SparkFun Thing Plus ESP32 Wroom - Two questions/issues?

Development Boards ESP32
1

Hi there, I bought a Sparkfun Thing Plus ESP32 Wroom and have two questions, or possibly issues?

  1. In Arduino IDE, I select the Sparkfun ESP32 Thing Plus in the board manager, I upload the code, but then it doesn’t work no matter what I try (even if I use an unmodified example code from the Sparkfun libraries). HOWEVER. I have found that it does work if I select ESP32-WROOM-DA Module though. So currently my NTRIP base station is working, but I’m wondering if there’s a reason I can’t use the Sparkfun board profile, and if I’m possibly losing functionality because of this? Which ties into my second and more important issue…

  2. I can flash the code and when I power on the device, it’ll show the Sparkfun flash screen on my attached SerLCD but then it just goes blank and nothing happens. I have to press the RST button every time to launch my actual code. By my understanding, this isn’t normal behaviour and it should just start the code immediately on boot, and maybe I have a bad capacitor or something? Does anyone have any input on this - is it functioning properly and I just have the wrong hardware for my job, or is it a faulty board? I have pretty unstable power here so its just not reasonable to need to push the button every time I want to use the device, which is meant to be on 24/7.

Any help or advice? TLDR: I just want the NTRIP Caster to start casting as soon as the device powers on, i.e. no button press needed.

BTW: I’m not against going to a regular Arduino board as I never planned for a wifi setup in the first place, but converting ethernet was going to be a winter project. But if the ESP board is just not the right fit for this problem that means I’m okay buying something different.

Thanks,