LILYGO T-QT Pro 0.85-inch WiFi IoT display adds support for battery charging

LILYGO T-QT Pro is an ESP32-S3 WiFi and BLE IoT board with a 0.85-inch color display, 4MB flash, 2MB PSRAM, a USB-C port, a few GPIOs, and support for LiPo battery with charging.

It is an upgrade to the ESP32-S3-based LILYGO T-QT V1.1 board that also supports LiPo battery power but lacks a charging circuit, so you had to remove the battery and charge it manually each time. The T-QT Pro adds a charging circuit and switches from an ESP32-S3 with an 8MB flash design to one using ESP32-S3FN4R2 with 4MB flash and 2MB PSRAM.

LilyGO T-QT Pro ESP32-S3 board

LilyGO T-QT Pro specifications:

  • Wireless MCU – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3FN4R2 dual-core Tensilica LX7 @ up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration, 512KB RAM, 4MB flash, 2MB PSRAM, wireless connectivity
  • 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.
    • Ceramic antnna and u.FL connector for external antenna
  • Display – 0.85-inch 128×128 IPS LCD with 262K colors based on GC9107 4-wire 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 STEMMA QT/Qwicc-compatible connector with 3.3V, GND, and 2x GPIOs
  • Misc – Reset button, 2x user buttons
  • Power Supply
    • 5V via USB port
    • 2x pads for battery with charging circuit
  • Dimensions – 33 x 18 x 14mm
T-QT Pro pinout diagram
Pinout diagram

The company says the board is programmable with the Arduino IDE, PlatformIO, or the ESP-IDF framework, and provides the same instructions, PDF schematics, and code samples for the LCD and deep sleep modes as the T-QT V1.1 board on Github. That also means we don’t have the schematics for the Pro board, so it’s unclear how the charging circuit has been implemented. The schematics were shared along with a block diagram with the FCC for certification, but neither are public, and all we have is a user manual, a test report, and a few extra photos.

I came across the LILYGO T-QT Pro board on Banggood where it is sold for $19.99 with two 7-pin headers, a “power cord” for the battery, and a 2-pin PH2.0 female cable. It is also sold on LILYGO Aliexpress store for $13.24 as the “T-QT ESP32-S3FN4R2”, and you can even get an enclosure for around 80 cents more. I can also see another T-QT Pro variant with ESP32-S3FN8 with 8MB flash, but no PSRAM that’s a little bit cheaper and also supports battery charging.

LILYGO T-QT board variants

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7 Replies to “LILYGO T-QT Pro 0.85-inch WiFi IoT display adds support for battery charging”

  1. Who faked the LCD clock display? On a 128×128 pixel screen its going to look badly stepped! That image is over 800 pixels with antialiasing!

  2. The little enclosure is cute (reminds me of m5stack) but at $20 for the board I think I’ll stay with the Adafruit ESP-32S2 board that has PSRAM, CircuitPython, and a bigger display, at $25.

  3. You say adds support for battery charging, but when lipo is there and you plug in the USB, it just turns on the board and no charging happens. Is there any special thing we should to be able to charge via USB port?

    1. It should work automatically as long as the battery is not fully charged. I wrote battery charging, because in the past, the company made boards without battery charging, and in this case, they clearly mention “external battery support charging and discharging function”.

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