ESP32 Debugging made Easier with GPIOViewer

Published  January 3, 2024   0
S Staff
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ESP32 - GPIO Viwer

Debugging a circuit on a hardware level is always challenging, especially when coding is involved. It would always make the debugging easier if there were a way to monitor the MCU live. Are you looking for such a solution, without adding expense to your existing design? Worry not, the maker Charles Giguere got your back. Charles has designed a tool which aims to make it easier to troubleshoot projects built around Espressif ESP32 microcontrollers: an on-device web page providing live readouts of each pin on the board. Another advantage is that it fits in a 50kB Arduino library. This tool can be used with your existing code by just including the library and a very simple initialisation with two function calls within the setup function.

Webserver within ESP32

Once added to the code the tool will connect to your wifi network and will host a webserver within ESP32, which can be accessed from any browser. On the webpage, GPIOViwer will display an image of the board in use, which can be selected from 19 predefined board images, along with the status of every general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pin and free heap and flash storage statics. Currently, the library supports the digital, analog and PWM status of the pins. As per Charles the GPIOViewer saves time and eliminates the guesswork, helping us to focus on the creative aspects of our project. More details about the GPIOViewer can be found in Charles's YouTube video and the library itself can be found in his GitHub repository.