I Made A Tiny ESP32 

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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!

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

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.

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

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.....🙂

Crazy man - makes crazy things. Amazing project

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

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

Awesome. Looking forward to the third revision!

Really awesome and inspiring, thanks for sharing.

Wow!😯 Great project.

Great Project Man 💪

It’s so cute! Great job!

You can also pullout i2c pins for further expansion.

So proud of you!

Amazing work!

looks great for model rockets or air craft

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

That's absolutely something I want to see!

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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 ?

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.....

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.

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

Great Video, thanks for sharing this

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.

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.

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.

I love challenge for challenges sake, awesome work \

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.

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.

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!

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

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)

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

merci beaucoup. tres interessant. Super!!!

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

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.

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.

maybe get rid of buttons all together and put just tiny pads that you can connect with screwdriver if you absolutely need to.

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

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

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

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

Amazing

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!

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!!!

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.

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

nice !!!

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

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

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

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.

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)

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.

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 ;-)

Hi very good job. Here is one suggestion: So why would anybody need that size? Because space is crucial. And that’s only the case if I put the MCU somewhere into. So I would get rid of the USB Port since you probably only upload the Code once and then use OTA or something. You could give the user a simple RX/TX breakout to use an external programmer. Then I also would ditch the buttons for the same reason. You wouldn’t use them anyways. Just breakout the pins. It’s easy to integrate the button somewhere else.

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?

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

Don't know if there's space on the board for the additional tracks, but could you break out more IO (or maybe even contacts to solder on an external wifi antenna?) by using contact pads instead of through holes? Even just having two or three IO pins would massively increase the usability of the board. This might be way too wild, but could you ditch the USB port to a daughter board that uses pogopins to pads or edge connectors? Not sure how many of the USB C pins are actually used, but having that port on there and also having a 3.3V pin (which I'm assuming you use to power the device away from USB?) feels like a waste of space unless you're actively programming it. Another idea to potentially break out more IO, if the USB C port doesn't use all the IO: Create a separate board with a female and male USB C connector that only connects the necessary pins through, then have a separate breakout board that you can plug into the port after the ESP32 is programmed. The ESP32 can then connect any of its IO pins to the normally unused pins on the USB C connector.

Nice work

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.

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

You were beaten to it. And it has been done with working wifi (weak range tho). It's called O.M.G Cable for hacking, they basically fitted it inside the USB-C cable.

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

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

You could ditch the usb port for test pads.. and with mini pogopins a custom connector to Program it :D

mad engineer in action

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

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

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

You could even ditch the USB port and just use TX and RX pins!

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. 😅

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! ❤

HA I have USB cables with plugs bigger than that whole board. Impressive work. Now we need like keychain stream viewers or some kind of micro display to go with it.

And people thought there are no microchips in covid vaccine! Look how tiny this is! Great work man!

The seed studio is making really tinny esp32 but this is half the size

honestly you could fit that thing into a charging cable and turn it into a badusb, its so tiny

nice

If you make it even smaller, then maybe could me more space to add the bells and whistles back in?

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 !

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.