ESP32 S3 DevKitC 1: high-resolution pinout and specs

by Renzo Mischianti · Published 15 June 2023 · Updated 20 August 2024

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The evolution of microcontroller technology has changed the face of hardware development, enabling creators to realize complex applications more efficiently and cost-effectively.

The ESP32-S3 DevKitC-1, developed by Espressif Systems, is an exciting entrant in this realm.

ESP32-S3 DevKitC-1 is a small-sized yet powerful development board equipped with the robust ESP32-S3 System-on-Chip (SoC). It features a full Wi-Fi & Bluetooth/BLE 5.0 stack, making it an excellent choice for IoT applications.

This article explores the key features of the ESP32-S3 DevKitC-1 and provides a comprehensive pinout guide for developers.

Here a short selection of esp32s3 ESP32 S3 Purlple AI-S3 - YD-ESP32-S3 - ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 - ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 - ESP32-S3 Board screen

Specifications

Key Component	Description
ESP32-S3-WROOM-1/1U/2	ESP32-S3-WROOM-1, ESP32-S3-WROOM-1U, and ESP32-S3-WROOM-2 are powerful, generic Wi-Fi + Bluetooth LE MCU modules that have a rich set of peripherals. They provide acceleration for neural network computing and signal processing workloads. ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 and ESP32-S3-WROOM-2 comes with a PCB antenna. ESP32-S3-WROOM-1U comes with an external antenna connector.
5 V to 3.3 V LDO	Power regulator that converts a 5 V supply into a 3.3 V output.
Pin Headers	All available GPIO pins (except for the SPI bus for flash) are broken out to the pin headers on the board for easy interfacing and programming. For details, please see Header Block.
USB-to-UART Port	A Micro-USB port used for power supply to the board, for flashing applications to the chip, as well as for communication with the chip via the on-board USB-to-UART bridge.
Boot Button	Download button. Holding down Boot and then pressing Reset initiates Firmware Download mode for downloading firmware through the serial port.
Reset Button	Press this button to restart the system.
USB Port	ESP32-S3 full-speed USB OTG interface, compliant with the USB 1.1 specification. The interface is used for power supply to the board, for flashing applications to the chip, for communication with the chip using USB 1.1 protocols, as well as for JTAG debugging.
USB-to-UART Bridge	Single USB-to-UART bridge chip provides transfer rates up to 3 Mbps.
RGB LED	Addressable RGB LED, driven by `GPIO48`, and you can use `LED_BUILTIN` (`49+48=97`) as normal LED.
3.3 V Power On LED	Turns on when the USB power is connected to the board.

In boards featuring ESP32-S3-WROOM-1/1U modules with Octal SPI flash/PSRAM memory, or ESP32-S3-WROOM-2 modules, the GPIO35, GPIO36, and GPIO37 pins are reserved for internal communication between the ESP32-S3 and the SPI flash/PSRAM memory.

CPU and Memory

Xtensa® dual-core 32-bit LX7 microprocessor,
up to 240 MHz
CoreMark® score:
– 1 core at 240 MHz: 613.86 CoreMark; 2.56 CoreMark/MHz
– 2 cores at 240 MHz: 1181.60 CoreMark; 4.92 CoreMark/MHz
128-bit data bus and SIMD commands
384 KB ROM
512 KB SRAM
16 KB SRAM in RTC
SPI, Dual SPI, Quad SPI, Octal SPI, QPI and OPI interfaces that allow connection to multiple flash and external RAM
Flash controller with cache is supported
Flash in-Circuit Programming (ICP) is supported

