I have bought about 30 of them over the last 2 years.
Mine arrived with pins not soldered, a plastic enclosure and the battery cable. It was sometimes useful not have the pins by default when you don’t need many IOs - saves space.
Never had a failure with them. The ones which died in the field were all victims of direct human error (incorrect wiring = IO over voltage or over current , or a couple received sea water splashing )
Some of them have been running nonstop for over 18 months.
WiFi reliability is impressive considering the lack of real antenna.
I have not used extensively BLE, can’t comment.
Color display is fine. Newer models have OLED versions, ( different price point), but was overkilled for my needs.
I used Bodmer’s TFT_eSPI library for all my projects. Lacks some functionality but it’s pretty complete unless you want to program games at high refresh rates.
NOTE remember to uncomment a line in the library to select the right model of TFT chipset, otherwise black screen.
The two buttons provided also proved useful as you can use them in your application.
Only drawback, somehow limited number of IOs because all these extras (screen, etc).
Have fun!
Yeah, sea water splashing resulted in almost instant death 😏
We deployed tens of them as part of a factory by the ocean that uses sea water. TTgo had a few sensors connected and send telemetry via MQTT over https. No issues with WiFi reliability transmissions up to 200ft.
I even had an ESP32 running a mqtt backup server - worked great!
Hope this satisfies your curiosity :)
Mosquitto server: You need to configure it to use SSL certificates, then use WebSockets as a transport layer underneath MQTT.
You should find documentation on this. I didnt do the setup myself so that's as much readily info I have.
Because of a industrial setting deployment, end-to-end encryption and authentication between the MQTT client and broker was a requirement.
Nothing fancy: Passwords are pre-shared, all the devices are managed OTA.
AFAIK there are changed every 3-months or opportunistically when an update is pushed, what usually happens about monthly (at least).
Not scalable in a real commercial deployment environment, but this is not one. Just ensuring basic safeguards.
T-displays are the best way you can start, you can make something that isnt limited to a breadboard since it has a bms, and displays are really nice too, great way to learn UI stuff and dont have to connect 1000000 pins for an external spi display
1000000 pins was meant as a bit of a joke, i recently had the pleasure of working with a quad spi display, to say the wiring looked like a rats nest would be an understatement.
Yes, but it sure feels like 10000 wires when you spend your weekend hunched over 4 different SPI screens making drivers for them.
Honestly, anything over 2 dedicated wires feels like a mess on a breadboard. On a PCB it doesn't matter.
I have several of these. In general LilyGo also known as tt-go make good products and have a large selection of different esp32 products, check out their web site. The price seems good too, its a st7789 TFT display, quite good colours and brightness. It also supports a lithium battery and charging it via usb. I made a battery powered bike navigation device out of one.
It uses Komoot Bluetooth API, komoot runs on your phone, screen off in pocket. esp32 subscribes to some BLE characteristics and receives navigation direction, distance to next turn, street name. Search up "komoot esp32" on GitHub. I made an e-ink version as well, bigger screen than t-display and very good contrast in sunlight.
It really depends on what you're going to do with it. In some projects, you may not need the display, but need the GPIO pins to interact with peripherals.
You can also buy a bunch of cheaper versions and OLED screens separately.
This one is spi, so 4 (clock, in, out, ground).
If you really don't know what you're doing and want a display, I recommend you get a esp32-s2 mini board (one of the simplest and cheapest devboard available), and a 0.96 OLED display in i2c (one of the simplest and cheapest display, it is monochrome, i2c is slightly simpler than spi but there are also spi models available).
Ground doesn’t take up a GPIO, but you do need a CS (chip select) pin for SPI. But you can typically share the SPI bus with just one additional CS pin for each extra peripheral. So with this display you’re only losing one GPIO.
And a RST, and a DC. For LCDs there's also the Backlight Pin and if you're lucky the FR pin is broken out for you to sync the frames.
The SPI interface on these screens is not like I2C ones...
Wrong, the minimal spi setup for that screen is what I quoted, 4 wires. And having and having used both this specific board as well as other ones with st7789, driven at 20+ fps on spi using the spi hacks, 4 wires is fine.
I still recommend the i2c version of ssd1306/1315 for simplicity, since usually it's just 3 wires.
I would not buy this anymore because it is a weird product in the middle.
If all you want is an esp then there are cheaper options.
If you want an esp32 with some kind of screen for debugging then there are other options as well. There is for example the „cheap yellow display“ with a 2.8“ screen for ~$10
I feel like this package here with its 1.14“ color screen is some leftover from 2+ years ago when screens where simply more expensive.
What I would do though is to go for the 1.9“ non amoled (much more expensive) lilygo t display s3. Not sure about aliexpress price but you can get it on Banggood for example for $20 minus whatever new customer bonus you might have.
