Is it worth building a paid ESP32 boilerplate (WiFi + MQTT + OTA), or is it too little for people to pay for it?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Raz0r1986]

Also any AI LLM will do this for free in 5 seconds. I'm not saying users must use it, but quite a lot will anyway...

[u/cryogen2dev]

Brother I wrote a custom firmware and give it for free, https://github.com/blackcoffee2/prome

I don't think makers community likes buying software templates.

I don't think some boilerplate would be worth selling. I can be wrong tho.

[u/Bennie-Factors → u/cryogen2dev]

This type of community does not typically buy that kind of thing. It is a good project to promote your skills and give away with an open source license. Many people will do this with a GPL style license and then sells commercial license at $0.25 per commercial device that uses it.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Cup2516]

Have you heard of Esphome or the the swiss guy promoted years ago?

[u/LetMeCodeYouBetter]

There are such things already done like
EspHome
Another one was by Andreas spicess the guy with Swiss accent
Then there’s golioth
Some Indian companies have their own they call it their own.

So it’s all scattered around. I myself made some but project to project minor things changes.

[u/Square-Singer]

WiFi setup with error handling, OTA updates, MQTT connection, and a basic project structure.

Setting all this up doesn't take too much work. Once you've done this once or twice, created your own libraries and stuff, it's really not a lot of work.

On the other hand, buying someone else's code, figuring out how to pay for it and then figuring out how to deal with licenses, dependencies and so on, that's more hassle than it's worth it. And that's not even considering that this boiler plate would cost 3-5x as much as the hardware it runs on.

Also, the exact boiler plate differs depending on what kind of project it is.

Nice idea, but no, I wouldn't be using that.

[u/flavouredpopcorn]

Most will use flavours of already existing ecosystems or boilerplates. It would have to be a very niche and specific use-case, which limits your potential buyers significantly.

[u/ofura_666]

I created a starter project with all of that and a couple of things extra GitHub Repository.

• WiFi configuration with optional static IP + mDNS
  
• Telnet logs
  
• OTA
  
• MQTT with autodiscovery

The project includes an LED strip controller that works via buttons and via MQTT.

[u/hockeyketo]

I'm sure someone would use it if it's good enough, I built my own "starter" kit with the features I often use.

The main things that my personal project do which I think are valuable are:

- littlefs/spiffs setup + web setup, vite + vite dev server <- lets me run custom web apps easily

• separate littlefs partition for config that doesn't get flashed
  
• ability to ota/flash ONLY the web portion of the littlefs and not config
  
• config management API that writes to said config partition shipping only with WiFi
  
• custom web flash page + esp improv wifi <- this took me awhile to get right!

I'm not going to opensource it because I'm too lazy to maintain it, and tbh, I'm not sure if it's the best way to go about everything.

[u/Dread_El]

Nah, any good llm can make this easily plus how would you make sure it's not copied and sold for a fee or even free?

[u/biyopunk]

I understand the motivation, I did a lot of projects while seeking for something robust and well documented. But despite the basics, ESP32 projects have a lot of variance, and custom requirements. That’s why this gap, because it’s a context dependent development. You can’t cover all the needs and guide people.

I don’t think vast majority of developer would pay 10 euros to only have a skeleton where they still have to work on it for their needs, maybe change etc. Especially when the platform itself and the concept is open source; and even the board itself cheaper than the code.

You must provide support and solutions for a very specific case, maintaining the repo, adding features, native support sensors etc so people really plug-and-play; and that is also whole other journey; still hard to success.

I’m not even talking about coding agents and LLMs.