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ESP32

Articles related to lessons learned or projects built using Espressif ESP32 devices. This page lists all posts in the category, in reverse chronological order.

• Note: An AI Generated pill displayed in the list below indicates that the post description displayed on the page was generated from the post content using Generative AI (GenAI). The post content itself was written by a human (me).

• NeoPixel Stick Mounting Issues

  Posted Thursday, May 15, 2025 at 07:28 AM  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT), Project Builds
  

  In yesterday's post about mounting Adafruit NeoPixel Stick devices in a line, I made the following comment: "But, the folks at Adafruit didn't feel the need to make this easy." For this post, I thought I'd explain why I said that.

• Mounting Multiple NeoPixel Sticks in a Line

  Posted Wednesday, May 14, 2025 at 05:48 PM  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT), Project Builds
  

  This post describes a 3D printed device I use to mount multiple Adafruit NeoPixel Sticks together in a line. I had a friend create it for a project I'm working on.

• Mounting Breadboard-friendly NeoPixels

  Posted Sunday, March 16, 2025 at 06:11 AM  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT), Project Builds
  

  I build a lot of projects using Adafruit's NeoPixels. They dramatically simplify the process of wiring multiple LEDs into a project, requiring only three wires between each NeoPixel rather than two wires and a resistor to each LED. This article explains an issue I discovered with mounting Breadboard-friendly RGB Smart NeoPixel in a project and the solution I found for resolving it.

• USB 3.0 Cable Power Switch

  Posted Sunday, March 2, 2025 at 01:37 PM  in Project Builds, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  On a couple of projects lately I found myself repeatedly plugging and unplugging microcontrollers to/from my development system. This happens most frequently when writing faulty code for an ESP32 device and, when the compiled code runs on an ESP32, the code Panics and repeatedly reboots the device - panicking every time it restarts.

• Cloud Function Certificate Issue

  Posted Tuesday, February 18, 2025 at 07:53 PM  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  After publishing my M5StackC-Plus Cloud Function Execution example, I used it for about a week before it just stopped working one day.

• ESP32 Request Repeater With Sleep

  Posted Tuesday, February 18, 2025 at 06:46 PM  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  In my previous post I described how to put an ESP device to sleep (allowing it to wake up later). I used a sample sketch I created, ESP32 Request Repeater (HTTP), to show how it works.

• Putting an ESP32 Device to Sleep

  Posted Sunday, February 16, 2025 at 08:15 AM  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  While playing around this week with a hardware project, I decided to spend some time learning how to use Sleep modes in an Arduino project on an ESP32 device. It turns out that it's not that hard to do, but you really have to pay attention to a couple of things as you code your project. In this post, I demonstrate how to build an Arduino project that sends a HTTP request to a remote server, puts the device running the sketch asleep for a few minutes, then wakes up and does it again until the device loses power.

• ESP32 Parroting Web Server

  Posted Saturday, February 15, 2025 at 08:41 PM  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  I'm working on a version of my Pumpkin LED Controller for the Unihiker M10 single board computer. Web and mobile apps have a variety of issues when connecting to a web server running on an ESP32 device (as I wrote about in Accessing an Arduino ESP32 Web Serverand Pumpkin Controller Native Apps for Windows) and I think a device like the Unihiker may provide a way around them.

• M5Stack M5StickC-PLUS Garage Door Opener

  Posted Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 05:26 PM  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  In ESP32 HTTP Client Request with JSON Body I demonstrated how to call a remote API from an ESP32 device; in that example, the request body passed content in JSON format to the server. As I described in that post, I built that sample because I wanted to be able to build an ESP32 garage door opener and that was a stepping stone for me to this project.

• Playing Around with Info Orbs

  Posted Saturday, February 8, 2025 at 08:59 AM  in ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  A while back, I learned about this ESP32 project called Info Orbs; it's a simple project that pairs 5 1.8 inch circular displays with a simple stand and some pretty cool software. The kit seems to be designed as a first project for people interested in getting into Arduino; it requires a little bit of soldering and the entire software configuration and deployment process runs in Visual Studio Code. The assembly instructions are simple and easy to follow.

• ESP32 HTTP Client Request with JSON Body

  Posted Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 06:57 AM  in ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  A few weeks ago I published an article called ESP32 Connect Using HTTPS that demonstrated how to build an Arduino sketch for the ESP32 platform that connected to a remote server using TLS (HTTPS). I wrote that article because I wanted to learn how to connect to a REST API running on a server online and I knew that most (all) modern API servers required TLS.

• ESP32 Connect Using HTTPS

  Posted Wednesday, January 22, 2025 at 07:02 AM  in ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  As I described in my previous post, I'm working on a project where I'm using an M5Stack device to interact with a Google Firebase Function I have running in the cloud. As I started planning my project's code, I realized that the SSL (HTTPS) requirement Firebase Functions forces on applications would be a problem for me.

• Automated Public Cert to Arduino Header Conversion

  Posted Monday, January 20, 2025 at 07:59 PM  in ESP32, Raspberry Pi, Internet of Things (IoT), Web Development
  

  AI Generated   I was working on a project using an M5Stack device to interact with a Google Firebase Function, but I ran into an issue with the SSL requirement. After exploring different options, I found that ESP32 devices could send HTTPS requests, but required the server's public cert embedded in the code. To simplify this process, I created a web app called Cert2Arduino that automates the conversion of public certificates into Arduino-compatible code.

• Accessing an Arduino ESP32 Web Server

  Posted November 19, 2023  in Internet of Things (IoT), ESP32
  

  The third (and, I think, final) article in this series. In this post, I show the different options for connecting to the ESP32 web server highlighting the limitations and restrictions that apply to make your life miserable.

• Using UDP Broadcast to Synchronize Actions Across Arduino Devices

  Posted November 5, 2023  in Arduino, ESP32, Raspberry Pi, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  Describes a way to synchronize actions or activities across multiple Arduino devices using UDP (broadcast and receiver).

• Arduino UDP Broadcast Receiver

  Posted November 2, 2023  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT), Flutter
  

  I created an Arduino sketch that implements an UDP broadcast receiver which allows me to control multiple Arduino devices simultaneously from a mobile app.

• Glowing Pumpkin Project Refresh

  Posted August 30, 2023  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  Years ago I published a several Glowing Pumpkin projects: Arduino Glowing Pumpkin and Arduino Glowing Pumpkin (Adafruit Feather). Both projects used Arduino compatible devices plus either one of the Adafruit multi-NeoPixel devices or a NeoPixel shield. The shield approach was easy because I just had to solder some male and female headers to the boards and press them together into a unit. My first project used the NeoPixel Ring which required soldering wires and running them into an enclosure where the Arduino device resides.

• Arduino ESP32 Web Server on a Processor Core

  Posted August 27, 2023  in Internet of Things (IoT), Arduino, ESP32
  

  The second article in this series, describes in detail how to run a web server in an Arduino project on the Espressif ESP32 microcontroller.

• Arduino ESP32 Running Tasks On Multiple Cores

  Posted August 25, 2023  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  This article demonstrates how to assign different tasks to separate processor cores using the Arduino platform and multiple core microcontrollers. I always wanted to learn how to do this, but the examples on the web are so full of ads that I wanted to publish a version with no advertisements as a super clean example.

Header image: Photo by Hamed Taha on Unsplash