Advanced Peripheral Interfaces

45 × programmable GPIOs
Digital interfaces:
– 4 × SPI
– 1 × LCD interface (8-bit ~16-bit parallel RGB, I8080 and MOTO6800), supporting conversion between RGB565, YUV422, YUV420 and YUV411
– 1 × DVP 8-bit ~16-bit camera interface
– 3 × UART
– 2 × I2C
– 2 × I2S
– 1 × RMT (TX/RX)
– 1 × pulse counter
– LED PWM controller, up to 8 channels
– 1 × full-speed USB OTG
– 1 × USB Serial/JTAG controller
– 2 × MCPWM
– 1 × SDIO host controller with 2 slots
– General DMA controller (GDMA), with 5 transmit channels and 5 receive channels Espressif Systems 3
Submit Documentation Feedback ESP32-S3 Series Datasheet v1.6
– 1 × TWAI® controller, compatible with ISO 11898-1 (CAN Specification 2.0)
Analog interfaces:
– 2 × 12-bit SAR ADCs, up to 20 channels
– 1 × temperature sensor
– 14 × touch sensing IOs Timers:
– 4 × 54-bit general-purpose timers
– 1 × 52-bit system timer
– 3 × watchdog timers

Every variant has its Flash management.

Ordering Code	Module Integrated	Flash	PSRAM	SPI Voltage
ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-N8	ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N8	8 MB QD	—	3.3 V
ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-N8R2	ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N8R2	8 MB QD	2 MB QD	3.3 V
ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-N8R8	ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N8R8	8 MB QD	8 MB OT	3.3 V
ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-N16R8V	ESP32-S3-WROOM-2-N16R8V	16 MB OT	8 MB OT	1.8 V
ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-N32R8V	ESP32-S3-WROOM-2-N32R8V	32 MB OT	8 MB OT	1.8 V
ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1U-N8	ESP32-S3-WROOM-1U-N8	8 MB QD	—	3.3 V
ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1U-N8R2	ESP32-S3-WROOM-1U-N8R2	8 MB QD	2 MB QD	3.3 V
ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1U-N8R8	ESP32-S3-WROOM-1U-N8R8	8 MB QD	8 MB OT	3.3 V

Wi-Fi

IEEE 802.11 b/g/n-compliant
Supports 20 MHz, 40 MHz bandwidth in 2.4 GHz band
1T1R mode with data rate up to 150 Mbps
Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM)
TX/RX A-MPDU, TX/RX A-MSDU
Immediate Block ACK
Fragmentation and defragmentation
Automatic Beacon monitoring (hardware TSF)
4 × virtual Wi-Fi interfaces
Simultaneous support for Infrastructure BSS in Station, SoftAP, or Station + SoftAP modes Note that when ESP32-S3 scans in Station mode, the SoftAP channel will change along with the Station channel
Antenna diversity
802.11mc FTM

Bluetooth

Bluetooth LE: Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth mesh
High power mode (20 dBm)
Speed: 125 Kbps, 500 Kbps, 1 Mbps, 2 Mbps
Advertising extensions
Multiple advertisement sets
Channel selection algorithm #2
Internal co-existence mechanism between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to share the same antenna

Low Power Management

Power Management Unit with five power modes
Ultra-Low-Power (ULP) coprocessors:
– ULP-RISC-V coprocessor
– ULP-FSM coprocessor

Security

Secure boot
Flash encryption
4-Kbit OTP, up to 1792 bits for users
Cryptographic hardware acceleration:
– AES-128/256 (FIPS PUB 197)
– Hash (FIPS PUB 180-4)
– RSA
– Random Number Generator (RNG)
– HMAC
– Digital signature

How to

Firmware and OTA update management
1. Firmware management
  1. ESP32: flash compiled firmware (.bin)
  2. ESP32: flash compiled firmware and filesystem (.bin) with GUI tools
2. OTA update with Arduino IDE
  1. ESP32 OTA update with Arduino IDE: filesystem, firmware, and password
3. OTA update with Web Browser
4. Self OTA uptate from HTTP server
5. Non-standard Firmware update
  1. ESP32 firmware and filesystem update from SD card
  2. ESP32 firmware and filesystem update with FTP client

Integrating LAN8720 with ESP32 for Ethernet Connectivity with plain (HTTP) and SSL (HTTPS)
Connecting the EByte E70 to ESP32 c3/s3 devices and a simple sketch example
ESP32-C3: pinout, specs and Arduino IDE configuration
Integrating W5500 with ESP32 Using Core 3: Native Ethernet Protocol Support with SSL and Other Features
Integrating LAN8720 with ESP32 Using Core 3: Native Ethernet Protocol Support with SSL and Other Features
Dallas ds18b20:
- Dallas ds18b20 with esp32 and esp8266: introduction and parasite mode
- Dallas ds18b20 with esp32 and esp8266: pull-up P-MOSFET gate and alarms
- Dallas ds18b20 with esp32 and esp8266: all OneWire topologies, long stubs and more devices

