Specifications
| In the range | Four bases for one board: expansion (2.54 mm pins), PinPulse (pins and sockets with an LED on every GPIO), pluggable terminal (push-in) and screw terminal |
|---|---|
| Fits | The 44-pin Lonely Binary ESP32-S3 Gold Edition — 22 pins a side, rows 22.86 mm apart. The PinPulse box includes one |
| GPIOs at the edge | 36 on the PinPulse, with nothing left out; 28 on the expansion base, 26 on the screw terminal base and 24 on the pluggable terminal base |
| Edge rows | PinPulse: 2 rows of 22 on each side at 2.54 mm, male pins outside and yellow female sockets inside, wired together pin for pin. Expansion: 4 × 20 pins at 2.54 mm, two strips a side wired together |
| Terminals | Pluggable: 2 × 12 push-in ways at 3.5 mm, plus a 4-way power block each side. Screw: 2 × 15 screw ways at 3.5 mm |
| LEDs | PinPulse only: 36, one per GPIO, lit while the pin is HIGH. Driven by 6 × SN74HC04 inverters from the 3.3 V rail through 5.1 kΩ, so the pin sees one CMOS input: at most 1 µA and 10 pF |
| Display connector | 15-way FPC at 1.0 mm pitch on all four bases, wired to the same GPIOs: GND, 3V3, BL, RST, DC, MISO, SCK, MOSI and CS on contacts 1 to 9, and 6 spare GPIOs. The legend on the back of every base misprints contacts 10 and 11 as 20 and 22 |
| Power at the edge | PinPulse: 3V3 twice and 5V once on the left, GND once on the left and three times on the right, on both pins and sockets, RST at the top of the left edge. The other three bases have no RST. Expansion: 3V3 and GND on each strip, 5V on the right strips only. Pluggable: 3V3 twice and GND twice on the left, 5V, 3V3 and GND twice on the right. Screw: 3V3 and GND on the left block, 5V and GND on the right |
| Spoken for | GPIO 43 and 44 (serial), 19 and 20 (native USB), 35 to 37 (octal PSRAM on N16R8), 0 (BOOT button) and 48 (RGB LED), all on the dev board, not the base. GPIO 0, 35 to 37 and 43 to 46 are not brought out by the three bases other than the PinPulse |
| Mounting | 4 corner holes on every base: 4 × 4.7 mm on the PinPulse, 40 mm apart across the board; 4 × 4.8 mm on the other three, on the 8 mm grid of LEGO Technic bricks: 40 × 64 mm apart on the expansion base, 48 × 64 mm on the screw base and 56 × 64 mm on the pluggable base |
| Size | 61 × 73 mm for the PinPulse, 10.3 mm tall from the underside of the board to the top of the sockets; 48 × 72 mm for the expansion base, 56 × 72 mm for the screw terminal base and 64 × 72 mm for the pluggable terminal base |
Seat the ESP32-S3 the right way round, every time. Its two USB sockets go over the two boxes printed USB at the bottom of the base, and its antenna ends up under the display plug. The board also fits end for end, and that way its 3.3 V output is wired to ground. Plug the cable in only after the board is seated.
What a base is
The ESP32-S3 arrives with forty-four pins soldered on and nowhere to put them. A base is the board it drops into: two 22-way sockets in the middle, the pins brought back out at the edges, four mounting holes, and a fifteen-way ribbon socket for a display.
Four of them share this page, because the question anybody holding one asks is the same — which way round, and where did my pin go — and the second half of that is a comparison.
Which one
| Expansion | PinPulse | Pluggable | Screw | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A wire lands in | pins | pins and sockets | a push-in terminal | a screw terminal |
| GPIOs at the edge | 28 | 36 | 24 | 26 |
| 5 V at the edge | right strips | left edge | right block | right block |
| An LED per GPIO | — | yes | — | — |
| Display connector | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Best for | jumpers, breadboards | debugging, teaching | wiring that changes | wiring that travels |
The three bases other than the PinPulse leave out GPIO 0, 35 to 37 and 43 to 46: the boot button, the octal PSRAM, the serial port and the strapping pins. The terminal bases leave out more, so check your sketch's pin list against the section for the board you are holding.
The PinPulse
The PinPulse shield is the full set: every pin brought back out at each edge twice — as a male pin and as a female socket — and an LED beside every GPIO that lights while the pin is HIGH.
Two things make it worth owning.
The lights cost your signals nothing. "Is this pin doing anything" is answered without a meter, and an I²C bus, an SPI clock or a serial line can be watched working, with no change to how they work. The LED is not on your pin. Six SN74HC04 inverter chips sit between the pins and the LEDs: the pin drives one CMOS input, at most 10 pF and 1 µA, and the light is paid for by the 3.3 V rail. Why that cannot disturb I²C or SPI.
The display plug is the standard one. The fifteen-way socket at the top takes the same ribbon as every Lonely Binary display, with the same nine contacts in the same order, so a screen goes in with no wiring and the display library's default pins are already the ones on this board.
Wiring, in four lines
- Seat the ESP32-S3 with its two USB sockets over the boxes printed USB. Press straight down, a thumb at each end.
- Plug the USB cable in after the board is seated.