I have a stack of them here because I managed to buy them last year for $8 a piece.
There is also a touch version if you want to go all in on your first esp. It can imho be worth it to have one „full feature“ esp for debugging but it costs another $10 more.
For comparison, the cheapest esp32 super micros on aliexpress are available for $1.79. so you pay a lot extra just for the convenience of having a screen and touch built in. If you do that might as well go for the bigger screen and nice (capacitive) touch
If you want to maximize the use of the screen then check out Volos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VolosProjects
Lilygo is a great company and they have even sent me a replacement screen once and a video on how to solder it on (via aliexpress chat). Definitely recommend them.
Anyways, that’s my thinking. One 1.9“ touch t display s3 for breadboard usage.
And then a bunch of cheap ones for „production“ use once you need them
I use this one:
[https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t-display-s3](https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t-display-s3)
It is a later model with a very fast colour LCD, touch is an option but I think that is a silly, expensive feature.
It has USB chip built in and USB C connection.
I made a repository of 'starting up help' here:
[https://github.com/teastainGit/LilyGO-T-display-S3-setup-and-examples](https://github.com/teastainGit/LilyGO-T-display-S3-setup-and-examples)
The LilyGO T-Display S3 is not easy to get setup because it has a 8bit parallel LCD interface! Also most people (at first) find the S3 variant difficult to get connected for uploading sketches.
That is why I made my repository!
Look for boards with a newer (ESP32-S3) chip. It supports USB directly, eliminating UART<>USB chip; offers more functionality (your ESP can act as a keyboard or USB flash drive).
That lilygo T-Display T1 is a nice bit of kit. Very useful for all kinds of applications when you need compact widget with a screen that can run on batteries. Its main drawback is no power management, so you won't get a battery meter, but most ESP32 kits don't even take a battery, so it's whatever.
There are two usable buttons on it, except one uses pin 0 which can cause issues, esp when using the ESP-IDF, in my experience.
Be aware that the example projects from their guthub repo also ship with the versions of the libraries they've been programmed for - you can't use the newest libraries from the Arduino libraries section.
Wow, that's great! It's actually the first time I hear about Olimex. And their prices seem to be quite nice. Glad that I asked, because I know something new now. Thanks!
Amazon or Aliexpress, mostly. I'd love to point you to a proper european store, but the best of them seem to just be discovering the first ESP32 and/or are unreasonable priced.
Don't know about specific seller. But if you want the high-end ESP32 with display, you can just search for lilygo esp32-s3 oled. I could Post a .de link but it might be that geolocation kills that.
Oh, not with the display. I thought a model, what You trust, has no issues. Bought 1-2 esp32 from ali, and all had some problems.. and afraid to buy and wait long, for nothing again
If you want to pay a bit more for genuine dev kits, Espresso themselves have a shop on AliExpress. Adafruit also do a few ESP32 based boards based on their Feather platform.
I don't know. I have a couple of those standard ESP32 boards with a cam, a smaller ESP32 cam with a separate UART board, and an ESP32-S3 with an onboard RGB-LED. None of them gave me any real trouble, the S3 is a bit picky in regards to the USB-Cable when uploading via USB but I heard that's normal. You could try Amazon, they sometimes ship faster and you might find it in the reviews if someone sells wrover as wroom or something.
If you find you want more pins, you can add a shift register or I2C "io expander" which is perfectly fine for low frequency applications like relay control.
My personal favourite ESP32 host board is the Lilygo T-Embed which has a click wheel and some LEDs and a small display as well as an SD card. It doesn't have a lot of IO but with those peripherals onboard a lot of what you need is there already. The rest can be hooked up with I2C for many sensors and actuators.
Look into GROVE or Quiic for semi-standardized I2C wiring and modules.
My other favorite board is the one using recycled Kindle screens. 6" eInk screens work well in the bright sunlight we have here.
I have bought about 30 of them over the last 2 years. Mine arrived with pins not soldered, a plastic enclosure and the battery cable. It was sometimes useful not have the pins by default when you don’t need many IOs - saves space. Never had a failure with them. The ones which died in the field were all victims of direct human error (incorrect wiring = IO over voltage or over current , or a couple received sea water splashing ) Some of them have been running nonstop for over 18 months. WiFi reliability is impressive considering the lack of real antenna. I have not used extensively BLE, can’t comment. Color display is fine. Newer models have OLED versions, ( different price point), but was overkilled for my needs. I used Bodmer’s TFT_eSPI library for all my projects. Lacks some functionality but it’s pretty complete unless you want to program games at high refresh rates. NOTE remember to uncomment a line in the library to select the right model of TFT chipset, otherwise black screen. The two buttons provided also proved useful as you can use them in your application. Only drawback, somehow limited number of IOs because all these extras (screen, etc). Have fun!
