ESP32 Pinout, Datasheet, Features & Applications

Hi Guys! I hope you’re doing great. Today, I am going to share Chapter Zero of the ESP32 Programming Course. I have called it Chapter 0 because today, we won't practically work on the ESP32. Instead, I’ll walk you through the detailed theoretical Introduction to the ESP32 Module, where we will discuss the ESP32 Pinout, Datasheet, Specifications, Features, Applications etc. in detail.

ESP32 is an embedded module that supports both WiFi and BT(dual-mode) connectivity and is thus used in Cloud-based IoT projects. ESP32 is the upgraded model of the ESP8266 module and is designed by Espressif Systems in China.

The following tables show the main features and technical specifications of the ESP32 module.

So, let's get started with the Introduction to ESP32:

Introduction to ESP32 Module

• 

  ESP32 (designed by Espressif Systems, a Shanghai-based Chinese Company) is a 48 Pin microprocessor-based embedded IC(available in QFN package), that supports both WiFi & BT(dual-mode) connectivity and is used majorly in wearable devices, mobile & cloud-based IoT applications.
• The microprocessor used in the ESP32 chip is the Tensilica Xtensa LX6 microprocessor (single-core and dual-core).
• A few LX6 based ESP32 ICs are:
  • ESP32-D0WDQ6 (and ESP32-D0WD)
  • ESP32-D2WD
  • ESP32-S0WD
  • ESP32-PICO-D4

ESP32 vs ESP8266

• Both the ESP32 and ESP8266 are inexpensive WiFi modules with low power consumption.
• Both modules are desirable for DIY projects in the areas of IoT (Internet of Things) and automation.
• The ESP32 is a dual-core 160Mhz 240Mhz CPU, while the ESP8266 has an 80Mhz single-core processor. Therefore, if your primary concern is processor speed, you should prioritize the ESP32 over the ESP8266.
• The ESP32 offers more GPIO than the ESP8266.
• ESP32 supports Bluetooth 4.2 and BLE(Bluetooth Low Energy).
• The ESP32 offers a 12-bit ADC, while the ESP8266 offers only a 10-bit ADC.

ESP32-WROOM-32

• ESP32-WROOM-32 is a 38-pin breakout board of ESP32, which is most commonly used in third-party ESP32 modules.
• As ESP32 IC is available in the QFN(Quad Flat No Leads) package, so it's quite difficult to solder the IC in embedded projects.
• So, to ease the process of using ESP32 IC, Espressif Systems designed numerous small modules(using ESP32 chip) that have a built-in antenna and easily usable pinout.
• Other ESP32 modules are ESP32-SOLO and ESP32-WROVER.
• One of the most commonly used breakout boards of ESP32 is ESP32-WROOM-32, shown in the below figure:

Third-Party ESP32 Development Modules

• Many embedded companies have used ESP32-WROOM-32 and designed different ESP32 development boards, which are plug-and-play modules and are thus normally used for learning and prototyping purposes.
• One of the most commonly used ESP32 development boards is called ESP32-DevkitC.
• ESP32-DevKitC is a 30-pin ESP32-based development board, designed by Espressif Systems and is used in embedded and IoT projects.

• All you need to do is plug this device using a USB cable and play with it on the fly.
• Boot mode and Reset buttons are incorporated on the board.
• USB micro connector and USB-UART Bridge, and LDO regulator are also included in the device.

Types of ESP32 Development Boards

• The following are the five different versions of ESP32-DevKitC.
  1. ESP32-DevKitC-32E
  2. ESP32-DevKitC-32UE
  3. ESP32-DevKitCVE
  4. ESP32-DevKitCVIE
  5. ESP32-DevKitCS1

So, that was the evolution of ESP32 from a simple IC to plug & play board. Now let's have a look at the Pinout of the ESP32 microcontroller and modules:

ESP32 Pinout

We have seen above that ESP32 has evolved first into ESP32-WROOM-32 and is further upgraded into ESP32-DevKitC. So, let's have a look at the pinout of all these boards, one by one:

Pinout of ESP32 IC

• ESP32 IC in its pure form consists of 48 pins in total.
• The following figure shows the labeled ESP32 Pinout diagram:

