Freenove ESP32-S3 and Breakout Board

Jim_Haseloff · February 23, 2025, 9:50pm

Hi - we’re developing some training materials around the Freenove ESP32-S3 Wroom board and the matching Freenove Breakout Board, which supplies LED port readouts, screw terminals and higher power output for motor control, etc. It is intended to match a 4D Systems Reptor-250 touchscreen display and controller for rapid prototyping of bioinstrumentation and other things.

This is part of the Biomaker training effort at the University of Cambridge (https://www.biomaker.org). We’re looking for any help with Fritzing parts that would allows to make better training materials - all open source. (Similar to: Document-your-project — Biomaker.org, and can be seen in the Biomaker Handbook online)

The relevant processor board and breakout board are:

Freenove ESP32-S3 Wroom board, with:
Freenove ESP32/ESP32-S3 Breakout Board

Previous work, similar parts

The Freenove ESP32-S3 Wroom board is similar to:
ESP32-S3-1-N16R8-module (ESP32-S3 CAM development board WiFi Bluetooth module onboard ESP32-S3-1 N16R8 module dual TYPE-C interface.) by Peter Van Epp (vanepp in forums) (ESP32-S3 CAM papan pengembangan modul WiFi Bluetooth onboard ESP32-S3-1 modul N16R8 antarmuka TYPE-C ganda - AliExpress 44)
The Expressif chip is slightly smaller on the Freenove board than that shown on this existing part.

There doesn’t appear to be an existing part for the Freenove ESP32/ESP32-S3 Breakout Board.

Top view
This picture shows the part from above, so that is easy to see were connectors should go, and which diameter they have.

Datasheet
The official documentation of the part manufacture is linked here:

Type
I did not read this
[ x] Breakout board, sub assembly, plug in module (A)
Antenna (AE)
Battery (BT)
Capacitor (C)
Diode (D)
Display (DS)
Fuse (F)
Hardware , mounting screws, etc. (H)
Jack, fixed part of a connector pair, header (J)
Relay (K)
Inductor, Coil, Ferrite bead (L)
Loudspeaker, Buzzer (LS)
Motor (M)
Microphone (MK)
Plug, moveable part of a connector pair (P)
Transistor (Q)
Resistor (R)
Thermistor (RT)
Varistor (RV)
Switch (S)
Transformer (T)
Integrated Circuit (IC)
Crystal, Oscillator (Y)
Zender diode (Z)
Other (please specifiy)

Footprint
E.g. SOT23-5 , TO-220.
This usually does not apply to breakout boards.

Thanks in advance for any advice or help with this. Best regards, Jim Haseloff.

vanepp · February 24, 2025, 8:57pm

Here is the Freenove ESP32-S3 Wroom board (it is a relatively minor edit of the ESP32-S3-1-N16R8-module)

ESP32-S3-Wroom-board-Freenove.fzpz (30.6 KB)

the breakout board will likely take a while longer

Peter

Jim_Haseloff · February 24, 2025, 10:24pm

Dear Peter,

Thank you for this - it will be very helpful for our training efforts, and is much appreciated!
This is a super-helpful community.
Thanks again, Jim.

vanepp · February 26, 2025, 5:57pm

Here is the breakout board. It is a bit more complex as it is designed to take the cpu board as a daughter card which implies some limitations. The basic part looks like this

drag the cpu board in to the sketch

then move it til it aligns (if it aligns, more on that later!) to the female headers where it goes in real life.You need to move the cpu card on to the breakout board to get it to connect (the circled in green green connections) moving the breakout board won’t make the connections (a Fritzing quirk.)

the wrinkle is that the female headers are offset 0.05in in x from the rest of the pins so sometimes the pins will be correct (as here) and it will connect, and other times (depending in what Fritzing took as the reference pin for the grid which changes from load to load at apparent random) it will be misaligned and won’t connect. The fix for that is to change the grid size from 0.1in (the default) to 0.05in which will allow the board to connect.

which will look like this if the default is set (it is stored with the sketch so it will stay once changed)

to this

then you should be able to move the cpu board to connect. Which will produce this (the cpu board is placed randomly in schematic so it won’t align)

drag it in to position

and click on the ratsnest lines to make the connections between the breakout board and the cpu board and it should match real life.

esp32-breakout-board-Freenove.fzpz (61.0 KB)

Now I will move on to finishing the display board part.

Peter

Jim_Haseloff · February 26, 2025, 7:41pm

Thank you Peter!
(Is this what you call waiting? - that was super fast)
Much appreciated, Jim.