I Made A Tiny ESP32

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[@paulprice]

Affiliated links for the things in this video Mini Hot Plate - amzn.to/3RnFTga iFixit Tweezers - amzn.to/3Rr1ILZ Low temp solder paste - amzn.to/3uBbH8e high temp solder paste - amzn.to/4a3Spsl Join my discord - discord.gg/pc7cSxwzj3

[@_WalterWhite]

i will join the discord!

[@_WalterWhite]

ok i joined my friend

[@bobby9568]

I saw your video from 12 years ago.... jeesshhhh...

[@Axeiaa]

If you want a slightly more functional challenge. Try putting the 'fingers' for a USB type A directly on the PCB so you can insert the entire PCB into a USB port, I've seen some bluetooth dongles do this.If you squeeze a WiFi antenna on there as well you'd have a pretty cool ESP-now receiver - could make for a pretty low latency wireless keyboard receiver or something like that.

[@X3msnake]

also why buttons, just have pads that you can short with tweezers

[@Nicolas_dG]

​@@X3msnakebtw i putted buttons on the dongle for convienience as it was intended for dev purpose, but i could have put smaller ones

[@Nicolas_dG]

@@X3msnake and i'm using a esp32-s2 instead of c3

[@charleslambert3368]

would a flexible (embroidered?) wifi antenna work? I'm just thinking about project WarKitteh from a defcon talk a few years back, fitting a microcontroller with wifi into a cat collar.

[@Nicolas_dG]

@@charleslambert3368 yes many antennas are made from flex pcb, it would totaly work

[@XiaZ]

Use flex PCB and make the back side as USB-A contact, after solder make a mold the size of PCB and fill the component side with acrylic. Use the ESP8685 not the C3 (and not ESP8285 either), it's basically the C3 but in 4x4 mm QFN package. Some decoupling capacitor can be omitted, the same with resistors on pin 2 and 8. You don't need a BOOT switch when programming using USB-CDC, and you can just power cycle the thing in case of RESET switch, so both can be omitted.

[@kjade7778]

You can easily ditch the reset button without any caveats. Just hold the programming button when inserting usb cable.

[@paulprice]

Dude, that is so simple and yet brilliant at the same time lol. I never would've thought of that. I guess to take it out of download mode after programming just unplug and replug in the USB.

[@adamhowell1694]

@@paulprice Or ditch the buttons altogether and short two pads with the tip of a screwdriver.

[@CraigBurden1]

It's a C3, you don't need either button. It can be reset to bootloader via USB

[@voidtype]

this is a great idea, @adamhowell1694 ! or some other type of much smaller switching mechanism :D

[@NewtoRah]

​@CraigBurden1 I don't know if it's the same for the c3, but with s3 boards you can get them into a state where it crashes on boot and won't respond to USB to be rewritten and you need to reset it with hardware into download mode

[@atomic14]

This is great - I thought I'd gone small with my latest boards, but I see that I have to try harder!

[@AzaB2C]

Am impressed by both of your ludicrously tiny boards.

[@stevesfascinations1516]

Loved the close up shots of you populating the boards. Nice project, thumbs up and subscribed.

[@alexg9362]

Very nice little board. I'd remove the USB connector, buttons and possibly the LED. Instead if you put a U/FL connector for the antenna and a small board connector such as the Hirose DF40 series (a 20 pin is only 6.6 x 3.6mm) then far more GPIO could be broken out. Would need a seperate programmer board with the USB and reset buttons, but once programmed you'd have a very tiny board that could easily be integrated into other projects with only 1 connector and an antenna.

[@paulprice]

Thanks man, that's an interesting idea and one I'll consider. I've gotten a lot of great feedback thus far on how to improve this so I'm excited to make a 3rd revision of this.

[@xxportalxx.]

