Olimex Launches New ESP32-C3-DevKit-LiPo RISC-V Development Board for Under $6

Bulgarian open source hardware specialist Olimex has launched a new compact development board, built around the RISC-V Espressif ESP32-C3: the ESP32-C3-DevKit-Lipo.

Designed to cram in the features without bloating the cost, Olimex' ESP32-C3-DevKit-Lipo is described by company founder Tsvetan Usunov as an "entry-level RISC-V board," yet includes an impressive 15 general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins, 2.4GHz 802.11/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 connectivity with an on-board antenna, and an integrated lithium-polymer battery management system with status LED.

The breadboard-friendly layout includes the Espressif ESP32-C3 module to one end and a USB Type-C port, for power and data, to the other. The ESP32-C3 system-on-chip includes a single low-power RISC-V processor core running at up to 160MHz, 400kB of static RAM (SRAM), 384kB of ROM, 8kB of additional SRAM in the real-time clock (RTC), and 4MB of embedded flash storage.

The ESP32-C3-DevKit-Lipo isn't Olimex' board design to make use of Espressif parts: Two years ago the company respun its earlier ESP32-S2-DevKit-Lipo, a direct predecessor to today's ESP32-C3 version, to unlock previously-unavailable USB On-The-Go (OTG) functionality, while its ESP32-ADF board targeted audio applications.

The new board, which is supported in the Arduino IDE, PlatfomIO, and via Espressif's own ESP-IDF development environment, is now available to order on the Olimex store priced at just €6 (around $5.90) — battery, as always, not included. The board's design KiCad design files and Gerber production files, meanwhile, are available on the project's GitHub repository under the strongly reciprocal variant of the CERN Open Hardware License Version 2.