Prepare materials
For the breadboard form of ESP-Claw, you need one ESP32-S3 dev board, one or more breadboards, and optional extension peripherals.
Required hardware
Section titled “Required hardware”ESP32-S3 dev board
Section titled “ESP32-S3 dev board”ESP32-S3 has multiple variants such as N8R8 and N4R2. N8 means 8 MB Flash, and R2 means 2 MB PSRAM.
To run ESP-Claw, you need an ESP32-S3 with at least 8 MB Flash and 8 MB PSRAM.
We recommend the official ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 board from Espressif. It exposes more pins and is suitable for breadboard assembly. You can buy it from Espressif official channels.
Breadboard
Section titled “Breadboard”
Prepare a breadboard with 400 tie points or more. It is recommended to reserve extra breadboards for optional peripherals.
Wires and Dupont cables
Section titled “Wires and Dupont cables”Wires and Dupont jumper cables are needed for connections. Prepare enough quantity for wiring.
Optional peripherals
Section titled “Optional peripherals”ESP-Claw supports various extensions, including display, camera, microphone, and speaker. These peripherals make interactions richer.
Display
Section titled “Display”ESP-Claw supports external displays. The web flasher firmware supports an ST7789 SPI color display; you can buy the same model from the link below.
If you choose another display, you may need software adaptation.
Camera
Section titled “Camera”ESP-Claw supports USB cameras for vision features. Even without a vision-capable model, captured images can still be sent to users.
For ESP32-S3, the USB camera should meet the requirements in the USB Stream User Guide.
If you buy the USB camera sample from Espressif, it is recommended to also buy an MX1.25 4-pin single-ended cable (male) for breadboard wiring later.
Microphone & speaker
Section titled “Microphone & speaker”Besides USB-UVC (USB camera), ESP-Claw also supports USB-UAC (microphone and speaker).
If you use the USB camera sample from Espressif, you only need to buy a microphone and speaker and connect them to the reserved ports on the camera with MX1.25 2-pin terminals.
WS2812 light strip/ring
Section titled “WS2812 light strip/ring”
In addition to the built-in WS2812 LED on ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1, you can connect a WS2812 strip/ring to extend lighting effects.
Due to power limits, do not connect an overly long WS2812 strip/ring.
ESP-Claw supports servos for mechanical motion.