Make Review: Adafruit Metro ESP32-S2 #Metro @Make @Adafruit
The Make Boards Guide reviewed the Adafruit Metro ESP32-S2 microcontroller board.
The Adafruit Metro ESP32-S2 packages the best features of Adafruit’s recent microcontroller boards in a traditional Arduino Uno form factor. The heart of the board, the Espressif ESP32-S2, improves on the ESP line of Wi-Fi-enabled microcontrollers by adding native USB support. The addition of USB mass storage to the platform allows drag-and-drop deployment of Adafruit’s CircuitPython, making the board very easy to program. It also allows the board to act as a USB input device (HID).
Installing CircuitPython is a little more work than using the Arduino IDE, but Adafruit provides you with a helpful guide. To start with, you need to install esptool (as an Administrator) so you can upload the UF2 bootloader to the board. The UF2 bootloader will allow you to mount the ESP32-S2 as a USB drive so you can drag and drop firmware onto it. In particular, you can drag and drop CircuitPython (.uf2) and then your code.py files onto it to run them. At the time of writing, Adafruit has put “Welcome to CircuitPython” ahead of “Install CircuitPython” in their step-by-step guide;to avoid a long detour, click ahead and install CircuitPython before learning about it. The installation guide contains code for a test of the Wi-Fi connectivity that is worth running to make sure everything is working as expected.
I expect this board and the other ESP32-S2 boards are going to be very popular (and well supported) for a while. They are easy to use, flexible in their applications, and remarkably inexpensive.
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