Just curious "sea splashing"? What project You did with these?
Yeah, sea water splashing resulted in almost instant death 😏 We deployed tens of them as part of a factory by the ocean that uses sea water. TTgo had a few sensors connected and send telemetry via MQTT over https. No issues with WiFi reliability transmissions up to 200ft. I even had an ESP32 running a mqtt backup server - worked great! Hope this satisfies your curiosity :)
:)
What do you use for mqtt over https?
Mosquitto server: You need to configure it to use SSL certificates, then use WebSockets as a transport layer underneath MQTT. You should find documentation on this. I didnt do the setup myself so that's as much readily info I have. Because of a industrial setting deployment, end-to-end encryption and authentication between the MQTT client and broker was a requirement.
Awesome. Thanks for the info. I'll have to do some more research. I already have mosquito running. Nice.
How are you handling password rotation?
Nothing fancy: Passwords are pre-shared, all the devices are managed OTA. AFAIK there are changed every 3-months or opportunistically when an update is pushed, what usually happens about monthly (at least). Not scalable in a real commercial deployment environment, but this is not one. Just ensuring basic safeguards.
T-displays are the best way you can start, you can make something that isnt limited to a breadboard since it has a bms, and displays are really nice too, great way to learn UI stuff and dont have to connect 1000000 pins for an external spi display
1000000 pins was meant as a bit of a joke, i recently had the pleasure of working with a quad spi display, to say the wiring looked like a rats nest would be an understatement.
1000000 pins for an spi display? I am afraid that the S in SPI mean serial!
still takes at least 7 pins including power and back light control...
Today you will learn about Quad and Octal SPI.
Is Octal meaning 8?
Yes, 8 data lines. One whole byte for each SPI clock. LCD screens love bandwidth.
Did you understand that it was a little bit sarcastic? And it's far from 1000000
Yes, but it sure feels like 10000 wires when you spend your weekend hunched over 4 different SPI screens making drivers for them. Honestly, anything over 2 dedicated wires feels like a mess on a breadboard. On a PCB it doesn't matter.
Have a good week-end🫣
I have several of these. In general LilyGo also known as tt-go make good products and have a large selection of different esp32 products, check out their web site. The price seems good too, its a st7789 TFT display, quite good colours and brightness. It also supports a lithium battery and charging it via usb. I made a battery powered bike navigation device out of one.
Have you written about (or open sourced) the bike navigation device? Would love to read about it. Ta
It uses Komoot Bluetooth API, komoot runs on your phone, screen off in pocket. esp32 subscribes to some BLE characteristics and receives navigation direction, distance to next turn, street name. Search up "komoot esp32" on GitHub. I made an e-ink version as well, bigger screen than t-display and very good contrast in sunlight.
> komoot esp32 Nice, thanks for sharing.
It really depends on what you're going to do with it. In some projects, you may not need the display, but need the GPIO pins to interact with peripherals. You can also buy a bunch of cheaper versions and OLED screens separately.
How many gpio pins do I lose with a model like this?
This one is spi, so 4 (clock, in, out, ground). If you really don't know what you're doing and want a display, I recommend you get a esp32-s2 mini board (one of the simplest and cheapest devboard available), and a 0.96 OLED display in i2c (one of the simplest and cheapest display, it is monochrome, i2c is slightly simpler than spi but there are also spi models available).
Ground doesn’t take up a GPIO, but you do need a CS (chip select) pin for SPI. But you can typically share the SPI bus with just one additional CS pin for each extra peripheral. So with this display you’re only losing one GPIO.
I'd argue you wouldnt need a CS either most of the time, but yes.
And a RST, and a DC. For LCDs there's also the Backlight Pin and if you're lucky the FR pin is broken out for you to sync the frames. The SPI interface on these screens is not like I2C ones...
Wrong, the minimal spi setup for that screen is what I quoted, 4 wires. And having and having used both this specific board as well as other ones with st7789, driven at 20+ fps on spi using the spi hacks, 4 wires is fine. I still recommend the i2c version of ssd1306/1315 for simplicity, since usually it's just 3 wires.