Pinout of ESP32-WROOM-32

• ESP32-WROOM-32 is a breakout board of ESP32 and consists of 38 pins in total.
• Here's the pinout of the ESP-WROOM-32 board:

Pinout of ESP32-DevkitC

• ESP32-DevKitC is a development board based on the ESP32 microcontroller and it has 36 pins in total.
• Here's the pinout diagram of ESP32 DevKitC:

ESP32 Pin Description

Now, let's have a look at the functions of ESP32 Pinout:

Power Pins in ESP32

• Power: Power is applied through Micro-USB, 3.3V pin, 5V pin, and GND. Regulated 5V is supplied to this pin which is further regulated to 3.3V to power up the board. And 3.3V pin directly supplies the 3.3V regulated to the board. And the ground is connected to GND.
• Enable: The enable pin is represented by ‘En’ on the board and is used to reset the microcontroller.
• AREF: It is marked as AREF which is used to provide a reference voltage for input voltage.

GPIO Pins in ESP32

ESP32 has 36 GPIO(general purpose input/output) pins to perform numerous operations(normally one at a time). Third-party ESP32 modules have different numbers of GPIO pins i.e. ESP32 Dev Kit V1 includes 30 GPIO pins. Let's have a look at the functionality of ESP32 GPIO Pins:

ADC Pins in ESP32

• ADC Pins: ESP32 has a total of 18 ADC channels(12-bit each) used to measure the analog voltage within the range of 0-3.3V.

ESP32 is equipped with two SAR analog-to-digital converter modules named ADC1 and ADC2. ADC1 has 10 Channels labeled from ADC2_1 to ADC2_7, while ADC2 has 10 Channels labeled from ADC2_0 to ADC2_9. The ADC output value ranges from 0 to 4093 at 12-bit resolution.

DAC Pins in ESP32

• DAC Pins: ESP32 features 2 distinct 8-bit digital-to-analog converters(DAC1 and DAC2) for translating digital values to analog signals. The DAC function is attached to below two GPIO pins:

1. DAC1-GPIO25
2. DAC2-GPIO26

The DAC employs a power supply as an input reference voltage and features an internal resistance network.

PWM Pins in ESP32

• PWM Pins: ESP32's PWM controller has 16 independent PWM channels with configurable frequency and duty cycles. Any GPIO pin can be used as a PWM pin.

PWM pulses are used to control the speed of motors or the brightness of LEDs. You can configure the frequency, channel, GPIO pin, and duty cycle of the PWM signal.

SPI Pins in ESP32

• SPI Pins: ESP32 has three SPI blocks that operate in both master and slave modes, named SPI, HSPI, and VSPI.

Among these 3 blocks, SPI is used as an interface to flash memory. So, we are left with HSPI and VSPI for normal use:

1. VSPI: ESP32 VSPI Pins are GPIO23 (MOSI), GPIO19 (MISO), GPIO18 (CLK) and GPIO5 (CS) used for SPI-1 communication.
2. HSPI: ESP32 HSPI Pins are GPIO13 (MOSI), GPIO12 (MISO), GPIO14 (CLK) and GPIO15 (CS) used for SPI-2 communication.

I2C Pins in ESP32

The ESP32 has two I2C interfaces. The SCL and SDA pins of both I2C interfaces can be assigned by a user in the program. The default I2C pins are:

• SDA-GPIO21
• SCL-GPIO22

ESP32 Capacitive Touch Sensors

• ESP32 has 10 capacitive touch-sensing GPIO Pins(T0 to T9), which get electrostatically charged when a finger touches the respective GPIO pin.

Without any additional hardware, these touch GPIOs can be utilized to make capacitive touchpads. Variations in capacitance are evident.

RTC GPIO

• ESP32 has 18 Low-Power RTC GPIO Pins(RTCIO0 to RTCIO17) used to wake up the ESP32 board from deep sleep mode.

• Serial: Two serial pins are represented on boards as Tx and Rx. The Tx is used to transmit serial data while Rx is used to receive serial data.

• External Interrupts: All GPIO pins can be used as external interrupts.

