HiLetgo 2pcs ESP32-DevKitC ESP32-32U Core Board ESP32 ESP-32 ESP32U Development Board for Arduino

Great, and cheap, esp32’s. Usually you end up with a bad one in the bunch and I have ordered these several times and haven’t had any issues. It’s a good buy if your looking for an esp32!

These things are great value for your money and they can be used for SO MUCH. Amazing.

I see a lot of folks having trouble connecting to or programming this little device. The solution is to follow instructions and a few simple troubleshooting steps. Step 1: Is the serial driver loaded? Probably not, go load it. (Google "CP210x Universal Windows Driver") Step 2: Did you select the right port and board in the IDE? "ESP32 Dev Module" is what worked for me. If you're not seeing the COM port, go back to step 1.While I haven't tested the range, I'm not expecting a mile range line of sight. It's a ~$8 microcontroller and you get what you pay for. If you want RANGE and PERFORMANCE, then expect to pay for it. This is a hobbyist's chip, it is not designed for engineering projects that actually require specifications to be met. Buy this to experiment and learn with or just for the fun of it, but don't buy it expecting top notch performance for the price. You will be disappointed with that expectation.If you expect it to just be a useful thing to learn with and maybe do something useful with, then your expectations are more in line with reality. :)

I purchased this as a possible replacement for a "HiLetgo: ESP-WROOM-32 ESP32 ESP-32D" that due to placement was experiencing poor WiFi connectivity and prior to deploying it, I wanted to compare the signal strength of this with the device I was planning to replace.I place 3 ESP-32's next to each other and started the network to see the relative signal strengths, from the picture you can see this data for each of the following devices:ESP32-Test01 - HiLetgo: ESP-WROOM-32 ESP32 ESP-32D (same as the device I was looking to replace).ESP32-Test02 - HiLetgo: ESP32 Mini ESP-WROOM-32 (because I had one laying around to compare)ESP32-Test03 - HiLetgo: ESP32-DevKitC ESP32-WROOM-32U with Highfine: 2.4GHz 6dBi Indoor Omni-Directional WiFi Antenna 802.11n/b/g (this device)This device/antenna configuration seen to be 12dBm stronger, so I'm hoping that it will be able to address my issue.

Worked great. I wish the board had holes for mounting and on-board second LED.

This board and a second board I bought work extremely well with every Arduino sketch I have used in them.As mentioned in the above headline the board is designed to be used with an external antenna for WiFi usage. You will notice the gold plated antenna connector is located in a notch in the corner of the metal card. It is for the antenna. Here is an antenna with coax and connector that will fit the board connector: Gain=8dBi (or 6.3 times gain isotropic ) RP-SMA Male WiFi Antenna + 20cm U.FL to RP-SMA Female Extension Cable for Mini PCIe Slot - Amazon supplier,Tenmory Store. Note, the antenna connector can be installed by first centering with the board connector and pinching with your fingers. You should get more than 100 foot coverage using this antenna in an open space. There is no change required in jumpers or wiring required.

one of the two boards was faulty and didn't work

Using this for Tasmota I found that when powering by the USB it works as expected. Trying to power it using the Vin pin lead to spurious inputs on the tasmota console - which makes it unable to perform tasks. I suspect if I had a super clean and stable power source (ie - not one manipulated by cheap voltage regulators, which is all I had), it might work. I ended up using the esp32 devkit 1 and soldered an external antenna on to achieve the project goals. These will sit in the drawer for now.