I thought those looked familiar, it's what the cm4 uses, ig I should have expected a connection like that in this community lol

[@reyariass]

@@paulpriceThis has me excited, now fingers crossed🤞hoping I find the revised version on your channel

[@dsuess]

Super awesome build!! Really cool to see you shrinky-dink the ESP32, even if it doesn't do BLE or WiFi

[@mmenjic]

Remove buttons, remove usb connector, use smaller components, use pads instead of holes for everything and you will have smaller board with more exposed IO, make one side of it all pads and then make socket for it if you want to use all pads or just solder to ones you need.....

[@mbunds]

Simply wonderful, that's an elegant and compact ESP32 design, thank you!

[@ressamendy]

The challenge was great. I watched it with pleasure. Anyway, what I want is to add an sx1262 lora chip to this structure. Let's see if it will be the way I want it to be. I think the important thing is that it has an esp32 s3 centered structure (with sx1262 lora chip) and supports both arduino ide, esp idf and microphyton infrastructure. I think having so many programming infrastructure options will greatly increase the popularity of these boards. Especially if you consider the difference between the ESP version supported by the Arduino IDE and the version of the ESP IDF, you can understand what I mean more easily. This type of board will be extremely functional in education. In short, for example, it is a module structure that connects an sx1262 lora chip to esp32 s3 fn8. Esp32 should be designed to keep the GPIO pins active as much as possible. In a sense, think of it as a module. Then I think that this structure can form the center of many training sets.

[@AzaB2C]

Well done, that's a pretty cool project. Cheers for sharing!

[@MyTube4Utoo]

I got my formal electronics education beginning in 1980. After all these years, I'm still convinced its magic. Very cool design. Thanks for the video.

[@kylejewiss659]

This is really cool. Thankyou for sharing, great vid!

[@canonicaltom]

Even smaller would be castellations for GPIO, SMT pads for power, and a picoblade connector with USB breakout board. You could probably fit a battery charger where the USB connector used to be. You could also potentially fit a U.FL connector for wifi.

[@erikkalmar4965]

Nice board! I guess u can improve this if u going to use multi layer pcb, this way u can integrate wifi antenna on the board and also u can break out more pins like that! Keep up, im interested how u done the next version as well, so i subbed!

[@quentidoudou6544]

Incredible! I'm actually designing a business card using the same ESP32-C3 with the built-in flash! Epaper as display, wifi, RGB LED and even temp/humidity sensor : it's gonna be great!

[@BlueSky-cy5nw]

Awesome. Looking forward to the third revision!

[@aladinmovies]

Crazy man - makes crazy things. Amazing project

[@noneofyourbusiness76]

Great concept. I look forward to your v3 with the suggestions implemented. Of interest to me are having an onboard antenna and more GPIO pins available. It would be handy if the parts were all on one side and pins exposed via catellations so it could be installed flush on another board. I like the suggestions of ditching the USBC and switches to make more room, as those can be connected via castellations. A companion dev board can be made to hold the castellations (with friction, like FlexyPins that I saw on hackaday) and breakout the USB, buttons and GPIO for prototyping & programming. For even more GPIO, could have SMD pads on the bottom side. I found your video while I was researching tiny ESP32 options I might use for a Bluetooth to PS/2 keyboard adapter. I don't think I can use an S3 in this case because I need classic Bluetooth for compatibility with most keyboards, so ultimately I need a classic ESP32 in tiny form. For this particular scenario it just needs to handle 5V power, GND and two GPIO from the PS/2 connector and I would only need temporary USB for serial monitoring and programming. I enjoyed your video on what's possible. :)

[@IanScottJohnston]

I guess you could push the footprint size even smaller by stacking the switches (using through hole) over the top of some of the other components.....🙂

[@paulprice]

I thought of maybe trying that early on, the only issue is the through hole part of it. The holes for the switches would interfere with the SOC itself. It's food for thought, but I'm not sure it will work at this scale. Not a bad idea tho!

[@vishal01mehra]

You can also pullout i2c pins for further expansion.

[@berloma]

Wow!😯 Great project.

[@sentinelaenow4576]

Really awesome and inspiring, thanks for sharing.