Support forum

Datasheet

ESP32s3 datasheet

Board Schematic

PCB size

Thanks

Arduino
esp8285
- DT-06
esp8266
- WeMos D1 mini
- esp12 E
- esp07
- NodeMCU v2.x
- NodeMCU v3.x
- ESP-01
- ESP-01S
ESP32
ESP32 s2
- ESP32 S2 Saola 1MI
- Ai-thinker ESP 12K
ESP32c3
ESP32s3
Arduino SAMD
- Arduino MKR WiFi 1010
- Arduino NANO 33 IoT
STM32
Raspberry Pi

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Tags: esp32 esp32s3 pinout

Oleksandr says:

29 June 2023 at 13:43

Hi Renzo
How and where have you created this beautiful pinout chart?
I have thos board from aliexpress https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DEHFK9x
I can’t find enough details so far and willing to create at least a pinout for myself and others)

Thanks in advance!

Reply
- Renzo Mischianti says:
  
  29 June 2023 at 14:06
  
  Hi Oleksandr,
  I did It with a standard graphical editor, for the specs I search on datasheet.
  I already have one of that, and I’m going to publish the pinout soon.
  Bye Renzo
  
  Reply
Marius Veltmaat says:

17 January 2024 at 23:19

AFAIK are the default SPI pins on an ESP32-S3:
SS = 10; MOSI = 11; SCK = 12; and MISO = 13.

//Find the default SPI pins for your board
//Make sure you have the right board selected in Tools > Boards
Serial.println(“\nDefault SPI pins for this board:”) ;
Serial.print(” SS: “);
Serial.println(SS);
Serial.print(“MOSI: “);
Serial.println(MOSI);
Serial.print(” SCK: “);
Serial.println(SCK);
Serial.print(“MISO: “);
Serial.println(MISO);

Reply
- Renzo Mischianti says:
  
  18 January 2024 at 11:47
  
  Hi Marius,
  I select the standard ESP32S3 Dev Module and I have this pin_variant
```
static const uint8_t TX = 43;
static const uint8_t RX = 44;

static const uint8_t SDA = 8;
static const uint8_t SCL = 9;

static const uint8_t SS    = 10;
static const uint8_t MOSI  = 11;
static const uint8_t MISO  = 13;
static const uint8_t SCK   = 12;
```
  I use the core 2.0.11.
  
  Can you check with your setting.
  Thanks Renzo
  
  Reply
Joel Le Cam says:

1 February 2024 at 12:11

Hi ,

I found a mistake on your ESP32 S”3 pin out picture on the top of this page. I think that you have invert SPI MISO and SPI CLK pin . GPIO12 is CLK and GPIO13 is MISO in the Espressif standard pinout document.

Best regards

Reply
- Renzo Mischianti says:
  
  1 February 2024 at 12:13
  
  Hi Joel,
  azz… yes you are right…
  I’m going to fix.
  Thanks again Renzo
  
  Reply
Bubba says:

10 July 2024 at 17:07

Hi!

You may want to add at the top that you have added the Arduino pinmap (ESP32 S3 Dev Module), sometimes you do!

Also, if you use the ESP32 S3 Dev Module setting, I assume that regardless what board you have (Waveshare Mini S3, etc.) you simply look-up the GPIO on the diagram and cross-reference it to your (excellent) pinout to get the Arduino function for that pin?

Reply
- Renzo Mischianti says:
  
  11 July 2024 at 08:31
  
  Hi Bubba,
  yes I add the Arduino Pinout (for the serial) but there is also the “original” pinout with banded color.
  
  For every board normally i retrieve the datasheet and then, I must, every time read the esp32 core for the correct function of the pin, because It change every time.
  Bye Renzo
  
  Reply