![\"Year](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Random-Nerd-Tutorials-Year-in-Review-2022.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nNext year, around March more or less, Random Nerd Tutorials completes 10 years. How crazy is that? I never thought that we could run this blog successfully for so many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Total Published Tutorials: 57<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Throughout this year, we’ve published a total of 57 new tutorials and one new eBook.<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"Year](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/published-projects-RNT-2022.jpg?resize=750%2C500&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nLast year, we’ve published more tutorials than this year (71 vs 57). However, quantity doesn’t mean quality. Our aim for this year was to publish at least one new tutorial per week, which we achieved successfully. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Usually, in the first week of a month, we send you a newsletter (for those that are subscribed to the newsletter) with a recap of the projects published in the previous month. On that week, sometimes we publish a new project, and other times we don’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most Popular Tutorials<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Curious about the most popular tutorials published this year? Here are the top 5:<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"Most](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Most-popular-projects-RNT-2022.jpg?resize=750%2C500&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n1. ESP32: Create a Wi-Fi Manager (AsyncWebServer library)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This tutorial shows how to build a Wi-Fi Manager for the ESP32 from scratch using the AsyncWebServer library. A Wi-Fi Manager allows you to connect the ESP32 board to different access points (networks) without hard-coding network credentials (SSID and password) and upload new code to your board. Your ESP will automatically join the last saved network or set up an access point that you can use to configure the network credentials.<\/p>\n\n\n Besides being a great feature to add to your projects, this tutorial is also great to learn more about building web servers with the ESP32 and its Wi-Fi functions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also created a similar tutorial for the ESP8266 boards: ESP8266 NodeMCU: Create a Wi-Fi Manager (AsyncWebServer library)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Firebase: Control ESP32 GPIOs from Anywhere<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You can use Firebase to control your GPIOs from anywhere. Basically, you create a database with the GPIO states. The ESP32 listens to database changes and receives new data every time something changes in the database. Then, it can update the GPIO states accordingly. <\/p>\n\n\n To change the GPIO states, you can write on the database manually using the Firebase dashboard, or you can create a web app to do that. We also have a tutorial to create such an app. So, for a complete project, we recommend following the next tutorials in order:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to use an ESP8266 instead, you should follow this tutorial first: Firebase: Control ESP8266 NodeMCU GPIOs from Anywhere<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 3<\/strong>. ESP32-CAM Save Picture in Firebase Storage<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This guide shows how to upload pictures taken with the ESP32-CAM to firebase storage. Then, you can access your Firebase dashboard to check the pictures taken with the camera. You can store multiple pictures or you can overwrite the last picture and only have one picture saved.<\/p>\n\n\n After having the pictures in Firebase Storage, you can build a web app to display the pictures on a web app. See part 2 of this tutorial to learn how to build the web app: ESP32-CAM: Display Pictures in Firebase Web App<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Getting Started with LILYGO T-SIM7000G ESP32 (LTE, GPRS, and GPS)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This getting started guide covers the most useful features of this board and contains examples showing how to connect to the internet, send SMS and get GPS data.<\/p>\n\n\n The LILYGO T-SIM7000G<\/a> is an ESP32 development board with a SIM7000G chip. This adds LTE (4G), GPS, and GPRS to your board. This means that with this board you can send SMS, get location and time using GPS, and connect it to the internet using a SIM card data plan. This board doesn\u2019t support phone calls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. ESP32\/ESP8266 with HTTPS and SSL\/TLS Encryption: Basic Concepts<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We’ve just published this article recently and it has already received lots of good feedback. This tutorial is a getting started guide to HTTPS communication with the ESP32 and ESP8266 using SSL\/TLS encryption. It covers and explains some basic concepts about this subject without getting into too many technical details. <\/p>\n\n\n We’ve already published another related tutorial showing how to make HTTPS requests with the ESP32:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We intend to cover more tutorials related to this subject in the next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The main subject we wrote about this year was “Databases”. We created a lot of tutorials showing how to interface different databases with the ESP32 and ESP8266 boards:<\/p>\n\n\n My favorite is Firebase, but InfluxdDB is a great option for datalogging (it is a