Learn
Task guides for real hardware questions: identify what you are holding, decide if a pin is safe to use, get your first firmware running — and understand the concepts every tutorial assumes.
Short, task-oriented guides. Each one answers a real question people ask about a supported board — what the documentation says, what it does not say, and where the fixed sources live.
Start here, by task
- "I just unboxed a board." — Getting started with the Raspberry Pi Pico · ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 first connection and flash · ESP32-DevKitC V4 first connection and flash
- "Which one do I have?" — Which ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 do I have? · Pico vs Pico 2
- "The computer sees nothing." — USB board not detected
- "Can I use this pin?" — GPIO35/36/37 on the DevKitC-1 · why the onboard LED is GPIO38 or GPIO48
Concepts every tutorial assumes
- Chip, module, board — the three layers
- Pin numbers, GPIO numbers and pin functions
- 3.3 V and 5 V — power rails, logic levels
- UART, I2C and SPI
By board family
- ESP32 guides — ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 identification, revisions, pins and first flash; ESP32-DevKitC V4 bring-up.
- Pico guides — first steps and generation choice for the Raspberry Pi Pico.
- Troubleshooting — the observable-breakpoint checklists.
Ready to compile something? Labs publishes reproducible experiments with pinned toolchains and real compile receipts.
Sections
- Learn
Task guides for real hardware questions: identify what you are holding, decide if a pin is safe to use, get your first firmware running — and understand the concepts every tutorial assumes.
- Concepts
The shared concepts every tutorial assumes: board layers, pin numbering, logic levels and the three buses — explained once, with real boards.
- ESP32 guides
Task guides for the Espressif boards: ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 identification, revisions, storage-occupied pins and first flash; ESP32-DevKitC V4 bring-up.
- Raspberry Pi Pico guides
Task guides for the Pico family: first steps (MicroPython or C/C++), and which generation you have or should get.
- STM32 guides
Task guides for ST boards on this site: NUCLEO-64 model comparison, debug connectors and what differs between board manuals.
- Troubleshooting
Observable-breakpoint checklists: each step has a yes/no answer you can see, and the official fact behind it.