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Introduction
The ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.28 (hereinafter referred to as the development board) is a low-cost, high-performance microcontroller development board designed by Waveshare. It features a 1.28-inch capacitive touch LCD screen, a lithium battery charging chip, a six-axis sensor (three-axis accelerometer and three-axis gyroscope), and other peripherals. The board is based on the ESP32-S3R2, which is a system-on-chip (SoC) integrated with low-power Wi-Fi and BLE 5.0. It also includes an external 16MB Flash and 2MB PSRAM. The SoC features hardware encryption accelerators, RNG, HMAC, and digital signature modules, meeting the security requirements of the Internet of Things (IoT). Its various low-power operating modes are suitable for power requirements in IoT, mobile devices, wearable electronics, smart home applications, and other scenarios.
Features
- Equipped with Xtensa® 32-bit LX7 dual-core processor, up to 240MHz main frequency.
- Supports 2.4GHz Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n) and Bluetooth® 5 (LE), with onboard antenna.
- Built-in 512KB of SRAM and 384KB ROM, with onboard 2MB PSRAM and an external 16MB Flash memory.
- Type-C connector, keeps it up to date, easier to use.
- Onboard 1.28inch capacitive touch display, 240×240 resolution, 65K color.
- Onboard QMI8658 6-axis IMU (3-axis accelerometer and 3-axis gyroscope) for detecting motion gestures.
- Onboard 3.7V lithium battery recharge/discharge header and 6 × GPIO pins via SH1.0 connector.
- Supports flexible clock, module power supply independent setting, and other controls to realize low power consumption in different scenarios.
- Integrated with USB serial port full-speed controller, GPIO pins allow flexible configuring pin functions.
Hardware Description
- When using the development board, pay attention to the ceramic antenna area, and avoid the PCB board, metal, and plastic parts covering the ceramic antenna.
- Development board leads to 6x GPIO that can be used for external connections, GPIO can be flexibly configured to I2C, SPI, and other peripheral functions.
- VSYS of SH1.0 connector can directly input 5V to power the whole development board.

- On the development board, the QMI8658 six-axis inertial measurement unit and the touchscreen share one set of I2C interfaces (SDA - GPIO6, SCL - GPIO7). For more details, please refer to the schematic diagram.
- The development board uses GPIO2 to control the backlight brightness. Additionally, two MOSFETs are brought out to control the switching points around the battery holder, connected to GPIO4 and GPIO5. These can be soldered to low-current switch devices. For more information, please refer to the schematic diagram.
- The board features an MX1.25 battery interface for connecting a single-cell 3.7V lithium battery. Pay attention to the polarity markings on the lithium battery interface.
Hardware Connection
- The ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.28 comes with a built-in USB to UART chip and automatic download circuit. When you connect it using a Type-C cable, you can directly download firmware.
Dimensions


Environment Setting
The software framework for ESP32 series development boards is completed, and you can use CircuitPython, MicroPython, and C/C++ (Arduino, ESP-IDF) for rapid prototyping of product development. Here's a brief introduction to these three development approaches:
- CircuitPython is a programming language designed to simplify coding tests and learning on low-cost microcontroller boards. It is an open-source derivative of the MicroPython programming language, primarily aimed at students and beginners. CircuitPython development and maintenance are supported by Adafruit Industries.
- You can refer to development documentation for CircuitPython-related applications development.
- The GitHub library for CircuitPython allows for recompilation for custom development.
- MicroPython is an efficient implementation of the Python 3 programming language. It includes a small subset of the Python standard library and has been optimized to run on microcontrollers and resource-constrained environments.
- The official libraries and support from Espressif Systems for C/C++ development make it convenient for rapid installation.
- Users can select Arduino
- Visual Studio Code (ESP-IDF) as their Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
- The environment is set up under Windows 10, users can choose to use Arduino or Visual Studio Code (ESP-IDF) as IDE for development, Mac/Linux OS users please refer to the official instructions.
Arduino
- Download and install Arduino IDE.
- Install ESP32 on the Arduino IDE as shown below, and you can refer to this link.
- Fill in the following link in the Additional Boards Manager URLs section of the Settings screen under File -> Preferences and save.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/gh-pages/package_esp32_index.json

- Search esp32 on Board Manager to install, and restart Arduino IDE to take effect.
3. ESP32-C3-Zero does not have a USB to UART chip mounted, you need to use the USB of ESP32-C3 as the download interface and Log print interface, and you need to enable USB CDC when using Arduino IDE.

MicroPython
- 1. Download and install the latest Thonny, open ThonNY ide -> Configure interpreter... as shown below:

- 2. Press the BOOT key on the board, connect it to the USB cable, find the device manager or the corresponding COM port, and download or run the demo. For more details, you can see #Hardware Connection.
- 3. Select the ESP32 series online MPY firmware to download according to the following steps. Clean the Flash on the development board before downloading, and the whole download process lasts about 1 minute.

- 4. Download the local firmware using flash_download_tool according to the following figure. It is recommended to select one from Step 3 and Step 4.

- 5. Please refer to MicroPython Documentation and Release Note to program.
Sample Demo
- For Arduino examples, please refer to arduino-esp32 or File -> examples in the Arduino IDE, and for screen drivers, please refer to the sample demo.
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