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bkpsu / NodeMCU-Breakout-Board

NodeMCU breakout/dev/carrier board, useful for finalizing your NodeMCU projects into complete packaged designs, or just for testing/development.
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ESP32 support #2

Open moose4lord opened 6 years ago

moose4lord commented 6 years ago

One thing I wish the v1.1 breakout board had is compatibility with ESP32. Although there seem to be a few incompatible development boards available for the ESP32 (36 pins), there's one made by DOIT that's pretty similar to the NodeMCU. It shares the same 30-pin form factor and the Vin/GND/3v3 pins at the bottom of the dev board. See here.

Here's the kicker. The width of this dev board is between the NodeMCU 0.9 and the NodeMCU 1.0. The NodeMCU 0.9 spans all 10 pins of a standard breadboard, the NodeMCU 1.0 is thinner, spanning 8 pins, and the ESP32 spans 9 pins. I was hoping the breakout board could accommodate the ESP32 like this:

 |--- NodeMCU 0.9 ---|
 |----- ESP32 ------|
  |-- NodeMCU 1.0 --|
ooo                 ooo row 1
ooo                 ooo row 2
 .                  .
 .                  .
 .                  .
ooo                 ooo row 15

But alas, the rows of vias for the NodeMCU 1.0 are offset vertically just a smidge from the vias for the 0.9, so my ESP32 can't use the 0.9 vias on one side and the 1.0 vias on the other. It would be nice if all the vias were aligned.

Maybe it would be easier to arrange the vias like so:

 |--- NodeMCU 0.9 ---|
  |----- ESP32 ------|
   |-- NodeMCU 1.0 --|
oooo                 oo row 1
oooo                 oo row 2
  .                  .
  .                  .
  .                  .
oooo                 oo row 15

Also, the 3v3 and GND pins in the middle of the NodeMCU dev boards aren't there on the ESP32, so that would have to be dealt with using jumpers or solder blob bridges maybe. Just thinking out loud.

moose4lord commented 6 years ago

Copied from @bkpsu's previous response:

While I like the idea of supporting the ESP32 board, I just think it's too different and pin-incompatible. For example, the 3v3/Gnd pins I use for my I2C OLED screens on the bottom right are now 3v3/CLK pins on the ESP32 board. The A0 analog input on NodeMCU is an "EN" pin on the ESP32, etc...I don't mind creating a new flavor of the breakout board, geared toward the ESP32, and the board you mentioned is definitely one of the better ESP32 devkits I've seen, but I just don't think we can hope to support both the ESP8266 NodeMCU and ESP32 boards in one PCB.