LILYGO T-QT V1.1 – A cute little board with ESP32-S3 and a 0.85-inch color display

LILYGO must be churning out at least one new “ESP32” board every month, but I don’t think they’ve ever made one with ESP32-S3. LILYGO T-QT V1.1 board changes that and combines the dual-core WiFi 4 and Bluetooth LE 5.0 AI microcontroller with a 0.85-inch color display.

The board also happens to be rather small and cute with a 33 x 18 mm form factor, offers some I/O via headers and a 4-pin connector, and can be powered via its USB Type-C port or a battery, but lacks a charging circuit.

LILYGO T-QT V1.1 specifications:

• Wireless MCU – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3 dual-core Tensilica LX7 @ up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration, 512KB RAM, wireless connectivity
• Storage – 8MB flash
• Connectivity via ESP32-S3
  • 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi 4 with 40 MHz bandwidth support
  • Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 5.0 connectivity with long-range support, up to 2Mbps data rate.
  • On board and external antenna support
• Display – 0.85-inch 128×128 IPS LCD with 262K colors based on GC9107 SPI display controller
• USB – 1x USB Type-C port for power and programming
• Expansion
  • 2x 7-pin headers with up to 11x GPIO, FSPI (fast SPI), ADC,  Sub SPI bus, 5V, 3.3V, and GND
  • 4-pin connector with 3.3V, GND, and 2x GPIOs
• Misc – Reset button, 2x user buttons
• Power Supply
  • 5V via USB port
  • 2 pads for battery; voltage monitoring is possible through IO04, but there’s no charging circuit
• Dimensions – 33 x 18 x 14mm

The board is programmable with the Arduino IDE, PlatformIO, or the ESP-IDF framework with instructions, PDF schematics, and code samples for the LCD and deep sleep modes available on Github. One of the key selling points of the ESP32-S3 wireless microcontroller is support for AI acceleration, and it should be a candidate for the ESP-DL library, although it lacks a camera or sensors by default.

Besides the lack of a charging circuit, LILYGO also warns that the board can get warm at about 50 to 60°C due to its small size, and since the ESP32S3 is a new chip, you’d need to make sure the version 2.0.3 or greater of the Arduino ESP32 SDK is installed. At the time of writing, 2.0.3 is the latest version and was released on May 4, 2022.

LILYGO T-QT V1.1 is sold on Aliexpress for $14.98 including shipping.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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