ESP32 thing LED lights

SparkFun ESP32 Thing remote controlled lights

This repo is a instruction manual on how to use the Sparkfun ESP32 Thing to control LED Light strip. The advantage of using the ESP32 Thing is that you have access to both WiFi for remote control and Bluetooth (BT 4.0) for local control.

Why the SparkFun ESP32 Thing?

Sparkfun has made it very easy to use the ESP32 from out of the box. One of the biggest painpoints when developing with the ESP32 is the need for a programmer and to handle the power surger carefully. The ESP32 Thing board takes care of everything so you can focus on programming. Best yet it has I/O to plug a LiPo battery for when you are done with your sktech or you can power it through USB.

My Favorite Features of this board

3 SPI interfaces
3 UART interfaces
Two I2C interfaces
2 digital-to-analog converters (DAC)
Two I2S interfaces
Power 2.2V - 3.6V / direct to usb 5V
Wifi 802.11 b/g/e/o
WPA/WAP2
Bluetooth 4.2 / BLE
on board Temperature Sensor
on board HAll Sensor
520kB internal SRAM
4MB external flash
Dual-core 32 bit

Bill of Materials

Hardware

Sparkfun ESP32 Thing
5V LED Strip
Micro USB B Cable

Software

Arduino IDE
FTI Drivers (USB-to-serial converter)

For Windows

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-install-ftdi-drivers/windows---quick-and-easy

For Mac

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-install-ftdi-drivers/mac

Add theESP32 to the Arduino IDE Boards Manager

https://dl.espressif.com/dl/package_esp32_index.json

Install the ESP32 Core (Advance) - Espressif's official ESP32 Arduino core

git clone https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32.git esp32

(Optional) BLE Scanner App --> I recommend nRF Connect from Nordic available for both iOS and android

Setting up the ESP32

Set baud rate to 115200.

Recomended Reading

If you are unfamiliar with the ESP32 Thing here is a quick 101 document on it.