- Take 3.3 V and ground from the nearest edge pin or terminal; each base has its own on both sides, and 5 V only where the table says.
- For a display, open the latch on the fifteen-way socket, slide the ribbon in, and close the latch. Nothing else to wire.
The PinPulse, both sides
The other three
Where to start
The handbook below starts with what all four bases share, the one mistake that ends a session (the board in end for end) and the display plug, then gives each base its own chapter: the expansion base, the pluggable terminal base, the screw terminal base and the PinPulse, whose chapter also covers its lights, its pins and a sketch that walks a light down every pin it is safe to drive. To see which hole is which GPIO on a board itself, open it in 3D: expansion, pluggable, screw or PinPulse.
When it doesn’t work
- Which way round does the ESP32-S3 go?
- USB sockets over the two boxes printed USB at the bottom of the base, antenna under the display port. The board fits end for end too, and that way its 3.3 V output lands on the base's ground row — a short across the regulator. Seat the board first, plug the cable in second.
- Which base should I buy?
- Jumper wires and breadboards: the expansion base, 28 GPIOs on pins. Debugging, or teaching somebody what a pin is: the PinPulse, which brings out all 36 and lights an LED on each. Bare wire you will rewire often: the pluggable terminal base. Bare wire that has to survive being carried: the screw terminal base. The two terminal bases bring out fewer pins, so check your sketch's pin list first.
- Why do the terminal bases bring out fewer GPIOs?
- There are only so many terminals: twelve push-in ways a side after a four-way power block on the pluggable base, fifteen screw ways a side on the screw base. The expansion base has room for more and still leaves out the same pins the other two do: GPIO 0, 35 to 37 and 43 to 46, which are the boot button, the octal PSRAM, the serial port and the strapping pins. The pluggable base also leaves out GPIO 1, 2, 3 and 4, and the screw base GPIO 3 and 18.
- Do all four bases use the same GPIOs for the display plug?
- Yes. Contact 3 is GPIO 41, 4 is 42, 5 is 2, 6 is 13, 7 is 12, 8 is 11, 9 is 10, and the spare contacts 10 to 15 are 1, 15, 7, 4, 6 and 5, on every one of the four. A display that works on one works on the others with no change to the sketch.
- Why are there pins and sockets on each edge?
- So either end of a jumper fits. The outer row is male pins and the inner yellow row is female sockets, and each socket is wired to the pin beside it — two ways onto the same 22 signals, not 44 different ones.
- Do the LEDs interfere with I²C, SPI or the serial port?
- No, and the six chips are why. The LED is not on your pin: each GPIO drives the input of an SN74HC04 inverter, which TI rates at 1 µA of leakage and 10 pF at most, and the LED's quarter-milliamp comes from the 3.3 V rail through the inverter's output. On I²C, 10 pF behind a 4.7 kΩ pull-up adds about 40 ns of a 300 ns budget at 400 kHz and the leakage is under 5 mV; SPI is driven both ways by its chip, so there is no pull-up to disturb. The shield adds no pull-ups of its own.
- Some LEDs flicker when I touch the board or wave a hand near it.
- Those pins are floating: nothing in your sketch has set them, so their inverter inputs pick up whatever is in the air. The back of the shield says the same. Set the pin as an OUTPUT and write it HIGH or LOW, or use INPUT_PULLUP, and the flicker stops.
- Some LEDs are lit before I have uploaded anything.
- GPIO 0, 43, 44 and 20 are pulled up inside the ESP32-S3 at reset, so their LEDs light on their own; 43 is also the serial transmit line and flickers when anything prints. GPIO 45 and 46 are pulled down and stay dark. None of that is the shield.
- Which chips drive the LEDs?
- Six 74HC04D hex inverters — SN74HC04 in the board's bill of materials. It is a plain inverter, not the Schmitt-trigger 74HC14, and the difference shows on a floating pin, whose LED can glow half-lit because the HC04 does not snap to one side.
- Will my Lonely Binary display plug straight in?
- Yes, any of them with the 15-way ribbon: the six panels of the SPI TFT display kit, and anything else that uses the same plug. Contacts 1 to 9 are always GND, 3V3, BL, RST, DC, MISO, SCK, MOSI and CS, so there is nothing to wire. On the ESP32-S3 the display library's default pins, GPIO 12, 11, 2, 42, 10 and 41, are the ones the shield connects. The 1.8 inch TinkerBlock display, TK89, is the exception: it has eight pins and no fifteen-way plug.
- Which GPIOs does the display plug use?
- Contact 1 is GND and 2 is 3V3. Contacts 3 to 9 are BL on GPIO 41, RST on 42, DC on 2, MISO on 13, SCK on 12, MOSI on 11 and CS on 10. Contacts 10 to 15 are spare, on GPIO 1, 15, 7, 4, 6 and 5. The table on the back prints contacts 10 and 11 as 20 and 22; the wiring is right and those two numbers are not.
- Does 36 lit LEDs overload the board?
- No. Each LED draws about a quarter of a milliamp, so all 36 are around 10 mA from the 3.3 V rail. The ESP32-S3 itself peaks at 340 mA while Wi-Fi transmits, which is the number to budget for.