In this article, we’re going to compare several ESP32 development boards. The aim of this article is to help you choose the best ESP32 development board for your project requirements.
The ESP32 is the ESP8266 successor. The ESP32 is loaded with lots of new features. It combines Wi-fi and Bluetooth wireless capabilities, and it’s dual-core. You can find the ESP32 as a standalone module or as a full-featured development board. There are lots of ESP32 development boards available.
How to Select an ESP32 Development Board??
Pin configuration and the number of pins. To properly use the ESP32 in your projects you need to have access to the board pinout. Make sure you have access to the pinout of the board you’re getting. Otherwise, you may end up using the ESP32 incorrectly. We recommend taking a look at our ESP32 GPIO Reference Guide that shows how to properly use the ESP32 GPIOs.
USB-to-UART interface and voltage regulator circuit. Most full-featured development boards have these two features. This is important for easily connect the ESP32 to your computer to upload code and apply power.
Boot and Reset buttons.
Battery connector. If you want to power your ESP32 using batteries, there are development boards that come with connectors for liPo batteries.
Extra features. There are ESP32 development boards with extra features like an OLED display, a LoRa module, a battery holder, or a camera.
| Sl No. | Image | Name | No. of Pins | Flash Size | On - Buttons | Bluetooth & Wifi |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | Esp Wroom 32 | 38 | 32 Mb | Enable and Boot | Yes |
| 2 |  | Esp Wroom 32 NodeMCU Board | 30 | 4 Mb | Enable and Boot | Yes |
| 3 |  | Esp Wroom 32 U NodeMCU Board | 38 | 4 Mb | Enable and Boot | Yes |
| 4 |  | Esp Wroom 32 D NodeMCU Board | 38 | 4Mb | Enable and Boot | Yes |
| 5 |  | ESP32 CAM Development Board | 16 | 32 Mb | NIL | Yes |
| 6 |  | ESP32 WeMos Lolin Board | 26 | 4Mb | NIL | Yes |
| 7 |  | ESP32 TTGO T-Call v1.3 /v1.4 | v1.3 - 41 pins v1.4 - 38 pins | 4Mb | Enable | Yes |
| 8 |  | ESP32 TTGO with 1.14″ LCD Display | 24 | 4Mb | Reset | Yes |
Esp32 Wroom 32 NodeMCU Board
ESP32-WROOM-32 is a powerful, generic Wi-Fi+BT+BLE MCU module that targets a wide variety of applications, ranging from low-power sensor networks to the most demanding tasks, such as voice encoding, music streaming, and MP3 decoding. At the core of this module is the ESP32-D0WDQ6 chip*. The chip embedded is designed to be scalable and adaptive.
There are two CPU cores that can be individually controlled, and the CPU clock frequency is adjustable from 80 MHz to 240 MHz. The chip also has a low-power co-processor that can be used instead of the CPU to save power while performing tasks that do not require much computing power, such as monitoring of peripherals. ESP32 integrates a rich set of peripherals, ranging from capacitive touch sensors, Hall sensors, SD card interface, Ethernet, high-speed SPI, UART, I²S and I²C. ESP32-WROOM-32 has 38 pins.
WROOM-32 serves as a good reference for when you program. It is important to pay attention to General Purpose Input / Output (GPIOs), that is, programmable data input and output ports, which can still be an AD converter or a Touch pin, such as GPIO4, for example. This also occurs with the Arduino, where the input and output pins can also be PWM.
Esp32 Wroom 32 NodeMCU Board
This is the Esp32 Wroom 32 NodeMCU board. There are two versions of this board, with 30 and with 36 GPIOs. Both work in a similar way. I prefer the version with 30 GPIOs because it comes with two GND pins (however, it’s been difficult to find the version with 30 GPIOs available online). Also, even though the other model comes with more GPIOs, the extra ones are not recommended to use (they are connected to the ESP32 integrated flash memory).
