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As a thanks for participating in the ESP32 mesh network project by Morgan and Ben, people whose badges became nodes on the network were generously gifted the ESP32 module mounted to each of our badges. Unfortunately, I managed to damage mine before the big stage demo so sadly I didn't put in the honest work to earn that ESP32. Still, I now have a damaged ESP32 that I can try to fix.

Before I start trying to fix it, though, I should have a better idea on how to tell if a ESP32 is up and running. The only mechanism I had before was to run the badge mesh network app and see if there's any response, but I want to know more about how a ESP32 works in order to better tell what's broken from what's working. Also - since I've desoldered my ESP32 from the carrier board, it is not nearly as easy to test it against the badge.

I've read about a lot of projects built using the ESP32 on Hackaday, so I know it's popular for and it would be cool to add it to my own project toolbox. Given its popularity, I thought it wouldn't be a problem to find resource on the internet to get started.

I was right, and wrong. There is no shortage of information on the internet, the problem is that there's too much information. A beginner like myself gets easily disoriented with the fire hose of data presented by ESP32.net.

Do I start with Espressif's own "ESP-IDF" development framework?

Do I start with an Arduino-based approach to ESP32 development?

Do I start with Amazon's tutorial for how to use an ESP32 with AWS?

How about other individual tinkerer's adventures on their own blogs? Here's one person's initial report poking around an ESP32, including using an oscilloscope to see how quickly it can change output based on input. And here's another Hello World, and there are many more blogs covering ESP32. (Soon including this one, I suspect.)

It's going to take a while for me to get oriented, but it should be fun.