This week was about databases — following guides to get two sample Expo React apps running and connected to Firebase.

The first app was a Firestore database that takes sample items on the Expo app, then writes the item data to the database.

The second app was an ESP32 UI on Expo with two functions: turn on/off the built-in LED, and read sensor data from D34 — it seemed like it worked based on capacitive touch.
What was surprising was seeing data updating in three different places and in real life all at the same time.

Here it is working in real life:

Some of the configuration files that should have been plug-and-play were not. I needed to read some error messages and add/change some of the code to get it working.
Luckily nothing took a super long time to figure out, but I did feel demotivated during the first class period because my ESP32 was experiencing brown out.
Once I got a working ESP32, fixing a few hiccups, it was working smoothly.
I feel like I still don't really understand metro.config.ts, but the actual config file made sense.
Something I learned after the fact — when helping a friend with this week's project, they tried my code, then plugged it into their computer, and it worked. But connected to my database. So I remotely controlled an ESP32 that was plugged into their computer. That amazed both of us because it was truly wireless.