ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 Evaluation Board and the ESP32-S3 SoC

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Ya’akov

Joined Jan 27, 2019
9,070
So, because I wanted to take a look at TensorFlow Lite I picked up a couple of the ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 boards on Amazon for $15.00 each.

Looking at the hardware guide I was blown away by the capabilities of the ESP32-S3 SoC. The module is less the $4.00 but it has so much peripheral hardware it's hard to believe. Some of it makes ultra low power operation amazingly robust, some of it makes interfacing amazingly flexible, and some of it just surprised me.

The SoC includes:

240MHz 32-bit usual core Xtensa CPU
ALU
Ultra Low Power Coprocessor

From the datasheet:

"The chip also has a low-power coprocessor that can be used instead of the CPU to save power while performing tasks that do not require much computing power, such as monitoring of peripherals."

Yes, when the CPU is in deep sleep the coprocessor can read from peripherals, including GPIO and ADC and wake up the CPU if it is needed!

Also on board are hardware accelerators for AES, SHA, and RSA and encryption of external memory.

There is a CWG (Cosine Waveform Generator) for tones, or whatever.

Hardware RNG

2.4GHz Wifi
BLE
RTC
SD card support
SDIO
RMT (IR support)
UART (3)
SPI (4)
I2C (2)
I2S (2)
LED PWM
Motor PWM (e.g.: driving an H-bridge)
pulse counter (8 channels, counts up to 32767, or down, on the rising/falling edge @ ≤4MHz
GPIO (45)
Internal Hall Sensor
capacitive touch sensor (12)
ADC (2, 12-bit)
DAC (2, 8-bit)
TWAI® (Two Wire Automotive Interface)
Video Interface
Camera Interface
USB Serial/JTAG
USB OTG
Ethernet MAC

There are things I forgot to include but it's really an amazing little module. Oh, and you can use the free Eclipse-based ESP-IDF IDE or.. it works like a charm in the Arduino IDE. Or, you can run FreeRTOS.
 

ErnieM

Joined Apr 24, 2011
8,377
I started using these via the ESP32 DEVKIT V1 for 3+ years now. Amazing devices!

There is also the earlier ESP32 versions available in the D1 Mini dev board that is perfect for tiny projects.

I've put both to good use around my house running my IOT things, including an IR transmitter to control some LED candles via Alexa.
 
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