I got some help on my PCB design, so I updated the schematic and ordered new PCBs. Unfortunately it still didn't work!
I decided to build a breakout board just for the ESP32 so that I could try to breaking the problem down in to smaller components. As I was building the breakout board, I noticed the footprint / symbol I was using have the wrong pins for TXD0 and RXD0. I had downloaded the footprint from some random website because Kicad, DigiKey, and Espessif didn't have one. Unfortunately the rando schematic had TXD0 and RXD0 on pins 34 and 35, but the datasheet clearly has them on pins 35 and 36.
TX and RX are pretty critical to the project (you flash the ESP over UART), so it makes sense that nothing would work.
I've updated the symbol and footprint in the project and ordered new PCBs. I'm still going to assemble a breakout board for the ESP32 first because I'm starting to run out of the other components and I want to make sure I actually have the ESP32 wired up correctly. 😅
The first two photos show the PCB connected to the BMW gear selector. The last two are from my PCB layout and the data sheet for the microcontroller. I guess my lesson is to not trust symbols and footprints I download from shady websites 😅
