LILYGO Goes After the Industrial Automators with the DIN-Mountable T-Connect Pro
Powered by an Espressif ESP32-S3, this industrial-themed development board includes a 10A relay, DIN rail mount, and touchscreen display.
Embedded and hobbyist electronics specialist LILYGO has turned its sights on industrial automation with the launch of the T-Connect Pro — a DIN-mountable microcontroller platform based on Espressif's ESP32-S3.
"T-Connect Pro is a product based on the [Espressif] ESP32-S3 main control chip, consisting of three stacked circuit boards," LILYGO explains of its latest launch. "It features a wide range of functions and is equipped with three different communication modules: CAN, RS485, and RS232, enabling long-distance data transmission. The product includes an Ethernet interface, a relay interface, and a LoRa module ([Semtech] SX1262). It also comes with an LCD screen to facilitate easier operation."
The rough footprint of the T-Connect Pro, brought to our attention by CNX Software, is similar to that of the Arduino Opta family — but while Arduino positions the Opta range as compact programmable logic controllers (PLCs), the T-Connect Pro comes without official support for IEC-61131-3 programming languages. What it does have is a 12-24VDC power input and a 10A-capable relay output for device control, at the top and bottom of the DIN-rail compatible chassis respectively.
Unusually, the device also includes an integrated 2.2" full-color touchscreen display with a 222×480 resolution. There are dedicated RS485 and RS232 serial modules, a CAN-FD module isolated to 2,500V, and an SPI-connected Fast Ethernet module — plus a Semtech SX1262 LoRa radio module, which can be used on top of the ESP32-S3's integrated Bluetooth 5 Low Energy (BLE) and Wi-Fi radios. There's also a Qwiic/STEMMA QT-compatible connector for external hardware expansion.
The Espressif ESP32-S3R8 at the heart of the T-Connect Pro features two Tensilica Xtensa LX7 32-bit microcontroller cores running at up to 240MHz and with vector instructions for on-device machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) workloads, 512kB of static RAM (SRAM), and 384kB of on-chip ROM, plus 8MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM) and 16MB of flash memory off-chip.
The T-Connect Pro is available to order on the LILYGO store at $70.36.
