With so much music on streaming services, and more and more being added daily, it's not always easy to find music I really love among the millions of tracks. I use a cheap ESP32 board to make the process much easier.

The reason many of us build smart homes and tinker with microcontrollers is to make the mundane feel a little more special. Though these projects are far from necessary, they can bring a bit of magic to your everyday routines and teach you a thing or two along the way.

You can buy a small ESP32 microcontroller for a few dollars—less than a Starbucks coffee. When you combine it with a special LoRa radio, you can create a device that can send encrypted text messages between locations without relying on a cellular service, Wi-Fi, or satellite data.

I don’t currently have any visible clocks on display in my house. I’m never without my watch or phone, and I decided that if I were to sacrifice some space for a dedicated timepiece, it would need to be something special, different, or interesting.

Stop letting old devices rot in a drawer and bring them back to life with the help of an inexpensive microcontroller and some code. The ESP32 is perfect for this task.

ESP32 boards are incredibly versatile tools. You can use them for a huge range of purposes, and they can also be an extremely cheap way to help you get started in a new creative tech hobby.

Smart video doorbells can be incredibly useful, but they don't last forever. If you have an old or even broken video doorbell, you don't need to throw it away. There are plenty of ways you can put it to good use.

Raspberry Pis have been popular devices for DIY projects for years. They're ideal for many tech projects, but they're not always the perfect choice. There are many projects where a cheap ESP32 board is a better option, and the benefits go beyond the much lower price.

I use a lot of ESP32 boards around my home, but they don't always have to be stuck indoors. By putting an ESP32 in my car, I'm able to access live engine data from my car that tells me much more than my dashboard does.

I've owned a lot of houseplants in my time and killed many of them. The biggest issue has always been knowing when to water them. Wi-Fi moisture sensors can help, but if you have a lot of plants, the cost can soon add up, and if your Wi-Fi goes down, they become useless. Using an ESP32, you can make a moisture sensor that works offline and is a fraction of the price.

Whether your homelab consists of an ISP-provided router and a mini PC or a whole rack that takes up the corner of your spare room, it could always benefit from a few considered upgrades.

I miss the good old days when you had to queue for a movie, lining up outside the theater and passing the Now Showing posters which would get you excited about what you were about to see. I wanted to build something similar for Jellyfin using a cheap ESP32 display.