LILYGO Updates Its Mini E-Paper Core Development Board with a Shiny New Espressif ESP32-S3 Version
A move to a newer microcontroller at the board's heart means more performance, more memory, and acceleration for on-device ML and AI.
Embedded electronics specialist LILYGO has launched an upgraded version of its Mini E-Paper Core all-in-one development board, which is now based around the Espressif ESP32-S3 microcontroller — providing more memory, more flash, and vector instructions for faster on-device machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) workloads.
"The design focuses on low power consumption and the basic requirements of MINI appearance to keep the product appearance as [small] as possible," LILYGO explains of its board, which launched in its original version back in 2021. "The Mini [E-Paper Core] is based on the 1.02-inch ePaper screen size, and the ABS shell is designed based on this mini structure to keep the entire module mini."
The original Mini E-Paper Core is now joined by a variant which swaps out the original Espressif ESP32-PICO-D4 microcontroller for the newer Espressif ESP32-S3, as brought to our attention by CNX Software. That means a shift from a dual-core Tensilica Xtensa LX6 CPU to the newer LX7, bringing with it vector instruction extensions for faster on-device AI and ML workloads, 512kB of static RAM (SRAM) plus 2MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM), and a boost to 4MB of flash storage.
What hasn't changed is the display on the front of the device, a 128×80 electrophoretic ePaper panel which only requires power when it's changing states. The rear of the gadget includes pin headers for unused general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins, including five connected to the microcontroller's analog to digital converter (ADC) — though these come at the loss of the original design's two digital to analog converter (DAC) pins. There's a three-way button on the top, and support for single-band 2.4GHz Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth 5 Low Energy (BLE).
The new Mini E-Paper Core S3 is now available on the LILYGO store at $19.10 per unit, sharing a listing with the original design — so be sure to select the "ESP32 S3 [H676]" version in the drop-down list before ordering if you don't want to receive the older, and oddly more expensive, original version.