Finally figured out how to wire a big ESP32 on a tiny breadboard

I ran into the exact same thing with a 30 pin board last year when I was wiring up a little weather station on a half size board. What ended up working for me was just leaving the board straddling one edge and accepting that only one row of contacts was usable on the narrow side. I put my grounds and 3.3V on that single row, then ran female to male jumpers from the far side pins over to the open area where my sensors sat. It looked messy for about an hour til I bundled the jumpers with a twist tie, and after that it was actually fine to work on. The other thing I tried before settling on that was snapping two of the cheap half boards togather end to end, wich gives you enought width for the whole board plus rails on both sides. If you ever grab a second one for a couple of dollars it solves the problem permanently, but for a quick test the jumper method got me through a good two weeks of prototyping without any contact issues. One tip from my experiance, keep the wires coming off the board short and same length where you can, because long sloppy jumpers on the 3.3V line gave me random resets with a finicky sensor until I shortened them.

For what it's worth, I gave up fighting my 30 pin board on a half size breadboard entirely. I picked up a full size 830 point board for a few dollars and the ESP32 drops right across the middle channel there, leaving a usable row of holes on both sides plus the power rails free on each edge. That fixed the problem for me without any workarounds. Before I did that I also tried snapping two of the smaller 400 point boards side by side, which works fine since the plastic clips together and the rows line up. Only downside is the two halves don't share a common ground strip, so you have to jumper the rails together yourself. If you allready own the smaller board and don't want to spend anything, another trick I used once was putting the ESP32 on a couple of female to female dupont wires like little legs, so the whole breadboard stays free for sensors and the board just hangs off to the side. Looks messy but it wired up fast and I could still probe every pin.

I'm having a similar issue, but my ESP board has more pins than the 30 pin ones mentioned, and I'm using a smaller breadboard than half size. I realized my problem might not be the physical width of the board itself, but just that I'm hooking up way too many individual sensors at once for a quick test. I keep trying to cram everythign onto one board to check the initial code flow. I was wondering if anyone else has just started grouping their components by function and testing them in smaller batches instead of trying to run the whole system at once? Like, powering the radio module separately from the temprature sensors until I know the basics are stable. It seems like that might solve the physical space issue too.

Yeah the full size board is what solved it for me too. My 30 pin board sat over the middle gap with one row free on each side, and I found it helps to leave that narrow side row empty on one end so you've got spare holes for your button or led grounds instead of cramming everything next to the power pins. One thing to check before you buy, some of those boards have the usb connector sticking out past the pins, so make sure it clears the edge or you'll be fighting the plastic housing the whole time.