Adafruit Feather ESP32S3 TFT
Overview
The Adafruit Feather ESP32-S3 TFT is an ESP32-S3 development board in the Feather standard layout, sharing peripheral placement with other devices labeled as Feathers or FeatherWings. The board is equipped with an ESP32-S3 mini module, a LiPo battery charger, a fuel gauge, a USB-C and Qwiic/STEMMA-QT connector. Compared to the base model, this TFT variant additionally comes with a 240x135 pixel IPS TFT color display. For more information, check Adafruit Feather ESP32-S3 TFT [1].
Hardware
ESP32-S3 mini module, featuring the dual core 32-bit Xtensa Microprocessor (Tensilica LX7), running at up to 240MHz
512KB SRAM and either 8MB flash or 4MB flash + 2MB PSRAM, depending on the module variant
USB-C directly connected to the ESP32-S3 for USB/UART and JTAG debugging
LiPo connector and built-in battery charging when powered via USB-C
MAX17048 fuel gauge for battery voltage and state-of-charge reporting
Charging indicator LED, user LED, reset and boot buttons
Built-in NeoPixel indicator RGB LED
STEMMA QT connector for I2C devices, with switchable power for low-power mode
240x135 pixel IPS TFT color display with 1.14” diagonal and ST7789 chipset
Asymmetric Multiprocessing (AMP)
The ESP32-S3 SoC allows 2 different applications to be executed in asymmetric multiprocessing. Due to its dual-core architecture, each core can be enabled to execute customized tasks in stand-alone mode and/or exchanging data over OpenAMP framework. See Inter-Processor Communication (IPC) folder as code reference.
For more information, check the datasheet at ESP32-S3 Datasheet [7].
Supported Features
The current adafruit_feather_esp32s3_tft board supports the following
hardware features:
Interface |
Controller |
Driver/Component |
|---|---|---|
UART |
on-chip |
serial port |
GPIO |
on-chip |
gpio |
PINMUX |
on-chip |
pinmux |
USB-JTAG |
on-chip |
hardware interface |
SPI Master |
on-chip |
spi |
TWAI/CAN |
on-chip |
can |
ADC |
on-chip |
adc |
Timers |
on-chip |
counter |
Watchdog |
on-chip |
watchdog |
TRNG |
on-chip |
entropy |
LEDC |
on-chip |
pwm |
MCPWM |
on-chip |
pwm |
PCNT |
on-chip |
qdec |
GDMA |
on-chip |
dma |
USB-CDC |
on-chip |
serial |
Wi-Fi |
on-chip |
|
Bluetooth |
on-chip |
Connections and IOs
The Adafruit Feather ESP32-S3 TFT User Guide [4] has detailed information about the board including pinouts [5] and the schematic [6].
Programming and Debugging
Prerequisites
Espressif HAL requires WiFi and Bluetooth binary blobs in order work. Run the command below to retrieve those files.
west blobs fetch hal_espressif
Note
It is recommended running the command above after west update.
Building & Flashing
Simple boot
The board could be loaded using the single binary image, without 2nd stage bootloader. It is the default option when building the application without additional configuration.
Note
Simple boot does not provide any security features nor OTA updates.
MCUboot bootloader
User may choose to use MCUboot bootloader instead. In that case the bootloader must be build (and flash) at least once.
There are two options to be used when building an application:
Sysbuild
Manual build
Note
User can select the MCUboot bootloader by adding the following line to the board default configuration file.
CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT=y
Sysbuild
The sysbuild makes possible to build and flash all necessary images needed to bootstrap the board with the ESP32-S3 SoC.
To build the sample application using sysbuild use the command:
west build -b adafruit_feather_esp32s3_tft/esp32s3/procpu --sysbuild samples/hello_world
By default, the ESP32-S3 sysbuild creates bootloader (MCUboot) and application images. But it can be configured to create other kind of images.
Build directory structure created by sysbuild is different from traditional Zephyr build. Output is structured by the domain subdirectories:
build/
├── hello_world
│ └── zephyr
│ ├── zephyr.elf
│ └── zephyr.bin
├── mcuboot
│ └── zephyr
│ ├── zephyr.elf
│ └── zephyr.bin
└── domains.yaml
Note
With --sysbuild option the bootloader will be re-build and re-flash
every time the pristine build is used.
For more information about the system build please read the Sysbuild (System build) documentation.
Manual build
During the development cycle, it is intended to build & flash as quickly possible. For that reason, images can be build one at a time using traditional build.
The instructions following are relevant for both manual build and sysbuild. The only difference is the structure of the build directory.
Note
Remember that bootloader (MCUboot) needs to be flash at least once.
Build and flash applications as usual (see Building an Application and Run an Application for more details).
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b adafruit_feather_esp32s3_tft/esp32s3/procpu samples/hello_world
The usual flash target will work with the adafruit_feather_esp32s3_tft
board. Here is an example for the Hello World application.
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b adafruit_feather_esp32s3_tft/esp32s3/procpu samples/hello_world
west flash
Open the serial monitor using the following command:
west espressif monitor
After the board has automatically reset and booted, you should see the following message in the monitor:
***** Booting Zephyr OS vx.x.x-xxx-gxxxxxxxxxxxx *****
Hello World! adafruit_feather_esp32s3_tft
Debugging
ESP32-S3 support on OpenOCD is available upstream as of version 0.12.0. Download and install OpenOCD from OpenOCD [2].
ESP32-S3 has a built-in JTAG circuitry and can be debugged without any additional chip. Only an USB cable connected to the D+/D- pins is necessary.
Further documentation can be obtained from the SoC vendor in JTAG debugging for ESP32-S3 [3].
Here is an example for building the Hello World application.
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b adafruit_feather_esp32s3_tft/esp32s3/procpu samples/hello_world
west flash
You can debug an application in the usual way. Here is an example for the Hello World application.
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b adafruit_feather_esp32s3_tft/esp32s3/procpu samples/hello_world
west debug