I have been doing Arduinos and tinkering with electronics for 5 years (at the time of this paper’s writing). I have encountered some interesting sensors and modules that I found useful. In this post, I will make a list of these items and provide a short description of what they do.
Table of contents
Open Table of contents
Modules
The modules section includes things like microcontrollers and dev boards with microcontrollers.
The ESP32
Probably the most popular type of microcontroller among hobbyists. Cheap, and packed with capabilities. However beware when buying. There are multiple types of this microcontroller. This section is dedicated for ESP32 SOCs not dev boards that you probably will be buying.
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ESP32: The default flavor of ESP32. Has wifi, bluetooth, hall sensors, touch pins, I2S, I2C, UART, SPI. Useful for normal projects and low power projects. Usually comes on a dev-board about 7cm long. ARM based.
- Pros: Feature packed, relatively low powered. Lots of GPIO pins. Has 1 normal power core and 1 low power.
- Cons: Does not fit on a normal breadboard (The ESP32 is too wide to fit on a normal breadboard. You have to use jumpers to connect) It only supports bluetooth 4.2 (usually enough for most applications). It also is a little on the older side, being released in 2016.
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ESP32-C: A new type of ESP32. It is based on the RISC-V architecture instead of the ARM architecture. It is ESP’s newer generation of ESP chips. Has wifi, bluetooth, I2C, I2S, UART, SPI. Since it runs on the RISC-V architecture, it takes less power to use. The newest generation of this chip, the ESP32-C6 (released 2023) has support for Zigbee and Matter network connectivity along with wifi-6 (2.4 and 5ghz).
- Pros: Low powered, new, has different connectivity options.
- Cons: Does not have that 2nd ULP core, which limits it from going into sleep modes. The newest chips may not have the best support in the Arduino board library released by Espriff.
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ESP32-S: Another type of ESP32. It is another ARM based ESP32. It has wifi, tons of GPIO (43), touch sensors, I2S, I2C, UART, SPI. It is useful for projects that need high computing power. The ESP32-S3 chip has a coprocessor specifically intended for AIOT (artificial intligence powered IOT devices) devices.
- Pros: Can run machine learning models, strong processing ability.
- Cons: Doesn’t have Bluetooth.
WeMos S2 Mini
The S2 Mini is a small microcontroller dev board released by WeMos. It is quite small and is great for projects that require small form factors. As the name implies, this board is based on the ESP32-S2 SOC. This board is not breadboard friendly, having two rows of GPIO pins which makes plugging it into a breadboard impossible.
Sensors
Useful:The BME/BMP series of sensors (BMP180, BME280, BME680, BME688)
These sensors are a part of a series of sensors released by Bosch. These sensors are a go to when you need to get temperature, pressure and different parameters. These sensors all use I2C (0x77 or 0x76) to communicate and usually operate on 3.3V, but most of them have a internal voltage regulator so can be powered off 5V. Bosch offers a proprietary library for processing data on their newer models. Library
- BMP180: The oldest one out of the family. Can measure temperature and pressure.
- BME280: Measures temperature, pressure, and humidity.
- BME680: Measures tempreature, pressure, humidity, and air quality (gasses)(needs the propritary library).
- BME688: Measures tempreature, pressure, humidity, air quality, and a few other parameters. It supports machine learning.
Useful:SI5351
The SI5351 is a handy module that can be used to generate different clock signals for most of your projects. It comes in very handy compared to finding a crystal oscillator for the frequency.
Interesting: 24GHz RF Human Presence Module
WIP