time-series database) if you want to easily and quickly build charts with your data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This year, we released a new eBook about Node-RED: SMART HOME with Raspberry Pi, ESP32, and ESP8266<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n This eBook covers building an automation system using Node-RED<\/strong>, Node-RED Dashboard<\/strong>, Raspberry Pi<\/strong>, ESP32<\/strong>, ESP8266<\/strong>, MQTT<\/strong>, and InfluxDB database<\/strong>. You can find all the details about the ebook on the following link:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was very skeptical about writing this eBook because Node-RED, Raspberry Pi OS, and other software change quite often, which means I’ll need to update the eBook content quite frequently. However, everything seems to be working as expected for now and our customers just love this eBook. I wasn’t expecting that you would like it so much and that there were so many people interested in this subject. I think I’ll write more about this subject next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This year we updated the following eBooks:<\/p>\n\n\n We’re also currently updating our “Learn ESP32 with Arduino IDE eBook\/course<\/a>“. This is our most complete eBook about the ESP32 with more than 700 pages. We need to reorganize some of the chapters and review all the content, which will take some time. We would like to remind you, that everyone that buys one of our eBooks, gets free future updates. So, if you’ve already bought the ESP32 eBook, you can expect to receive an updated version next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visit the Courses Page to see All the eBooks \u00bb<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n For those of you who don\u2019t know, Maker Advisor<\/a> is our other website where you\u2019ll find reviews about development boards, tools, and gear for your electronics lab. That\u2019s also where we show where you can buy your electronics components for your projects (check the Tools page<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n We’re currently not creating new content for Maker Advisor, except for some board reviews and updating our previous guides. Here’s a list of the most popular articles on Maker Advisor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have a youtube channel that we used to use to publish some video tutorials or video demonstrations for some projects. You can check our youtube channel here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n It’s been a while since we published a new video. Creating new videos takes a lot of time and that’s not our main focus. So, at the moment we don’t intend to create video tutorials, except for short video demonstrations for some tutorials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I mentioned last year, we spend a lot of time answering all your questions: emails, comments, questions on the forum, questions on the Facebook group, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n I would like to remind you that at the moment we don’t do consulting or write custom code. Currently, our job is to write tutorials. If you have any doubts about our content, or if something we wrote is not working as expected, we’re happy to help. However, if you have a specific project that’s not related to our tutorials, please understand that it’s impossible for us to help everyone with their specific project. Even though we try to help in those situations, that’s not our priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides answering the questions from our customers about our eBooks, and many times about other subjects too, I also try to answer the comments we receive on all our blog posts. As the blog keeps growing, we get more interactions from our readers, but it’s impossible for me to take care of everything. Additionally, we receive many questions that are not well formulated and that don’t provide enough details. If you want an answer, you need to make a good question providing as much relevant information as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of your questions may have already been covered in our previous tutorials. So, it’s important that you know how to search for content on our website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the home page, at the top bar, there are some rectangles with the main subjects we cover on our blog. If you click on “ESP32”, for example, you’ll see all ESP32 tutorials published on the blog.<\/p>\n\n\n You can also use our search tool. It works well if you only search for one word. For example, imagine you want to learn how to use the Firebase database with the ESP32, simply search for “Firebase” and you’ll get all our articles about Firebase.<\/p>\n\n\n If you’re looking for something more specific you can always use google and add “site:randomnerdtutorials.com<\/span>” in the search term to see if we have something about that specific topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope with these tips you can take the most out of our tutorials. I know our blog is not perfect, but we do our best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We would like to thank our sponsor PCWay <\/a>for supporting our work (even though we didn’t focus on creating PCB projects this year). <\/p>\n\n\n\n PCBWay is a full-feature Printed Circuit Board manufacturing service. Their service is really good and fast, and the PCBs have great quality. If you want to turn your prototypes into professional PCBs, consider trying the PCBWay service. If you buy your PCBs from PCBWay<\/strong><\/a> using our link (https:\/\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/pcbway<\/a>), you are supporting our work.