ESP32-S3 DevKitC-1 N16R8 Development Board

The ESP32-S3 DevKitC-1 N16R8 is a powerful Wi-Fi + Bluetooth LE development board built on the ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 module, with a dual-core 240 MHz processor, 16 MB flash and 8 MB PSRAM. It's the go-to board for projects that need more memory and speed than a classic ESP32 — cameras, displays, audio, voice and on-device AI.

Features

• Dual-core Xtensa LX7 32-bit CPU up to 240 MHz, with vector instructions for AI/ML workloads
• 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n) and Bluetooth 5 LE with mesh
• 16 MB flash + 8 MB PSRAM for large apps, frame buffers and LVGL GUIs
• Two USB Type-C ports — one USB-to-UART for flashing and serial monitor, one native USB OTG (keyboard/mouse/MIDI/mass-storage)
• On-board addressable RGB LED (WS2812), BOOT and RESET buttons
• Hardware security: secure boot, flash encryption, AES/SHA/RSA/ECC accelerators

Board layout

Pinout

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Board layout and pinout images: Espressif Systems, Apache License 2.0.

GPIO35, 36 and 37 are used by the 8 MB PSRAM on N16R8 boards — leave them unconnected. GPIO0, 3, 45 and 46 are strapping pins; avoid pulling them at power-up.

Getting started in Arduino IDE

Prefer a video? This walkthrough covers your first upload over both the UART and native USB ports:

Good for

• IoT dashboards and smart-home controllers
• ESP32-CAM-style camera and image projects
• TFT / touch display GUIs (LVGL)
• Voice, audio and TinyML / edge-AI experiments

Logic level is 3.3 V — don't connect 5 V signals directly to the GPIO pins.