Design
For this week, I wanted to try to use the ESP32 chip to connect to a website, just like in the HTMAA website. The schematic is below:
Mill
I milled the board using the Roland SRM-20 using the given traces and outline PNGs. The best part was that nothing actually went wrong with the process! Usually something goes wrong: the end-mill breaks, I have to restart the machine, the traces mess up, etc.
Solder
Soldering was quite straightforward, except for the ESP32 WROOM. The joints on the ESP32 WROOM are so small that I kept messing up. I was struggling so much to fix the chip that I forgot to take a picture of the mistake. But, in essence, I tried to solder on parts of one side of the ESP32 first, but I realized too late that the entire chip was rotated a bit too much, so the joints on the other sides were not exactly aligned with the board. I tried to de-solder the side to re-align the ESP32 WROOM, but it was hard and I ended up accidentally ripping part of the copper off the board! In the end, I was able to adjust the ESP32 and then solder it back on with the correct alignment :).
Program
I first tried to plug the board into the computer, but it kept giving me a board not recognized error (see below) even though I had ESP32 WROVER board module selected.
I ended up extending this task into my final project! Check out my final project page and look at either the LEDs or motor section to see how I redesigned the boards with the ESP-32 to connect to WiFi and communicate with a Firebase database.