HiLetgo ESP-WROOM-32 ESP32 ESP-32S Development Board 2.4GHz Dual-Mode WiFi + Bluetooth Dual Cores Microcontroller Processor Integrated with Antenna RF AMP Filter AP STA for Arduino IDE

There are cheaper ESP32 boards out there, but this one is worth the extra cost. The WiFi receiver in this little board is awesome. I get good connectivity throughout my entire house (I tested it as some reviews for other ESP32 boards complained about bad WiFi reception). This is a good one!Using it with an LD2410 for presence detection. Quick and easy setup in Home Assistant & ESPHome. Got a great project box for this and it looks so cool sitting on the desk! There are so many fun projects for ESP32. If you are considering a board, get one from Hiletgo. It’s great.

I've purchased one of the HiLetgo ESP-WROOM-32 ESP32 ESP-32S Development Boards. The board works great and it looks well built. I liked the readable schematics too.However, when I use an external 3.3V power supply to power the board, my code won't run. The 5V red led turns on and the IO2 blue led keeps blinking. When I disconnect the external power supply and use the USB cable, everything works fine. If you don't plan on using an external power, it seems to work fine. In my case, I may have to look for another manufacturer.I've submit a support request w/ HiLetgo and will update this review if there's a solution to this issue.Updated on 6/11/23It turned out there was a cold solder joint on my own board (not HiLetgo's) that was causing the issue. I was able to identify the problem on my own but HiLetgo did respond to my inquiries. I'm changing the rating to 5 stars and will be buying more boards!

I am not good at programming, and I don't use the Arduino IDE app. If you re going to use this board it is a bunch easier to load VS-code and PlatformIO. Then take the time to learn how to write C++ code, Or steal code from everywhere else and modify it, like I do.I bought these controllers for the onboard IOT capabilities and the Bluetooth-BLE. As I have played with them I have found they are pact full of usefulness. I have been able to create a BME680 weather station that works through Thingspeak, A wireless relay, A DHT11 weather alarm, and several other projects.I used to use Arduino UNO's for most of my projects writing in the Arduino IDE. But since I loaded PlatformIO, I have learned so much more about library management and code assignment.. It is really worth the migration. Plus, if your interested in coding in general the VS Code is a great place to learn. It has so many good features that help you in your coding...You are obviously buying the Amazon products, and when the sensors aren't what you thought, or the LED strip isn't exactly how you foreseen it to be, and finding the right library to use with them is a hassle, the PlatformIO extension usually has the right library for your framework. PIO uses both ESP-IDE framework, and Arduino-IDE Framework so you have the ability to code the ESP32's in either format..In all the are a pain to work with, but they are so much more versatile than Most Arduino products, and not even as pricey as a PI..

Flashed without issue and set up an internet connection. Works great for my JD's garage CNC plasma table build!

First, I am a total noob at this sort of thing. The board and the software all work fine once you puzzle it out. I decided to go with the platformio and JTAG debug method. This offers many hours of problem solving and googling just to get the blinky and hello-world examples to work reliably. I would take careful notes about a setup that seem to work then hours later I would get oodles of connection error messages/link errors/compile errors for what seemed like the same arrangement.Some items of interest:I assumed that I should see COM ports in order for this to work NOT SO. The debugger device fools you it does have a COM port but if you do it correctly it has some USB port instead BUT that only works on interface 0. You will become friends with ZADIG.Some pins are special at power on - surprise GPIO12 !Although the JTAG debugger board has COM port it seems like it cannot be used while debugging or uploading ?? I had to use a separate USB - USART dongle so you need to USB cables. If you don't want to move little wires around.The slightest change to anything (with a few exception) causes 100s of little programs to be recompiled taking several minutes. Does the Win 10 Antivirus like that ? no way - it is going to slow that down for you.Trying to remove some of the fancy WIFI, BlueTooth, HTTP code just for a little testing seems near impossible.Careful with that platformio.ini else many hours of puzzlement.

I received a HiLetgo ESP32 board on Dec 31 2017. They are packaged quite well securely which I guess qualifies as "unfriendly" but better safe than sorry with these little gadgets. If you use Arduino IDE you will have to install the board library for this hardware using either git or downloading and manually extracting the zip file. If you ever dabbled with the little sister of this one (ESP8266) you should be able to get this done, although it is not quite as easy (no board manager as of 12/31/2017).After about 30 minutes setup I was off and running. Currently running a burn in test, requesting a page repeatedly. No errors and connects to the network fine so the fundamentals of this board appear good after about 18 hrs of continuous operation.In the past I spent a lot of time trying to interface one of the tiny ESP8266 modules with an Arduino, even with logic level converters in place and things communicating the whole thing feels rickety. The all in one ESP8266 modules are nicer but lack GPIO for any heavy lifting. GPIO wise the ESP32 gets closer to an Arduino UNO board than the ESP8266. Great for remote sensor monitoring/logging, display panels.The Adafruit HUZZAH32 boards are a little more feature rich and more expensive. Unless you use the specific features like battery charging these boards will be a dominant player IoT tool kit, either way a great addition.