01. Introduction to Hibiscus Sense

Hibiscus Sense is a rapid Internet of Things (IoT) development board, powered by the mighty and popular dual-core ESP32 microcontroller, which on-board equipped with rich profusion sensor's data and basic actuators as below:

• 3 sensors:
  • APDS9960: an environment sensor, which sense proximity, RGB and gesture.
  • BME280: an environment sensor, which sense the altitude, barometric pressure, humidity and temperature.
  • MPU6050: 6-axis motion tracking sensor, which sense 3-axis gravitational acceleration, 3-axis rotational velocity and temperature.
• 3 actuators:
  • Buzzer: short distance small buzzer.
  • LED: blue LED.
  • RGB LED: WS2812 RGB LED.

Hibiscus Sense comes with USB Type-C to power up the board and to program the ESP32. The on-board USB-to-Serial converter Silicon Labs CP2104 with automatic bootloader reset circuit, we don’t have to press the RESET button each time to upload the program.

Although, we can program ESP32 using other programming language such as C, C++ and Micropython, but in this tutorial we will be using Arduino as the learning and prototyping platform.

Hibiscus Sense Features

Hibiscus Sense Pinout Diagram

• Blue LED is connected to ESP32's GPIO2.
• Small Buzzer is connected to ESP32's GPIO13.
• WS2812 RGB LED is connected to ESP32's GPIO16.
• All GPIO can generate digital input/output (3.3V) and PWM signal output, except GPIO34-GPIO39 because it is an input pin only.
• ESP32's VSPI is complete MISO GPIO19, MOSI GPIO32, CLK GPIO18 and CS GPIO5.
• ESP32's I2C SDA GPIO21 and SCL GPIO22, without pullup resistor.
• Sensors: APDS9960, BME280 and MPU6050 interfaced to the ESP32's I2C, respective I2C address: 0x39, 0x77 and 0x68.
• Avoid using ADC2 channel while using WiFi.
• Each GPIO absolute maximum current drawn only 16mA.
• Board measurement including header in mm: 58.7 x 27 x 13.3 (length x width x height).
• Package measurement in mm: 71.8 x 35.5 x 20.4 (length x width x height).