TAMUCC Project Designer

Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi  |  Engineering summer-camp curriculum

Last semester TAMUCC hired me to develop the engineering projects for a kids’ summer camp. I had to choose a microcontroller to base those projects on. I picked the ESP32 because it can cover a wide range of activities and because the documentation is solid enough for students to work from.

The first projects used an 8×8 LED matrix. Those later moved to a 16×16 RGB matrix. I added several sensors to the same controller so the activities were interactive instead of just driving a display.

I also wrote a graphics library so the students would not have to talk to the matrix directly. With that library you can draw basic shapes and lines, set pixels, run RGB color patterns, and draw pictures. I used that same library in the sensor projects and built simple activities around it for the camp.