The ESP32 is a series of dual-core 32-bit processors with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities. It's a very common and cheap chip used for many hobby projects. It has more than 30 GPIO pins, however, not all of them are true GPIO pins and you should be careful with your pin choices. It can be programmed using the C programming language via the ESP-IDF framework or using C++ via the Arduino platform.
A development board should not cost much (I bought two from Amazon for about 10 Euros, but you can buy them for way cheaper) and the chips alone cost a lot less. You can program the chip in the Arduino IDE or using the PlatformIO extension on Visual Studio Code (my preferred way). Or you could link your programs yourself and flash them manually, which would take a bit longer.
They are fairly common and you can buy them from many vendors, but you need to see which chip is the best for your needs
. The chip itself should be powered by a 3.3V power supplier. There is usually a power regulator on the development modules available
online so you just need to plug the board to your computer, download the USB-UART drivers and you can start writing code.
Two of the most common USB-UART chips used on the dev boards are the
CP210x and
CH340x
chips. You need to download the right one so your board is detected by your computer.
Attention! Make sure that your USB cable transfers power AND data. Some USB cables only transfer power and are meant for charging. If
your board still isn't detected by your device, a possible fix could be changing the cable connecting the board to your computer.
Here are some app examples in C using the ESP-IDF framework: