$60 M5Stack CoreS3 ESP32-S3 IoT controller comes with 2-inch display, VGA camera, multiple sensors

M5Stack CoreS3 is a battery-powered ESP32-S3 IoT controller with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, a 2-inch touchscreen display, a 0.3MP camera, a microSD card slot for storage, several sensors, plenty of I/Os, a USB Type-C OTG port, as well as a 9V to 24V DC input port.

That’s the second ESP32-S3 IoT controller from M5Stack we’ve seen this year, as the CoreS3 follows the smaller M5Stack AtomS3 with a 0.85-inch display, only a few I/Os, and fewer features overall although it does come with an IR transmitter that’s missing from the larger CoreS3.

M5Stack CoreS3 specifications:

• Wireless MCU – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3FN16R8 dual-core 32-bit Xtensa LX7 microcontroller with AI vector instructions up to 240MHz, RISC-V ULP co-processor, 512KB SRAM, 2.4GHz WiFi 4 (802.11b/g/n), Bluetooth 5.0 BLE + Mesh, 16MB flash, 8MB PSRAM
• Antenna – Internal “3D” antenna
• Storage – MicroSD card slot
• Display – 2-inch display with 320×240 resolution via ILI9342C driver, capacitive touch support
• Camera – 0.3MP VGA camera @ 30 fps using GC0308 CMOS sensor
• Audio
  • 1W speaker connected to AW88298 I2S power amplifier chip
  • Dual microphones connected to ES7210 audio decoding chip
• USB – 1x USB Type-C port
• Sensors
  • LTR-553ALS-WA proximity sensor
  • BMI270 6-axis gyroscope and accelerometer (The company calls it an “attitude” sensor…)
  • BMM150 magnetometer
• Expansion
  • 30-pin female header connected to DIN base with
    • 4-pin GPIO Grove connector
    • 4-pin UART Grove connector
  • 4-pin I2C Grove connector
• Misc
  • Power and Reboot buttons
  • Power switch
  • BM8563 RTC
• Power Supply
  • 5V via USB Type-C port
  • 9V-24V DC input via DC jack
  • Built-in 3.7V/500mAh battery
  • AXP2101 power management chip
• Dimensions – 54x54x16 mm ;DIN rail mountable; M3 mounting screws
• Weight – 73.3 grams

As usual, M5Stack says the controller is programmable with the Arduino IDE or UIFlow visual programming tool, but points us to a currently empty repository on GitHub for Arduino code samples… A few more technical details can be found on the documentation page.

M5Stack is selling the CoreS3 IoT development kit for $59.90 on its own store.

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