I'm trying to embed it in an extremely thin enclosure and need it to be as thin as possible. Oddly I can't find a version of it without the soldered on headers. Does anyone happen to know where to get that?
And in what sense is this a "development board"? Is there a stripped down pro version somewhere?
The "development board" adds a few other convenient features - voltage regulator, USB UART, user-friendly form-factor etc. I suppose, yeah, if you can solder surface mount (kind of fiddly but not that hard if you take your time) you could go it alone with just the ESP32.
wrybread:
I'm trying to embed it in an extremely thin enclosure and need it to be as thin as possible. Oddly I can't find a version of it without the soldered on headers. Does anyone happen to know where to get that?
If that board (or similar) is too 'thick' then you will need to uses the bare bones ESP32 WROOM as suggested by @GypsumFantastic.
You will need to add a regulator\capacitors and a couple of switches. You done need a USB\Serial converter, just use an external one.
A bare module needs supporting parts. No way around that,and that could make thing bulky again.
You could ofcourse remove the pinstrips.
The plastic part slides off with a bit of gentle force, and then you can remove the pins one by one with a soldering iron and tweezers.
Leo..