[@ishioproductions9709]

Awesome! Add the ant with TINY packages and pogos instead of USB. @ D: I believe a design guide would be SWEET.

[@ShadowDrakken]

would be interesting to tweak the design to have: power, SPI pins, and one of those tiny antenna jacks; that way it's mostly full featured

[@starfishluna5121]

So proud of you!

[@BotondBereczki]

Amazing work!

[@LUCIANOMARIANI]

Great Project Man 💪

[@UliTroyo]

It’s so cute! Great job!

[@paulprice]

Thank you! 😊

[@JonnyWaldes]

looks great for model rockets or air craft

[@isweartofuckinggod]

That's absolutely something I want to see!

[@knowurself4999]

Use smd antenna that is on the esp32 c3 mini dev board, no need of buttons just expose two solder pads and any tweezer can be used to trigger flash, I could argue that microusb port can also be ditched and temporary wire solder or some hacky 4pin alligator style clip can be used to program it but it might trigger some people, Also check deep sleep as you used your own schematics and different capacitors can cause rise/fall timings on rst pin to change and make deep sleep unusable

[@knowurself4999]

Just realized that everyone else basically said the same things, very pleasantly surprised, wonder why manufacturers are not thinking that not everyone needs pampered dev boards

[@Flare1107]

I agree with the usb male "fingers" but remember you can also space out the connections to make it type 3 compatible. And with the extra space for the USB on one side, you might as well move the antenna to the other side. Another space saving constraint would be to put those castellated half holes. And maybe break out a few GPIO on the sides with the half size holes

[@adamhowell1694]

Excellent build! Have you considered a connector other than USB-C? Maybe JST has something which would work. For WiFi, how about the ceramic antennas that Adafruit and Seeed use on the QTPy and Xiao series of boards? It would make your board larger, but not by much. Obviously this would be for another project where you aren't going for minimal space.

[@paulprice]

Thanks! I've gotten some great feedback and ideas on how to improve this and I think I can make a new version with an antenna without making it bigger (hopefully) and not sacrificing any of the buttons/usb. So stay tuned!

[@shrinidhikulkarni5703]

Great Video, thanks for sharing this

[@ethkid8925]

very very nice! If I had to choose a pinout with 4 pins, I'd go for I2C: VDD, GND, SDA and SCL. Endless possibilities!

[@davidd2661]

Truly the best option out here.

[@prozacgod]

I've been wondering how small of footprint a wifi enabled rs232/wifi adapter could be made. Id love to see that.

[@jemmrich]

Would be awesome if it was set up so that you could sandwich other micro boards to increase functionality. Allowing you to run with just a basic esp32, or add other boards if you have the space available. Makes me think there could be a whole community around building out expansion micro boards. Very good work! I wish I knew enough about building boards and electronics, instead of going down the software engineering path.

[@davidd2661]

Getting them i2c and i2s pins exposed would be awesome on this. Imagine the spy gadget you could make with these. Damn

[@gregfarley7976]

I love challenge for challenges sake, awesome work \

[@Mulakulu]

You probably don't need a full on usb-c port either. You can use breakout pins. If you power the board externally, maybe with a powerbank, you can probably get away with just + and - data pins with usb

[@camelionpen]

It'd be super interesting to see how small you could get this :O

[@bertbrecht7540]

Very nice work. Couldn't you have the PCB manufacturer place the components for you?

[@mikestewart9422]

So flipping impressive!

[@jwc4520]

Life long fan of making it smaller, from a radio receiver for R/C reduced to stamp size, to index a tiny computer which consisted ofv3 index card sized boards 1973. Last project was quad controller about 12 years ago, from 55x70 mm to 11x17 mm. There was one problem, I knew little of reflow soldering. Thus placing the microprocessor on the bottom was and adventure. But with a failure or two I got it done , nobody was more amazed than me. Now the parts are too hard to see, and my hand shake a bit. Guess I could still design tiny things and have the build done elsewhere but then would it be mine ....? So I well appreciate your your project . Remember a tech looking at my tiny receiver and asking why ? I explained reduced weight, and size will allow smaller aircraft, to be fully controlled . Again he ask why ?

