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 Compatible with Arduino IDE (3PCS)

Used one of these to replace the control box for one of the big box store's animated Christmas trees that decided not to work anymore. Instead of trashing the tree, I cut the old control box off and replaced it with one of these ESP32 boards loaded with WLED. 3D printed a box for it and now it works again. I have easier and a lot more control with more animations to choose from using the WLED app on my phone or web interface on a PC. Now I'm researching more LED setups for Xmas and other holidays.

I picked these up to make a cheap COB LED strip smart. It only came with an RF remote which is not sustainable. They arrived without documentation, but that isn't a problem for me. My will is stronger than that. They arrived sealed in antistatic bags and looked new. The onboard USB port is a micro USB. I used it to flash WLED and setup wifi. I powered the board and the LED strip from the same power source because they used the same voltage. Then, I used a GPIO pin to communicate with the light strip. It was easier than I thought it was going to be. A heat sink is not recommend because the ESP chip does not produce much heat. They do not include a display. The quality is fine for my purposes. If you are just getting started with something like this, read the WLED site or ESPHome. Step 1. The website will flash the firmware for you.

All three ESP32s worked and the price was very reasonable.

These were the first ESP32s I ever bought, so I didn't really know what I was looking at or for, but they ended up working very well. As I learned more, I realized there are many different types, and it was hard to know what type this was. As someone else mentioned, I ended up using esptool command line tool. Here is what I got in hopes it makes someone's else's journey a little easier. Based on documentation, best I can tell this is the original ESP32 Series, not the S series. Here is what esptool tells me about mine: Chip type: ESP32-D0WD-V3 (revision v3.1) Features: Wi-Fi, BT, Dual Core + LP Core, 240MHz, Vref calibration in eFuse, Coding Scheme None Crystal frequency: 40MHz That confusion aside, they worked great for what I needed, they came package well, with Styrofoam pads protecting the pins and all 3 were in working order. Deducted 1 star for the confusion around knowing exactly what you are getting.

Using these with home assistant. A lot of different use cases. In my case I use at a Bluetooth proxy with home assistant. This allows me to know where my phone is in my home so I can automatically turn on lights depending on location

It's a bit complicated to set up, but it works awesome!

Two of the three I ordered no longer connect to WiFi after a month. They drop the connection even when right next to my router. Happens intermittently for a few minutes, then drops off the network entirely unless rebooted. After several power cycles, I’m lucky to get them reconnected for a minute or two. One even stopped connecting via serial port to my computer. I have several others from other manufacturers being used in the same fashion, and I’m only having issues with this bunch. It’s a minor financial loss, but I’ve spent hours prototyping devices and projects that I eventually soldered before installing them, and now I’ve spent many more hours troubleshooting only to realize that it’s not me, it’s the hardware. Consider purchasing from another seller and manufacturer, even if they cost a few dollars more. Thankfully I should be able to desolder and swap in some more reliable boards.

I bought five of these to make as bluetooth proxies for my Home Assistant Green. It was fairly trivial. Go to the ESPHome website. Install the appropriate driver for your system (CP210x Universal Windows Driver X64 for Windows 11 in my case), plug in the device to a USB C (assuming you got the USB C version). Flash it, add your wifi credentials and add it to your Home Assistant. Maybe 5 minutes for my first one. Then you can just distribute them all over the house. Obviously this little computer can do a lot of other things, but I can guarantee this works for this without any difficulty at all. I'll have to figure out some kind of case, and I am adding POE to USBC adapters to each so I can just stick them up by my switches in various rooms.

Really useful microcontroller

I had a few old Chinese addresses able rgb strips that just had a very basically controller and crappy power supplies. Install WLED on this board and now all the strips are smart light strips and they perform better than some of the other branded RGB led strips.

Am able to connect sensors and host a server on it!

Ok

Great for my daughters uni project