Elecrow’s CrowPanel Advance is a family of 2.8-inch to 7-inch ESP32-S3 WiFi and BLE displays that supports replaceable modules for Thread/Zigbee/Matter, WiFi 6, 2.4GHz, and LoRa (Meshtastic) connectivity.
Those are updates of the CrowPanel (Basic) displays introduced last year. They feature an ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8 module soldered on the back plus headers taking ESP32-H2, ESP32-C6, SX1262 LoRa transceiver, or nRF2401 2.4GHz wireless MCU.
CrowPanel Advance 7-inch specifications:
- Wireless Module – ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8
- SoC – ESP32-S3
- CPU – Dual-core LX7 processor with up to 240MHz
- Memory – 512KB SRAM, 8MP PSRAM
- Storage – 384KH ROM
- Wireless – WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 with BLE
- Storage – 16MB flash
- PCB antenna
- SoC – ESP32-S3
- Storage – MicroSD card slot
- Display
- 7.0-inch IPS capacitive touchscreen display with 800×480 resolution (SC7277 driver)
- Viewing Angle: 178°
- Brightness: 400 cd/m²(Typ.)
- Color Depth – 16-bit
- Active Area – 156 x 87mm
- Audio
- Built-in microphone
- Speaker connector
- Wireless Expansion
- ESP32-H2 module with 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee, Thread, and Matter
- ESP32-C6 module with WiFi 6 and 802.15.4 radios
- Semtech SX1276 module for LoRa connectivity (Meshtasic firmware for messaging)
- nRF2401 module for low-power 2.4GHz connectivity
- Expansion
- 2x UART output connectors
- 1x UART input connector
- I2C connector
USB port, UART, I2C, SD card slot, battery socket, speaker port, microphone, etc.
- Misc
- RTC with coin-cell backup battery
- Buzzer
- Reset and Boot buttons
- Power and charging LEDs
- DIP “function” switch as some features are multiplexed: audio, microSD card, etc…
- Power Supply
- 5V/2A via USB-C port or UART input
- 2-pin battery connector
- Dimensions – 181.26 x 108.36 x 16mm
- Temperature Range – Operating: -20 to 70°C; storage: -30 to 80°C
While I listed the specifications for the 7-inch model above, the CrowPanel Advance series also includes 2.4-inch and 2.8-inch models with 320×240 resolution, a 3.5-inch model with 480×320 resolution, and 4.3-inch and 5-inch with the same 800×480 resolution as the 7-inch model. All models have most of the same features, except RTC is missing on the smaller ones. You can see some of the main differences between each model and what changes between the Basic and Advance variants in the tables below.
The CrowPanel Advance displays are mostly designed to be programmed with the Arduino IDE since the company provides an “online course” (actually basic instructions to get started), butMicroPython and the ESP-IDF framework are also supported. Both the popular LVGL graphics library and Square Studio utility to create slick user interfaces are supported.
The company also highlights support for “AI” which here means utilizing the microphone and speaker to implement smart speaker features like voice recognition and voice synthesis leveraging the vector instructions in the ESP32-S3 SoC likely through the Espressif ESP-SR speech recognition framework. Code samples for all features mentioned above are supposed to be in the “ESP32S3_120M” file, but I was unable to find it in the Wiki.
I first found the CrowPanel Advance ESP32 displays on Aliexpress for $25.99 to $54.19 depending on the selected model and whether any of the wireless modules shown above is added as an option. But you can also purchase the displays and wireless modules on the company’s store.
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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