[@Gameplayer55055]

Try to add a little SMA connector for the wifi antenna. So you save up the space and have WiFi supported

[@domiart6758]

merci beaucoup. tres interessant. Super!!!

[@osmanpasha_diy]

I think you can do better by integrating a chip antenna! I am currently designing an nRF52-based 10x14mm PCB, and it looks doable. I hope to get it soldered for me, though it should be solderable by hand as well.

[@orcofnbu]

mad engineer in action

[@yagobueno2785]

Just think... replace the usb-c for contacts for use a jig with pogo pins to programing and a small conector for a tiny battery, it's a option? And for antenna, probably won't work, but you can put only de μC on one side, make a space for a connector for the antenna or... take all the risk, create a thin pcb for stackup at side of μC to save the space and have the antenna in separate pcb

[@jackisgoofingoff5510]

Could you share more about how to do the PCB design?

[@seanperez1210]

Check out the expressLRS boards that are super tiny to get ideas for adding a ceramic or SMD antena * could just stick a smd connector for the antenna also … the FPV ones have a nice solid type like the MMCX but normal ones are even smaller … lol this is nice though, but you could get whompy with it and try and stick the ceramic antenna / connector on the Z axis ( side ) of the pcb, depending on how your routing the pins you could use a FPC connector from like a cellphone or whatever to break out them gpios

[@jtauscher]

you can try to reduce the shaking of one hand by holding this hand with your other hand - it sort of wipes out the shaking smiliar to noise (destructive interference)

[@MaxWithTheSax]

It would be really useful to have such a tiny board with wifi. I think the SMD antennas can be pretty small. Maybe it would fit if you ditch the reset button.

[@avi-crakhome2524]

There is a manual cmd component installer based on pantograph mechanics. Remarkably eliminates hand shaking!!! The mechanics can be assembled by yourself out of common junk, even out of wood!!! there is no need for high precision.

[@TaskerTech]

I would change the pads for a flat cable connector so it can be actually useful haha Cool project tho

[@richardvansoest]

Nice, its smal enough to put in a 1:87 model car. I now use a wemos d1 mini for that but its a bit to big for most cars.

[@PerilousPaddy]

maybe you could put this into a hotwheels car to make it a self driving object avoidance toy? That's what I would try to do at least lol

[@francoiscote4461]

Amazing

[@chechitogmail]

nice !!!

[@8BIGNIC8]

you could make touch buttons and initioally connect them with a wire to falsh the chip but if you would make the edged conductive you could fit etleast 4 touch pads on there :D.

[@paulprice]

That's a very interesting idea with the touch pads. I'm using the C3 variant because it's the smallest esp32 SOC I'm aware of and it doesn't have touch pins unfortunately, so the touch idea wouldn't work in this particular setup. But it's a good idea!

[@garyhalsey7693]

I know it would make it slightly bigger, but to increase the usefulness of this you could break out the two GPIO for I2C maybe instead of the one pin that you originally chose? New subscriber by the way. I love what you did with this.

[@paulprice]

Yeah so on the rev 1 board of this I did have 2 gpio for that very reason but when I decided to go as small as I thought I could I dropped it down to 1. But there's been some good ideas mentioned by others as well in the comments so ill probably try for a rev 3 and see what's possible.

[@garyhalsey7693]

@@paulprice Awesome!! Look forward to seeing it! Keep up the good work!!

[@MistahHeffo]

Or possibly casselations along the PCB's edge, with the signal routed from an internal layer.

[@andybrice2711]

If you make it slightly bigger though, you essentially just have an Adafruit Qt Py or a Seeed Xiao. What makes this unique is its absolute minimal footprint.

