Banana Pi BPI-Centi-S3 – An ESP32-S3 board with an 1.9-inch TFT display and a rotary encoder

Banana Pi BPI-Centi-S3 is an ESP32-S3 WiFi & BLE IoT board with a 1.9-inch color TFT display, a rotary encoder, and a few I/Os, which offers an alternative to the T-Track ESP32-S3 board with AMOLED and trackball we covered a few days ago.

The Banana Pi board also comes with a 2MB on-chip PSRAM, an 8MB SPI flash, a USB Type-C port for power and debugging, two buttons, a buzzer, and an RGB LED. Besides powering the board with its USB-C port, you can also connect a LiPo battery with charging support.

Banana Pi BPI-Centi-S3 specifications:

• SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3 dual-core Tensilica LX7 @ up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration, 512KB RAM, 2MB PSRAM, wireless connectivity
• Storage – 8MB SPI flash
• Connectivity via ESP32-S3
  • 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi 4 with 40 MHz bandwidth support up to 150 Mbps
  • Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 5.0 connectivity with long-range support, up to 2Mbps data rate.
  • Ceramic antenna
• Display – 1.9-inch TFT LCD with 320×170 resolution via ST7789V3 8-bit 8080 display driver
• USB – Full Speed USB 2.0 OTG Type-C female port for power and debugging
• Expansion
  • 4-pin connector with 2x GPIOs, 3.3V, GND
  • 6-pin connector with 4x GPIOs, 3.3V, GND
  • 6-pin connector with 3x GPIOs, Reset, 3.3V, GND
  • GPIOs can also be used as I2C, SPI, PWM, UART, RMT, I2S, SD
• Misc
  • Incremental rotary encoder with button
  • Reset and Boot buttons
  • Buzzer
  • WS2812 RGB LED
  • RTC
  • 40 MHz External crystal oscillator
• Power Supply
  • 3.3V to 5V via USB port
  • 1.25mm 2-pin battery connector
  • Operating voltage – 3.3V
  • Max current – 2A @ 3.3V
  • Max charging current – 500 mA
• Dimensions – 63.2 x 26.1 mm (2x M.3 mounting screws)
• Temperature Range – -20°C to +60°C

Banana Pi provides support for MicroPython for the board with links to documentation, sample code (broken links for now), and some demo videos available through the board’s wiki. You’ll find one of the videos below showing how to get started with MicroPython programming on the board using Microsoft Visual Studio code.

Banana Pi sells the BPI-Centi-S3 board on Aliexpress for $14.74 plus shipping.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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