<\/p>\n\n\n This year, they took the gifts\/merchandise they send to us for Christmas to the next level. See the picture above (a pillow that turns into a blanket, a notebook, a cellphone holder, some rulers and reference guides, a mug, a table mat, and a mouse mat).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s a list of some of the things we intend to do next year:<\/p>\n\n\n\n As with previous years, we intend to send you a weekly newsletter with a new project or tutorial every week. We’ll also continue sending our monthly wrap-ups (a compilation of the previous month’s publications).<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it comes to the Maker Advisor website, we intend to update the most popular blog posts and write reviews about new boards that might be relevant at the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last year, we didn’t set any major milestones for this year, only that we want to continue publishing at least one project per week or every other week. As we’ve seen at the beginning of this post, we published a total of 57 tutorials this year, which is a little bit more than one per week. So, that milestone was successfully achieved this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taking a look at our year in review, it seems that we didn’t work that much compared with previous years. As I’ve mentioned last year, Rui is focusing on other personal projects and he takes care of essential tasks to keep Random Nerd Tutorials running like sending the weekly emails, taking care of the accounting, server monitoring, answering emails, and much more. I (Sara) take care of creating the tutorials and all related content like writing the code, designing diagrams, creating the thumbnails, answering the comments, answering your question on the RNTLAB forum, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s impossible to focus on everything at the same time, we’re just two people working here. So, last year, we decided that we would focus mainly on creating written content for the Random Nerd Tutorials blog. And that’s what we did. I’m very proud of all the articles we put together, plus the new SMART HOME eBook<\/a>, which took more time to finish than we anticipated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the previous year, we also planned that we would travel more and have more time out of the computers. This was achieved successfully as we traveled to many different places this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"ESP32](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/ESP32-ESP8266-wi-fi-manager-web-server-how-it-works.png?resize=735%2C827&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"Firebase](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Firebase-Control-Outputs-from-anywhere-web-app-project-overview-03.png?resize=730%2C1024&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"ESP32-CAM](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/ESP32-CAM-Firebase-Storage-Web-App-Project-Overview.png?resize=750%2C616&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"Getting](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/ESP32-TSIM7000G.jpg?resize=750%2C422&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"HTTP](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/HTTP-vs-HTTPS.png?resize=750%2C500&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nMost Covered Subject<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/different-databases.png?resize=705%2C189&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nNew eBook Released<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"SMART](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Smart-Home-Raspberry-Pi-ESP32-ESP8266-eBook500px.jpg?resize=325%2C500&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\neBooks Updates<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Firebase-eBook-cover-500px-f.jpg?resize=250%2C250&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/micropython-cover-ebook-1-1f.jpg?resize=250%2C250&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nMaker Advisor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/maker-advisor-750px.jpg?resize=462%2C152&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nOur Youtube Channel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/youtube-channel.jpg?resize=500%2C119&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nAnswering Your Questions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/chat-forum.png?resize=300%2C243&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nHow to Search Content on our Blog<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/RNT-Project-Categories.jpg?resize=750%2C438&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"RNT-search-bar\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/RNT-search-bar.png?resize=750%2C175&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nSpecial Thanks to PCBWay<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"PCBWay-merchandise-2022\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/PCBWay-gifts-merchandise-2022.jpg?resize=750%2C422&quality=100&strip=all&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nMilestones for the Next Year<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Our Personal Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/IMG_7460.jpg?ssl=1&resize=300%2C300\")
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<\/figure><\/div><\/div>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/IMG_7793.jpg?ssl=1&resize=300%2C300\")
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<\/figure><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/randomnerdtutorials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/IMG_9642.jpg?ssl=1&resize=300%2C300\")
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