A microcontroller is a whole little computer on a single chip. It runs one program from power-on with no operating system, costs a few dollars, and sips power. It is the brain of most do-it-yourself sensor and control nodes: it reads a sensor, decides something, and sends the reading on.
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- The ESP32 family: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the default board here.
- The ESP8266: The original cheap Wi-Fi chip.
- Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W: A different lineage, strong at precise timing.
- Arduino (Uno, Nano, and family): The classic on-ramp to electronics.
- More families (STM32, Teensy, Nordic, Feather): Specialist boards, for needs the ESP32 does not cover.
- Buying guide: which microcontroller: A short decision guide: the one-line answer and the exceptions.
This section is filling in with the collective, one page at a time. The links above go live as each one is written and verified. To scan the whole catalog at once, browse every hardware page on one list.