The pins are labeled at the top of the board, so it is easy to identify the pins to connect peripherals. It comes with on-board RESET (EN) and BOOT buttons. Additionally, it comes with a USB-to-UART interface, so that you can easily program it using Arduino IDE or other development environments, and comes with a voltage regulator circuit. The board can be powered using the micro-USB connector, or the VIN or 3.3V pins and it doesn’t come with a battery connector.
Esp Wroom 32 U NodeMCU Board
ESP32-WROOM-32U is a powerful, generic Wi-Fi+BT+BLE MCU module that targets a wide variety of applications, ranging from low-power sensor networks to the most demanding tasks, such as voice encoding, music streaming, and MP3 decoding.ESP32-WROOM-32U has 38 pins on board, users who found a shortage of pins in the other esp32 pins can buy this version of the ESP32.
ESP32-WROOM-32D is the most similar to ESP-WROOM-32 since it also comes with a PCB antenna, while ESP32-WROOM-32U is much smaller as it relies on an external WiFi/Bluetooth antenna via u.FL connector. Both new modules are pin-to-pin compatible with ESP-WROOM-32
At the core of this module is the ESP32-D0WD chip that belongs to the ESP32 series* of chips. The chip embedded is designed to be scalable and adaptive. There are two CPU cores that can be individually controlled, and the CPU clock frequency is adjustable from 80 MHz to 240 MHz.
Esp Wroom 32 D NodeMCU Board
ESP32-WROOM-32U is powerful, generic Wi-Fi+BT+BLE MCU modules that target a wide variety of applications, ranging from low-power sensor networks to the most demanding tasks, such as voice encoding, music streaming and MP3 decoding. ESP32-WROOM-32U has 38 pins on board, users who found a shortage of pins in the other esp32 pins can buy this version of the ESP32.
ESP32-WROOM-32D is the most similar to ESP-WROOM-32 since it also comes with a PCB antenna, while ESP32-WROOM-32U is much smaller as it relies on an external WiFi/Bluetooth antenna via u.FL connector. Both new modules are pin-to-pin compatible with ESP-WROOM-32
At the core of this module is the ESP32-D0WD chip that belongs to the ESP32 series* of chips. The chip embedded is designed to be scalable and adaptive. There are two CPU cores that can be individually controlled, and the CPU clock frequency is adjustable from 80 MHz to 240 MHz.
ESP32 CAM Development Board
ESP-32 CAM can be widely used in various IoT applications. It is suitable for home smart devices, industrial wireless control, wireless monitoring, QR wireless identification, wireless positioning system signals and other IoT applications. It is an ideal solution for IoT applications.
ESP-32 CAM adopts a DIP package and can be directly inserted into the backplane to realize rapid production of products, providing customers with high-reliability connection mode, which is convenient for application in various IoT hardware terminals.
ESP32 WeMos Lolin Board
The WeMos Lolin32 OLED is a development board with ESP32 and a built-in 0.96 inch 128×64 I2C OLED display. This is perfect to add some sort of feedback to your projects without worrying about the circuitry.
ESP32 (WROOM32) is already an integrated antenna and RF balun, power amplifier, low-noise amplifiers, filters, and power management module. The entire solution takes up the least amount of printed circuit board area.
ESP32 TTGO T-Call v1.3 /v1.4
The TTGO T-Call is an ESP32 development board that combines a SIM800L GSM/GPRS module. Besides Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, you can communicate with this ESP32 board using SMS or phone calls.
Additionally, you can connect the ESP32 to the internet using your SIM card. This is great for IoT projects that don’t have access to a nearby router via Wi-Fi. Compared to the version of v1.3, the v1.4 has speaker pins and mic pins on them.
ESP32 TTGO with 1.14″ LCD Display
This is TTGO board is based on the ESP32-D0WDQ6 Wifi Module comes with a built-in 1.14inch display and also it has an onboard battery connector and battery management system. The board has an onboard USB Type – C connector which can be used to provide power and to upload code to the ESP32.
All the components used in this article are readily available on our website. Please visit: PROBOTS to buy any components you need to kickstart your project.