Mint Reader

Got the ESP32 wired up. I think I might have to redo it because the number of pins is limited and I still need to add two more buttons, the SD card module, a switch, and the lipo battery to it.

After soldering, I realized that the wire I had (30 AWG) was too flimsy to work with in my breadboard sadly, so I made a makeshift solution for now by using copper wire to connect the ends to some jumper wires on my breadboard. After powering it from my computer I finally got it to turn on!

My next step will be to try and load some code up to see if I can change what the screen shows!

Soldered the TFT screen. This was my first time soldering wires into open holes rather than on a PCB. I used 30 AWG wire which was pretty thin, making it hard to solder (this has been my second time lol). In the end I managed to get all 8 wires on, but the connections are a lot messier than I expected. The solder didn’t naturally flow onto the hole like it did when I was working on my Blinky Board in the past. I’ll test out if the connections are good later tonight.

Setting up the ESP32! I spent quite a bit figuring out how to wire the pins and deploy some code onto it. It doesn’t fully work with the TFT screen yet since the header pins are too loose, so I’ll solder them on and try again tmrw. This was my first time working with a microcontroller and I was able to get it to print messages on my computer console but not on the screen itself (yet) :)