ESP32-S3 Screw Terminal Base pinout

InteractiveOpen the S3 Screw in 3DTurn the real board over and click any of its 30 holes. Every pad is placed from this design’s own net list.Open in 3D →

Reading this board

The base has no chip of its own. An ESP32-S3 Gold Edition plugs into the two 22-way sockets down the middle, antenna end toward the display connector, and the base brings 26 of its GPIOs out to two 15-way screw terminal blocks, one on each edge at a 3.5 mm pitch. Each GPIO comes out once. There are no pins to solder and no LEDs: each way is the dev board's pin and nothing else.

The silkscreen reads from the display end down, so that is the order here. Open the base in 3D and click either block; the handbook covers using it.

Way, from the display end	Left block	Right block
1	3V3	5V
2	GND	GND
3	GPIO5	GPIO1
4	GPIO6	GPIO2
5	GPIO7	GPIO42
6	GPIO15	GPIO41
7	GPIO16	GPIO40
8	GPIO17	GPIO39
9	GPIO8	GPIO38
10	GPIO9	GPIO4
11	GPIO10	GPIO48
12	GPIO11	GPIO47
13	GPIO12	GPIO21
14	GPIO13	GPIO20
15	GPIO14	GPIO19

GPIO 4 is on the other side

GPIO 4 comes out on the right block, between 38 and 48, although it sits on the dev board's left row. The net list ties the dev board's left-row socket pin 4 to the right block's part pin 6, the tenth way down from the display end. Every other left-row GPIO comes out on the left block. If you wire by row, a sensor on GPIO 4 goes on the wrong side of the board and a sketch that looks for it on the left finds nothing.

What does not come out

GPIO 0, 3, 18, 35, 36, 37, 43, 44, 45 and 46 are not on a terminal, and neither is RST. Their socket positions are connected to nothing. That leaves out the serial pair, the PSRAM lines of an N16R8 module and all four strapping pins (0, 3, 45 and 46).

Power

3V3 is on the left block only and 5V on the right block only, one way each. Both are the dev board's own pins passed straight through; the base has no regulator. 5V is whatever the dev board's 5V pin carries, and with USB as the only supply that is the USB voltage. One GND way is on each block, and they are the same net, joined with the sockets' ground pins.

The native USB pins are on the right block

GPIO 19 and 20 are the right block's last two ways, and they are the dev board's native USB data pair, D− and D+. A wire to either one shares the USB lines with the computer. Leave them alone unless the sketch is not using native USB. GPIO 48 on the same block is the dev board's RGB LED.

The display connector

A 15-way FPC socket on a 1.0 mm pitch at the top of the board, the same on every ESP32-S3 base. Nothing switches its lines: contacts 3 to 15 are the same nets as terminal ways, so a fitted display owns those GPIOs.

Contact	Signal	Contact	Signal
1	GND	9	GPIO10
2	3V3	10	GPIO1
3	GPIO41	11	GPIO15
4	GPIO42	12	GPIO7
5	GPIO2	13	GPIO4
6	GPIO13	14	GPIO6
7	GPIO12	15	GPIO5
8	GPIO11

The net list names BL, DC and CS for GPIO41, GPIO2 and GPIO10.

Pins to leave alone

GPIO15 — ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO16 — ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO17 — ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO11 — ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO12 — ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO13 — ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO14 — ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO48 — WS2812B RGB LED, single-wire at 800 kHz. The silkscreen says RGB@IO48.
GPIO20 — Native USB-C, D+ . Wired straight to the USB-Serial-JTAG peripheral, no bridge chip in the path.
GPIO19 — Native USB-C, D− . Wired straight to the USB-Serial-JTAG peripheral, no bridge chip in the path.