ESP32 Datasheet

Before you incorporate this device into your electrical project, it’s wise to go through the datasheet of the component that features the main characteristics of the device. You can click the link given below to download the ESP32 datasheet.

Now, let's have a look at the features of ESP32:

ESP32 Features

Here are the main features of ESP32 IC:

• ESP32 has built-in integration of both WiFi and Bluetooth dual-mode.
• ESP32 has 34 programmable GPIOs present on the chip.
• ADC is of 12-bit SAR and can support up to 18 channels.
• DAC is 8-bit and it has 2 DAC channels.
• ESP32 also has 10 touch sensors embedded in it.
• ESP32 also has a Hall sensor in it.
• It supports 4 SPI channels.
• It also has 2 I²S channels.
• ESP32 has 2 I²C ports in it.
• It supports 3 UART channels.
• It also has 1 host(SD/MMC/SDIO) and 1 slave(SDIO/SPI).
• ESP32 also supports the Ethernet MAC interface with dedicated DMA and IEEE 1588 support.
• It supports Two-Wire Automotive Interface (TWAI®, compatible with ISO11898-1)
• LED PWM up to 16 channels

A few of ESP32's key features are discussed below in detail:

ESP32 WiFi Key Features

• Wireless Networking Standard: 802.11 b/g/n
• Wireless Standard: 802.11 n (2.4 GHz), up to 150 Mbps
• WiFi Multimedia(WMM)
• WiFi Aggregation: TX/RX A-MPDU, RX A-MSDU
• Immediate Block ACK: suitable for high bandwidth & low latency traffic.
• Automatic Beacon monitoring (hardware TSF)
• Simultaneous support for SoftAP, Infrastructure Station and Promiscuous modes.
• Diverse Antenna
• Defragmentation to smoothen the data.
• Supports 4 virtual WiFi Interfaces.

ESP32 Bluetooth Key Features

• Compliant with Bluetooth v4.2 BR/EDR
• Class-1, Class-2 and Class-3 transmitters without external power amplifier
• Increased Power Control
• Transmission Power: +12 dBm
• BLE sensitivity: –94 dBm (NZIF receiver)
• Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH)
• Standard HCI supports SDIO/SPI/UART
• High-speed UART HCI, up to 4 Mbps
• Bluetooth 4.2 BR/EDR BLE dual-mode controller
• CVSD and SBC for audio codec
• Classic BT and BLE support Multiple connections.
• It can advertise and scan simultaneously.
• Bluetooth Piconet and Scatternet

ESP32 Microcontroller Key Features

• ESP32 uses an Xtensa® single-/dual-core 32-bit LX6 microprocessor(s) .
• It supports data rates up to 600 MIPS (200 MIPS for ESP32-S0WD/ESP32-U4WDH)
• It has a Flash Memory of 448 KB.
• It has an SRAM memory of 520 KB.
• 16 KB SRAM in RTC
• QSPI supports multiple flash/SRAM chips.

ESP32 Clocks & Timers Key Features

• ESP32 has a calibrated 8MHz crystal oscillator (internal)
• Calibrated RC oscillator (internal)
• External 2 MHz ~ 60 MHz crystal oscillator (40 MHz only for Wi-Fi/BT functionality)
• External 32 kHz crystal oscillator for RTC with calibration
• Two timer groups, including 2 × 64-bit timers and 1 × main watchdog in each group
• ESP32 also has one RTC timer.
• RTC watchdog is also present in ESP32.

ESP32 Projects & Applications

ESP32 modules have brought a revolution in embedded and especially IoT projects. As these boards are small-sized, low-powered and support both WiFi & BT, thus are gaining popularity in IoT-based handheld devices. A few applications of the ESP32 module are as follows:

• Used in Network projects.
• Employed for beginner-level DIY projects.
• Employed in the prototyping of IoT devices.
• Used in cloud-based smart security projects.
• Used in low-power battery-operated applications.

That was all about the Introduction to ESP32 module. If you have any questions, you can approach me in the comment section below. I’ll help you according to the best of my expertise. You’re most welcome to share your valuable feedback and suggestions around the content we share so we keep coming up with quality content customized to your exact needs and requirements. Thank you for reading the article.