it. Now you can see the program upload process. Also, you should do this process every time you upload programs.
OK, now you can see the LED on and off with a 1-second delay.
What is the ESP32 board and how to set up it with Arduino IDE?