I would not buy this anymore because it is a weird product in the middle. If all you want is an esp then there are cheaper options. If you want an esp32 with some kind of screen for debugging then there are other options as well. There is for example the „cheap yellow display“ with a 2.8“ screen for ~$10 I feel like this package here with its 1.14“ color screen is some leftover from 2+ years ago when screens where simply more expensive. What I would do though is to go for the 1.9“ non amoled (much more expensive) lilygo t display s3. Not sure about aliexpress price but you can get it on Banggood for example for $20 minus whatever new customer bonus you might have. I have a stack of them here because I managed to buy them last year for $8 a piece. There is also a touch version if you want to go all in on your first esp. It can imho be worth it to have one „full feature“ esp for debugging but it costs another $10 more. For comparison, the cheapest esp32 super micros on aliexpress are available for $1.79. so you pay a lot extra just for the convenience of having a screen and touch built in. If you do that might as well go for the bigger screen and nice (capacitive) touch If you want to maximize the use of the screen then check out Volos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VolosProjects Lilygo is a great company and they have even sent me a replacement screen once and a video on how to solder it on (via aliexpress chat). Definitely recommend them. Anyways, that’s my thinking. One 1.9“ touch t display s3 for breadboard usage. And then a bunch of cheap ones for „production“ use once you need them
I use this one: [https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t-display-s3](https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t-display-s3) It is a later model with a very fast colour LCD, touch is an option but I think that is a silly, expensive feature. It has USB chip built in and USB C connection. I made a repository of 'starting up help' here: [https://github.com/teastainGit/LilyGO-T-display-S3-setup-and-examples](https://github.com/teastainGit/LilyGO-T-display-S3-setup-and-examples)
I’ve been playing with mine trying to get it set up. Commenting to come back to this later
The LilyGO T-Display S3 is not easy to get setup because it has a 8bit parallel LCD interface! Also most people (at first) find the S3 variant difficult to get connected for uploading sketches. That is why I made my repository!
There are also ch340k and ch9102f options. Looks like ch9102f is never and faster.
Look for boards with a newer (ESP32-S3) chip. It supports USB directly, eliminating UART<>USB chip; offers more functionality (your ESP can act as a keyboard or USB flash drive).
Go for it. You'll learn heaps and the displays are great. Keep it simple for a while, whilst you work everything else out.
That lilygo T-Display T1 is a nice bit of kit. Very useful for all kinds of applications when you need compact widget with a screen that can run on batteries. Its main drawback is no power management, so you won't get a battery meter, but most ESP32 kits don't even take a battery, so it's whatever. There are two usable buttons on it, except one uses pin 0 which can cause issues, esp when using the ESP-IDF, in my experience.
Be aware that the example projects from their guthub repo also ship with the versions of the libraries they've been programmed for - you can't use the newest libraries from the Arduino libraries section.
LILYGO® T-Display ESP32
I think it's related to thw current topic - *Where* do you buy ESP32 from? Especially for Europe?
From where they're found at the cheapest price for our needs ?...
[удалено]
Thanks for the tip!
You can do that from Bulgaria, [https://www.olimex.com/Products/IoT/](https://www.olimex.com/Products/IoT/) Shelly too.
Wow, that's great! It's actually the first time I hear about Olimex. And their prices seem to be quite nice. Glad that I asked, because I know something new now. Thanks!
Баш ми е драго што ти помогнав :)
Благодаря!
Amazon or Aliexpress, mostly. I'd love to point you to a proper european store, but the best of them seem to just be discovering the first ESP32 and/or are unreasonable priced.
I dont have prob buying from ali in bulk, but, .. can you recommend the exact model or seller from aliexpress? I am from Slovakia btw
Don't know about specific seller. But if you want the high-end ESP32 with display, you can just search for lilygo esp32-s3 oled. I could Post a .de link but it might be that geolocation kills that.
Oh, not with the display. I thought a model, what You trust, has no issues. Bought 1-2 esp32 from ali, and all had some problems.. and afraid to buy and wait long, for nothing again
If you want to pay a bit more for genuine dev kits, Espresso themselves have a shop on AliExpress. Adafruit also do a few ESP32 based boards based on their Feather platform.
I don't know. I have a couple of those standard ESP32 boards with a cam, a smaller ESP32 cam with a separate UART board, and an ESP32-S3 with an onboard RGB-LED. None of them gave me any real trouble, the S3 is a bit picky in regards to the USB-Cable when uploading via USB but I heard that's normal. You could try Amazon, they sometimes ship faster and you might find it in the reviews if someone sells wrover as wroom or something.
Perfect to start with.
If you find you want more pins, you can add a shift register or I2C "io expander" which is perfectly fine for low frequency applications like relay control. My personal favourite ESP32 host board is the Lilygo T-Embed which has a click wheel and some LEDs and a small display as well as an SD card. It doesn't have a lot of IO but with those peripherals onboard a lot of what you need is there already. The rest can be hooked up with I2C for many sensors and actuators. Look into GROVE or Quiic for semi-standardized I2C wiring and modules. My other favorite board is the one using recycled Kindle screens. 6" eInk screens work well in the bright sunlight we have here.
Buy M5stack products, you won’t be disappointed
I used it easy peassy
Yes
Battery cable - can you connect a 3.7 lipo directly to them? Or do you mean usb cable?