[@nadiaplaysgames2550]

Drop the through holes and switchs and use tiny pads for the gpio

[@tablatronix]

Very cool, could make an esp a 4 pin i2c module hah

[@AKG58Z]

To make it even smaller I would just get rid of the PCB and solder everything on top of the chip itself making it a cube shaped esp32.

[@robinhodson9890]

You could make it smaller without the mini-mini-components, by exploring the third dimension: You could fit all your discrete components within the area of the IC: You'd need a board ontop of it, and the token LED could be SMT, while the token buttons could be contact pads to connect with a metal tool. Of course, the IC itself is smaller within its package, so you could shave that down a bit. At this stage, it might be better to add functionality rather than just reducing size, eg some of whatever you're plugging the microcontroller into. It would also be getting smaller than a standard USB connector. Ten+ years ago, ARM put a full processor inside a pen. You'd write with the pen, and it'd record the nib's movements, which you could then download.

[@nikheel5643]

Wow. I am new to all this arduino and esp32 stuff as I just started a month ago but that is the coolest thing I have seen done to the esp32. Does it still have its ble capabilities and will you be sharing the schematics for the PCB. I would love to play around with it.

[@Pixelcrafter_exe]

You could use use a male usb A pcb connector like some attiny85 designs do. You could only use one pcb site but you are not limited by the footprint of the usb micro port

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Oh man that is even smaller than mine, nice work! I should probably scrap using the ESP32-C3-MINI-H1 and use the raw SOC myself, adding my own supporting components. Did you find the design challenging at all? I've never gone that deep!

[@camelionpen]

Perhaps next time, you could also fit a teeny tiny screen to it?

[@agw5425]

that´s some impressive work. Could you even make a matchbox 486 dx 100 with s3+3d that could actually install win98 and run retro games? sure the hdd may need to be a tiny thumb drive or a separate ssd, but still.The smallest ever retro gaming pc with "original" but redesigned chips, that do exactly what the bulky pc components did but with modern 5-12nm chip manufacturing methods? Can that even be done, are the designs for the old pc stuff in public domain yet?

[@xl97]

This a DUAL core? Still pretty sweet either way! nice job!

[@user-iq2uz4vp9n]

no 1 core

[@Drawliphant]

I just want to see the kind of tiny project that warrants such a tiny esp32, like a 1/64th scale rc car

[@das250250]

Small enough to place inside a computer as a key logger or inside a USB connector ..pretty dam tiny

[@GameBacardi]

Nice work

[@paulprice]

Thanks! :)

[@marcusone1]

cool... however, still needs some way to put an antenna on it... even a wire would work no? or a uFl?

[@paulprice]

I plan on making a 3rd version with an antenna. So stay tuned!

[@dammitbobby283]

Delete the USB connector and make the board directly plug into a female USB connector like a cheap USB thumb drive.

[@paulprice]

It's a good idea, but I've got some other ideas as well that I'm going to try first. I'll be streaming tomorrow designing the 3rd version of this board. So stay tuned!

[@roboman2444]

For wifi antenna, throw a MHF1/u.FL connector (or mhf4). Should be a smaller footprint than one of your buttons.

[@jfseaman1]

Fantastic. Do you get any WiFi or BLE at all?

[@Grrr2048]

It would be great to see this with the smaller components (replace the reset button with antenna connector) ... postpone your morning coffee until after populating the board ;-)

[@de-bodgery]

I'd like to see a tiny ESP32 with 1mm pin full break out, canbus, USB, battery...all the stuff you usually get on an ESP32 breakout board. Antennas don't have to be on the surface of the board. You are already multilayer. Map them out so they are on the edges and internal. This tiny project is pretty cool, but to get it so tiny means seriously limited use!

[@PosiCat]

Any chance you'll be making a revised version of one of these available on Tindie? Hopefully with working bluetooth/wifi ... I'd love to make a ring where I can plug it into USB and cut/paste text from my phone to it.

[@quarteratom]

Now build one inside a Casio case that drives the segmented LCD display.

