Nano ESP32 IDE Nora Setup

Official Hardware Nano Family Nano ESP32
1

I ordered but have not yet received my hardware. So on this rainy Sunday afternoon I decided to download the latest Arduino IDE (Windows 10) and Nano ESP32 Board Package to get ready.

Strong Recommendation: please consider adding to the Tutorial/Setup Guide a suggestion to review the size (and delete if necessary) your c:\users\windowsusername\AppData\Local\Temp files. After deleting 3+ GB of stuff IDE 2.1.1 compiles faster... (Sigh.)

I Verified the Blink and BlinkRGB sketches using the Arduino Nano ESP32 board definition. Both compiled successfully, first time. Great job Everyone!

Questions:

  1. The IDE reports "Global variables use 30732 bytes (9%) of dynamic memory" for both sketches. HUH? Is this normal for such a simple sketch? [I am an experienced Arduino user. This is my first time using ESP-32 devices.]

  2. How can I discover what these Globals are?

  3. I assume some of these Global Vars support ESP32 features, I/O adapters or buffers not used by the Blink sketches. Is there a way to disable these or mark them "not used"? For example, does there exist something like the PIC Peripheral Pin Select (PPS) function?

Sincere regards,
Lew

2

Hello @lwithacre, as you correctly assumed, the ESP32 is a very complex target: it includes two CPUs, native Wi-Fi, etc. Any sketch you build is actually run on top of a full real time OS with network capabilities, and that needs a fixed, limited -but measurable- amount of resources. Still, it is only 10% of the internal RAM - and that number does not include the 8MB of external RAM that is usable with dynamic allocation (via new). So you still have plenty of room for your experiments! :slight_smile:

3

Hi lburelli,

Thank you very much for the reply! Are you located in Italy? FYI I collaborated in the past (2000-2005) with the IBM Vimercati lab, an excellent team of engineering professionals. I enjoyed the experience.

I am retired now, but back in the day had a lot of technology selection, product design and support experience based on highly resource constrained microprocessor systems. (Think assembler language.) So to me the numbers, the resources available in some modern devices is mind boggling.

Are you able to share the status/schedule for additional Arduino Nano ESP32 documentation?

*** Answered my own question. See "Arduino Nano ESP32 Cheat-Sheet"
*** https://docs.arduino.cc/tutorials/nano-esp32/cheat-sheet
*** This document contains numerous additional links

Thank you again and Best regards,
Lew