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There are lots of options. Most of what you see they don't: this is a one off project for the hacker and if others find it useful great, but not the goal. As such packaging isn't needed, sometimes you shove it in a box.

If you want something nice, that can be done, now you need to pay someone (could be yourself!) to design a package. ESP32 is designed to be easy to put into your own products, this means design a circuit board and case to fit each other, and so on. Then you buy the ESP32 chips in bulk and assemble them onto the circuit board. The board you buy for a prototype is officially only a reference board and not what they expect you to ship (though shipping the board is common: they are small, cheap, and someone else did the hard board design)



I'm not really talking about producing something at scale, just the bare minimum of not having a board with wires coming out of it.

Say I want to do some one-off project and put it outside somewhere, out of the weather, with some batteries to power it.

Or an indoor thing with an AC hookup of some kind.

Doesn't have to be perfect or beautiful or as tiny as possible; just sort of a complete package.


I mentioned M5Stack above. An alternative is to buy an off the shelf display, e.g., from Polycase -- an outfit I've used a lot and mount your board inside.

There are literally tens of thousands of off the shelf electronics enclosures for every likely possibility. From massive control panel boxes measured in multiple feet, to watch-sized enclosures with straps for items designed to be worn on your wrist. You'll find something suitable no matter what.


You can buy project boxes. Some of them come with breadboards/perfboard that properly fit with screws (e.g. https://discountbloc.ru/archive/products/xwzz1130z33x.html). Alternative is to 3D print a box.

Altoids box is a classic. Food plastic boxes also works depending how hot the components run.


AliExpress has a number of companies selling the "generic black rectangle" that looks a bit like an Apple TV now. I've been meaning to buy a couple and see what they're like to work with, because that's the overall effect I really want - something that looks like a router or generic company product.


Time for me to shill m5stack.com again

I don't work for them, I just really like their products and own about 10 of them. Downside, the documentation is rudimentary so you should enjoy steep learning curves (but not too steep - The ESP-IDF and MicroPython docs will get you through most problems).


I just buy new small breadboards and jumper wires and make it so that it looks nice. Jumper wires of the proper length, not jumper cables.




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