ESP32 ate the maker world - and audio projects beat smart home (May 2026 data)

Gal Ofel — Tue, 26 May 2026 05:46:04 +0000

We pulled the numbers on 662 maker projects from 367 makers over the last three months. A few of the results genuinely surprised us - and most of them contradict what the hardware press keeps repeating.

Three findings worth your attention

1. ESP32 isn't winning. It already won.
ESP32-family chips show up in 59.8% of new projects. Arduino AVR (mostly the Nano) holds 21.5%, almost entirely in non-connected builds — workshop tools, lighting, art. The "Arduino + Wi-Fi shield" pattern? Effectively zero. Dead.

2. Raspberry Pi Pico flopped on the workbench.
Just 0.6% — 4 projects out of 662. Despite years of marketing push from Adafruit, Pimoroni and friends, makers aren't reaching for it when they actually sit down to build.

3. The #1 project category is audio, not smart home.
Audio and music projects (guitar tuners, visualizers, synths, effects) hit 10.3% of all originals - beating every "IoT" or "smart home" subcategory. The tech press narrative doesn't match what people are actually soldering.

Bonus signal: offline AI is quietly happening

Six independent makers shipped offline AI inference nodes in two months. No coordination, no hype cycle - just people putting models on their own hardware. Worth watching.

Kit economics

Median project BOM: $139. There's a sharp drop-off above $200 - a real ceiling for hobby builds, useful to know if you're designing a kit or product around this audience.

This is the short version. The full post has the methodology, all the data tables, the kit-cost distribution, and a downloadable dataset if you want to run your own cuts.

👉 Read the full breakdown: State of Maker Projects, May 2026

What's your default MCU in 2026? Drop it in the comments - curious whether the ESP32 dominance holds in this audience too.

Built an AI Tool That Generates Wiring Diagrams and Code for Arduino Projects. Here's What I Learned.

Gal Ofel — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 19:10:53 +0000

I'm not an electrical engineer. But I kept wanting to build smart devices - a mosquito trap for the garden, a nightlight my kid controls with claps, a smart dog collar.

Every time, I'd hit the same wall: which components are compatible? What pins do I connect? What libraries do I need?

So I built Make-it - you describe a device in plain English and it generates:

A complete parts list with specs
A wiring diagram with pin assignments
Working Arduino/ESP32/Raspberry Pi code
A step-by-step build guide

The technical challenge

The hard part isn't generating code - any LLM can do that. The hard part is making the output actually buildable:

GPIO pin conflict detection across multiple sensors
Component compatibility validation (will this sensor work with this board?)
Correct library dependencies and imports
Pin assignments that match the physical wiring

A raw LLM will confidently tell you to connect a sensor to a pin that doesn't support analog input. The domain layer on top catches that.

Real-world testing

I've been dogfooding by posting actual builds on Reddit:

An automated mosquito trap hit 339K views and #1 on r/homeautomation
A clap-activated nightlight for kids got 25K views on r/arduino
People are actually ordering parts and building these projects

What's next

I'm working on multi-board communication (Arduino + RPi over serial), better PCB-level layouts, and eventually simulation.

Would love feedback from anyone who's tried using AI for hardware projects. What works? What breaks?

Try it here

DEV Community: Gal Ofel