THESE ARE THE LAST OF THE REV 2 KITS. ONCE THEY'RE GONE, YOU'LL HAVE TO WAIT FOR REV3. THAT MIGHT BE LATE 2021 OR EARLY 2022. SO IF YOU WANT ONE, ORDER IT NOW!

NOTE - A bare PCB is also available for $35 if you wish to bring your own parts - Check my items!

The Practical IOT Microcontroller Trainer is an evolution of the idea of a 'PLC trainer'. With this kit, we bring together many of the most common elements of electronics design in use today - microcontrollers, displays, rotary encoders, bluetooth and wifi, an integrated dual-rail power supply, a generous size breadboard, and more.

I prototype a lot of projects. My workbench had parts spread all over it, and I would just end up hooking the same things up to the same things all of the time... A microcontroller to a display, some pushbuttons, some LEDs, etc. This project makes that so much easier. We break out the most commonly used components so that they can easily be powered (on demand, and only when needed), connected together either directly or via a breadboard, where other components not included can be added. We even include an assortment of high-quality dupont jumpers!

Other development environments focus on providing 'passives' on board, or low-feature capabilities. We purposefully design this project to do the opposite. We give you an ESP32, an ESP01, an Arduino Nano, a bluetooth module, both an OLED and a resistive-touch screen TFT, a socket for a raspberry pi zero w (sorry, we can still not get these in bulk so we leave it up to you to supply the Pi, but everything else is included!)

The integrated power supply can provide up to roughly 500mw of power for both the 5v rail and the 3.3v rail, and if your needs exceed that, you can add your own outboard power. You can even power the board itself from many of the included microcontrollers, if your power requirements are within their capabilities. Lots of flexibility!

I designed the board with the Arduino ecosystem in mind, but you're in no way limited to this! Use whatever development toolchain you want!

Here's what you'll get:

1) One Custom Practical IOT Microcontroller Trainer Rev PCB (Your board will be blue, but the prototype board shown in the photos is green - the boards function identical).

2) One BusBoard BB830 breadboard. This isn't just any old 'import clone' breadboard - this is the real deal! This is by far the best breadboard we have found, and use in our own lab. It may be 5x the cost, but it's 100x the quality.

3) A .96" I2C OLED display. Two popular variants on this exist in the wild, and our board has been designed to support both pinouts for the 4-pin models, easily adapted with the change of a jumper.

4) An ESP32 development module (ESP32-DevKitC, based on the ESP32-WROOM-32D module).

5) A 2.4" resistive-touch capable TFT display. Stunning color graphics with a touch interface are a great way to add an interactive user interface to your project! An SD card module is also included on this board, and broken out for prototyping with SD media.

6) A BC-05 bluetooth module for adding wireless serial bluetooth communications to your project. This can be handy as a way to wirelessly reprogram your project, or communicate between devices!

7) An Arduino nano variant microcontroller. This is very similar electrically to the ever-so-popular Arduino Uno, but in a PCB-friendly form factor. We LOVE the Nano - it's one of our go-to microcontrollers. Note: Some models may be Micro-USB, some may be Mini-USB. It depends what we have on hand at that time. ( We are unable to order pi zero w's in bulk at this time, so while the board supports them, it's bring your own Pi for now ).

8) An ESP-01 microcontroller. These were first used as a way to add wifi to other devices, but evolved into being able to run natively in the Arduino ecosystem. With low cost and low density, these don't take up much space and can be used in some really awesome projects.

9) We provide not one but TWO rotary encoders with pushbutton - These work great for navigating a user interface during those times when you choose not to implement the touch screen interface. We also include nice machined knobs for the encoders, for a polished experience.

10) While we're talking about user interfacing, did I mention the PCB also supports 4 momentary pushbutton switches? Yup!

11) It doesn't stop here - we have LIGHTS. The board supports (included) a string of 4 WS2812B (or SK6812's depending what we have in stock - they work with the same library) LED's (known in the hobbyist community as a NeoPixel). Use the library from Adafruit and light these up! Loads of color, very bright, very awesome.

12) Our board is designed with a combination of 2.54mm header connectors for wiring everything up, and we include a pretty large assortment of high quality dupont jumpers with the board. M/F, M/M, and F/F configurations. These jumpers are bonded ribbon cables, so you can peel them out individually, or leave them connected for multi-wire connections. You can even swap out the plastic covers with others (not included) to make multi-wire jumpers where all the wires stay together! Very cool!

13) The board contains an integrated power supply that YOU BUILD (we give you a couple regulators, some resistors and capacitors, and some LEDs) and you get both a 5v and 3.3v DC rail available to your projects. A 2.1mm DC barrel jack is included for connection to any common power supply giving between 9 and 12 volts.

This will ship in kit form for easy assembly. We have kept the surface-mount parts to a minimum to aid in assembly (only part of the power supply section and the RGB LED's are surface mount) but even the surface mount stuff installs pretty easily. We prefer hot air, but a reflow oven, skillet, or even a soldering iron with a small tip can be used.

Hundreds of hours of design and testing have gone into this product (it's taken me 3 years to get it to a point I'm happy with) and I can't wait to share this with you!

Note: The Rev 2.0 PCB has a few minor silkscreen errors that we address in the wiki (https://wiki.bluesmokemonster.com) - Rev 3.0 boards will replace Rev 2.0 boards once inventory runs out, and we will update documentation accordingly.