ESP32 Forum

Hi all, I’m trying to develop my skills with hardware engineering. Please bear with me this will be my first design. I’m a software engineer for who even remembers how many years and I’m trying to dive into hardware as well.

So after researching a bit, I’ve decided to go with a ESP32-S3FN8. Which already has some internal Flash so I don’t have to worry about that part on my PCB.

What are the bare bones requirements for my PCB besides 3.3v and GND? Pretty sure I need a 40MHz crystal but I’m not sure which specs are required.

I plan on using headers to program over UART so I don’t need a USB circuit either.

My goal here is to have the minimal amount of SMD required to run the ESP32.

Check the hardware design guidelines. I'd strongly recommend adding USB as well, btw, the minimum configuration only needs GPIO19, GPIO20 and ground connected to a micro-USB connector, and this gives you USB-serial-JTAG and USB-OTG device functionality.

So a crystal isn’t required?

To quote the hardware design guidelines: "External Crystal Clock Source (Compulsory)"

Is it for the radio functionality? I want to run it without WiFi/bluetooth for now.

No, the ESP32 CPU core also needs it to function.