I am using this board to monitor some sensors and upload the results to a Firebase realtime database. Getting this working, especially connected to the wifi went way faster than I was expecting.

There were a few quirks with getting hello world running though. What worked in the end for me was:

• Install Arduino IDE
• Go into preferences and add the following board manager (not the normal sparkfun one): https://raw.githubusercontent.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/gh-pages/package_esp32_index.json
• Install the esp32 board manager
• Select "ESP 32 Dev Module" as the board
• Change "Upload Speed" to 460800
• Change "Flash Frequency" to 40 MHz
• Change "Flash Size" to 16 MB
• Start flashing and when you see "Connecting........_____" push and hold the "boot" button until the program starts flashing

Ready-to-go for low power logging with Qwiic sensors, and a full featured general purpose dev platform.

For logging-- grabbing the time on boot over wifi via ntp after setting a timezone will allow you to place the ESP32 in deep sleep and maintain accurate time with the RTC without having to make subsequent (or frequent) ntp re-syncs. By maintaining the pin state on the chip and software-disabling the Qwiic bus you can further reduce power consumption during sleep. I'll set these devices to grab a few measurements off chained Qwiic sensors and write to the SD card (please continue including these onboard, Sparkfun!) and find the whole assembly can run for days off a small LiPo.

I've made fairly extensive use of this device's features and haven't had a single issue- it's been perfectly reliable for an experimental product. Very nicely done, SparkX, keep 'em coming!

Had trouble getting SD card to mount. Finally, saw the small print at bottom of description text: Select ESP development board for programming. Had been following the hook-up instructions for the non C version which uses the Adafruit Feather board selection. Still, there seems to be some glitchy operation. When uploading code I have seen frequent timeouts requiring recompiling code and disconnecting the USB cable from my computer (seems to connect after this board restart). Hopefully, it will be easier going from here out. Also tested BLE and it seems to work as expected.

The CP2102 USB<>Serial bridges on the other Things all have unique serial numbers so if you have more than 1 connected to a host at the same time, you can tell them apart. You can even reprogram the serial numbers yourself with a small utility. This Thing uses a CH341 which comes with a burned-in serial number of "1a86_USB_Serial" on all devices which makes it impossible to tell them apart. Apparently the bridge needs an external flash device to store a custom serial number and the Thing doesn't have one. It's not a deal breaker by any means but it does mean a little more work to keep track of them while they're connected to a host.

Trouble free, plug and play boards. Well adapted to our device and technology. Very are a very happy and satisfied customers