Every pin

Pin	Name	Functions	Notes
3V3	3.3 V rail	power	L1. Output of the on-board regulator. Everything on the board runs from it, so budget what the regulator can spare, not what USB can deliver. A steady 3.3 V supply can also power the board through it, but never with USB plugged in at the same time.
GND	Ground	power	L2. Ground. Several holes so a breadboard build has one nearby wherever it needs it.
GPIO5	GPIO5	gpio, adc1, touch	L3
GPIO6	GPIO6	gpio, adc1, touch	L4
GPIO7	GPIO7	gpio, adc1, touch	L5
GPIO15	GPIO15	gpio, adc2	ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO16	GPIO16	gpio, adc2	ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO17	GPIO17	gpio, adc2, uart	ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO8	GPIO8	gpio, adc1, touch, i2c	L9. Arduino default: Wire (I²C) SDA.
GPIO9	GPIO9	gpio, adc1, touch, i2c	L10. Arduino default: Wire (I²C) SCL.
GPIO10	GPIO10	gpio, adc1, touch, spi	L11. Arduino default: SPI (HSPI) SS.
GPIO11	GPIO11	gpio, adc2, touch, spi	ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO12	GPIO12	gpio, adc2, touch, spi	ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO13	GPIO13	gpio, adc2, touch, spi	ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
GPIO14	GPIO14	gpio, adc2, touch	ADC2, so analogRead stops working the moment Wi-Fi starts. Unaffected as a digital pin.
5V	5 V rail	power	R1. The USB rail, upstream of the regulator. Feed the board here if you are not using USB, or take 5 V out if you are.
GND	Ground	power	R2. Ground. Several holes so a breadboard build has one nearby wherever it needs it.
GPIO1	GPIO1	gpio, adc1, touch	R3
GPIO2	GPIO2	gpio, adc1, touch	R4
GPIO42	GPIO42	gpio, jtag	R5
GPIO41	GPIO41	gpio, jtag	R6
GPIO40	GPIO40	gpio, jtag	R7
GPIO39	GPIO39	gpio, jtag	R8
GPIO38	GPIO38	gpio	R9
GPIO4	GPIO4	gpio, adc1, touch	R10
GPIO48	GPIO48	gpio	WS2812B RGB LED, single-wire at 800 kHz. The silkscreen says RGB@IO48.
GPIO47	GPIO47	gpio	R12
GPIO21	GPIO21	gpio	R13
GPIO20	GPIO20	gpio, adc2, usb	Native USB-C, D+ . Wired straight to the USB-Serial-JTAG peripheral, no bridge chip in the path.
GPIO19	GPIO19	gpio, adc2, usb	Native USB-C, D− . Wired straight to the USB-Serial-JTAG peripheral, no bridge chip in the path.

For this board

ESP32-S3 Expansion Base pinout — Every hole on the Lonely Binary ESP32-S3 Expansion Base: two 20-way strips a side on the same nets, 28 of the 36 GPIOs at the edge, the eight that stay on the sockets, and the 15-way display connector.
ESP32-S3 Pluggable Terminal Base pinout — Every way on the Lonely Binary ESP32-S3 Pluggable Terminal Base: 24 GPIOs on two 12-way push-in blocks, two 4-way power blocks, the display connector, and the twelve pins that stay off the edge.
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HotSwap Arcade Kit: Buttons, Joystick and Coin Acceptor for ESP32-S3, Nano, Pico and Zero 2 W — One mainboard for ten buttons, a joystick, a 12 V coin acceptor and an SPI screen, and four adapters that plug it into an ESP32-S3, a classic Arduino Nano, a Raspberry Pi Pico or a Zero 2 W. Pin tables for every adapter, the power arrangement, and the code.
Breadboard Power Adapters: Standard 5 V / 3.3 V, Step-Down and Booster — Three USB-C breadboard power adapters that plug into both pairs of rails at one end: a standard board with a 5 V / 3.3 V switch per side, a step-down that sets 1.25 to about 3.5 V, and a booster that sets about 4.3 up to 28 V. Which way round they go, why 5 V reads 4.7, and the half-amp fuse that limits all three.
CAN Bus — An SN65HVD230 CAN transceiver on a TinkerBlock board, for 3.3 V microcontrollers with a CAN controller of their own, such as every ESP32. CTX and CRX go straight across, the 120 Ω fitted on every board belongs only on the two end boards, GND runs with a twisted pair, and one board alone can never finish a message.
I2S Amplifier — An NS4168 I2S amplifier on a TinkerBlock board: the ESP32-S3 sends sound as numbers on three wires and the chip drives a 4 Ω speaker, about 1 W on 3.3 V. CTRL must be driven HIGH or it stays off, the L/R jumper picks which channel the mono chip plays, and neither speaker wire is ground.

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