Waveshare’s ESP32-S3-AUDIO-Board is an ESP32-S3-based low-cost smart speaker development kit with a dual microphone array, a speaker header, echo cancellation, surround RGB lighting, RTC, microSD card storage, and expansion interfaces for LCDs and DVP cameras.
The board integrates an ES8311 audio DAC and an ES7210 4-channel audio ADC, along with a PCF85063 RTC for timekeeping. It also supports Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth 5 LE with both ceramic and IPEX antenna options, and takes power from a USB Type-C port or an optional 3.7V Li-ion battery with a charging circuit. The ESP32-S3 audio board offers GPIO/I²C/SPI expansion and seven programmable RGB LEDs.
Waveshare ESP32-S3-AUDIO-Board specifications:
- SoC – Espressif ESP32-S3R8
- CPU – Dual-core Tensilica LX7 microcontroller up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration
- Memory – 8MB PSRAM
- Wireless – WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE + Mesh connectivity
- Storage – 16MB SPI flash, MicroSD card socket
- Display – Onboard LCD interface, compatible with Waveshare 1.47-inch, 2-inch, 2.8-inch, and 3.5inch LCDs and other SPI displays
- Camera – 24-pin DVP camera connector
- Audio
- ES8311 audio codec, ES7210 mic interface
- Dual digital microphone array with noise reduction & echo cancellation
- Speaker header for external speaker
- USB – USB Type-C port for power and programming
- Expansion
- GPIO/I²C/SPI via headers (shared with display connector pins)
- TCA9555PWR GPIO expander
- Misc
- Onboard ceramic antenna or IPEX1 connector for external antenna
- Power toggle switch
- 5x push switches for Reset, Boot, and 3 user switches
- 7x programmable RGB LEDs (surround lighting)
- PCF85063 RTC with backup battery; supports power-off time retention, alarms, and scheduled tasks
- Power Management
- 5V input via USB Type-C port
- 2-pin connector for 3.7 V Li-ion/LiPo battery
- Battery charging & power management circuit
- MP1605GTF-Z power module (up to 3.3 V, 2 A output)
- RTC battery header (for PCF85063 RTC)
- Dimensions – 58 x 43.7 mm
The ESP32-S3-AUDIO-Board can be programmed using the ESP-IDF framework (v5.4.1 recommended), optionally with the ESP-SR (speech recognition) framework, which offers ready-to-use offline voice models for wake-up and command recognition. It also integrates with ESP-ADF (Audio Development Framework) for audio streaming and processing, and enables access to online AI speech platforms such as DeepSeek and Doubao. Alternatively, the board can be programmed with Arduino IDE (ESP32-Arduino core v3.0.2 based on ESP-IDF v5.1) with support for the LVGL graphics library and SquareLine Studio for HMI development. The Waveshare Wiki also provides example demos for audio playback, speech recognition, RTC functions, and display/camera interfaces.
We previously covered the Xiaomi Mi AI Speaker Mini Smart Speaker, but it is not open-sourced and developer-friendly. There are many products similar to the ESP32-S3-AUDIO-Board, although the ESP32-S3 Smart Audio devkit comes close, but with only a single microphone. The Satellite1 Dev Kit is a higher-end voice assistant based on an ESP32-S3 module and an XMOS XU316 audio processor connected to a 4-mic array that can also be programmed like the Waveshare board, but is mostly used in combination with Home Assistant. The same is true of the ReSpeaker Lite Voice Assistant Kit and Nabu Casa’s Voice “Preview Edition”, but note that none of those are designed to add an LCD and camera.
The Waveshare ESP32-S3-AUDIO-board devkit can be purchased on Amazon for $23.99 without a battery and $24.99 with, and you’ll also find it on the Waveshare store for $15.99 without a battery and $17.99 with, excluding shipping.
Debashis Das is a technical content writer and embedded engineer with over five years of experience in the industry. With expertise in Embedded C, PCB Design, and SEO optimization, he effectively blends difficult technical topics with clear communication
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Dumb question — What can it do?
Can it turn lights on and off?
Can it search the internet to retrieve weather, sports, news, etc.?
Can it find and play music?
The obvious comparison is to Amazon Alexa — which has a lot of remote support infrastructure to enable capabilities that this obviously can’t begin to duplicate.
I realize this is a dev kit but it seems like *a lot* of developing would need to be done before this could even start to compete with a relatively cheap ($30), ready made, off the shelf product like Alexa.
You can use it as a voice assistant satellite (remote microphone and speaker) for Home Assistant voice control and notifications. Read this:
https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/12/19/voice-preview-edition-the-era-of-open-voice/
And check out this section on Home Assistant’s website for more what can be done with this:
https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/
But for the microphones to work at a distance you need some far-field technology, either in hardware or software. Without that your voice will not always be picked up in a noisy enviroment.
Main feature is offline voice assistant, i’d say. Low power, no Linux is also good. I think you can use it to play Spotify music, if you have a premium account, with a bit of hacking, since the api is pure JSON + raw UDP audio stream
Hi Debashis,
I found most of the software that comes with this device is infested with viruses. Is there a safe site or location place to download some of the “BIN”, binary and example files?
Thanks.
The software for this device: Arduino IDE, Python, VS Code, and tools from the ESP-IDF. Maybe I missed one, but all those are standard programs unlikely to have any virus.
The other program is the source code for the demos. Which binary are you referring too?
Hi,
I am not talking about the IDEs. I like to know if there is a safe site to download the example codes and the BIN files etc., a site such as the GitHub etc.
Thanks.