[@mmfix3851]

Hello good job mate! I do totally different jobs but i will be happy if i can try solder some of your smallest projects ever ! I dont have issue with solder but big issue with programming. How i can get some PCB the smallest you have to challenge my self also to use different Technics? Thank you !

[@XiaZ]

Try ESP8685, it is basically an ESP32-C3 in a 4x4mm QFN package.

[@stevenpaul9307]

awesome board you made! but esp32c3 will eat 80-100ma of power during wifi or bluetooth. will you fix this?

[@JAYProjects001]

I have a question : can you show us the schematics and the components to make a PCB with an esp32 ? Thanks you so much for this video

[@NOONFIX]

First : you don't need a usb connector, it's just one time use! So make a J-tag Like pins. Second: you don't need buttons either! Unless the project requires! Instead just use a pins for programing mode. Now you have a completely empty side for a nice wifi antenna!!!

[@paulprice]

Those are some good ideas for sure. I think I'll have a go at a 3rd revision and see if we can't get an antenna on there somehow.

[@theonetruejj]

For the buttons you could just replace them with two small pins and „press“ them with jumpers / paperclips 🤔

[@AkashJadhavIT]

is it possible to make something like LokSound 5 decoder for controlling light and sound and dc motor which can be controlled over wifi with esp32

[@MistahHeffo]

Could you put a PCB Trace antenna for the WiFi on an internal layer? say as part of a 4-Layer design? Sure it won't be the best reception being burried in FR4 but it's better than no antenna at all?

[@paulprice]

I've got some new ideas for the next version thanks to a lot of great feedback on this video. So I think I can get an actual ceramic antenna on it without making it bigger (hopefully) so stay tuned!

[@fire17102]

This is super awesome, tho i would love to see a version that can extend gpio count, and also can connect with LTE + battery Subscribed! ❤

[@paulprice]

Thanks! I plan on making a 3rd version with those added, so stay tuned!

[@bspringer]

I was reminded of the even smaller ESP 8285 based ExpressLRS PP RX when I saw this 😅

[@zofmod]

So what kind of Bluetooth range do you get without an aerial.

[@saydiy1528]

great!

[@maxcali863]

My challenge to you is to make a tiny board with all 3 communications, Bluetooth, Wifi, GPS or a small board that combines ESP32 and A9G. Pretty sure you can do it, but it would be cool to see it done.

[@ArcAiN6]

Here's a thought.... why not go down to 01005 footprint on the jellybeans, and utilize multi-layer pcb with castellated holes along the edges to give you more I/O. Depending on the fabhouse you're working with, and their minimum via size, you could pack quite a bit on both sides of the PCB, why using internal layers to do everything from power delivery, to routing. If you do go this rout, having a needle, and a fine tip paintbrush is the way to go when hand placing 01005 sized components (also a full face mask so breathing doesn't send them to narnia, and a microscope to see things)

[@domain3973]

Excellent sir ❤❤ Big fan Is this board contains WiFi facilities also Please reply

[@sandorgold7082]

amazing

[@ErickBuildsStuff]

You can see Logitech's wireless dongles. They have similar footprint with even onboard WiFi/tiny micro controller with firmware. Not too large similar to yours. Logitech uses lot of PCB real estate for 4 usb lines. You can ditch that and use esp32 with microusb/usb-C design. You can still have your buttons. You need much smaller components though. Most tiniest possible. It's design has even a wireless antenna, similar crystal oscillator and lot of caps. Just copy those designs and either Ti or NRF chip depending on your usecase. There are two variations of those PCBs Goldie 008 and Daggy 007. These are mostly Lightspeed, Unifying type USB receivers. I once couldn't do firmware writing so had to switch the Ti chips from a broken PCB to a donor Receiver. It was super hard and took me 45min without proper tools except a magnifying glass, board holder and cheap hot air station. Wish I had microscope and steady hands. 😅

[@bytesandbikes]

For production I've replaced buttons with just the pads, then short them when needed.