Overview

The ESP-32 is a great development board to start one's electronics journey. Its affordable, accessible, and awesome! I wanted to share what I have learned so far in using the ESP-32 in a comprehensive guide that explains everything from the ground up.
Microcontoller programming can feel like a lot of copy-pasting and not much understanding, that's why a guide that tries to involve the reader well beyond just providing code is so valuable. I took inspiration from SIK Guide for the Arduino, and began creating the ESP-32 Starter Guide. In making this guide I got to re-explore basic concepts and write fun projects. The guide is made in Figma for a consistent design and tries to incorporate graphics to make itself more accessible to younger audiences. Infact, the motivation to create such a guide was to supplement a kit I gifted to a young learner.
GitHub Repository Guide Releases

Tool Used

ESP-32Microcontoller

Micro-PythonProgramming Language

MPY-JamaMicro-Python IDE

FigmaGuide Designing

TinkercadCircuit Layout

Electronics ComponentsInterfacing With ESP-32

Approach

To help others understand electronics, I first wanted to get my understanding clear. That's why before starting to write, I did a lot of reading through articles, and other guides. I made a map of all the main topics to cover in the index and started to fill them out one by one. The goal was to create a polished book of sorts that did not feel like it was just written in a Word document, so I decided to use Figma Slides to create pages with consistent styles manually constructed a good-looking layout. When it came to the ESP-32 MicroPython part, I wanted to explain each step of the process clearly, hence I tended to introduce concepts from the ground up. As mentioned before, the target audience are enthusiasts in the age group 10-14, so I established a pattern of breaking down topics to the lowest level within the scope of the guide to give more detailed insights that interest the readers instead of boring them.

Learnings

Obviously writing this guide strengthened my fundamentals in electronics, but while working on this I also gained a new sense of appreciation to textbook development commitees and guide authours. I feel its easy to critisise bad book design in terms of content and layout but when actually presented with an ever evolving scope, managing to gather and fit content becomes a tedious task. I think working on the guide might have been more fun for me than the readers, since I got to explore Micro-Python for the first time, and found inspiration for future projects along the way.

Next Steps

Firstly, I want to complete the guide. Its too good of a project to leave indefinitely in the unfinished work-in-progress bin, and seems to have an actual deliverable (something not many of my projects have). Once I finish writing all the projects and upload the example code to GitHub, I would like to start refining and editing the content. Currently, it feels like everything is over-explained, but at the same time there is an urge to fill in gaps between topics. I would like to work in a more streamlined manner to actually end up with the booklet I had imagined, being a clear, crisp but detailed and interactive guide.