Waveshare ESP32-S3-DEV-KIT-NxR8 Wi-Fi Development Board – Pinout Diagram & Arduino Reference

After the enormous success of the ESP32 microcontroller, Espressif released an upgraded version of it called the ESP32-S3. The new ESP32-S3 overcomes many shortcomings of the legacy ESP32. Today, there are hundreds of boards designs based around the ESP32-S3 in the market as well as in the open-source community. In this post we are going to share a beautiful vector pinout diagram for the ESP32-S3-DEV-KIT-NxR8 development board from Waveshare. The board is designed after the official ESP32-S3_DevKitC-1 from Espressif. So the pinouts you see here also applies to that. If you are new to the ESP32 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth SoC, we have a great tutorial to get you started.

Pinout Diagram

Filename: Waveshare-ESP32-S3-DEV-KIT-NXR8-Pinout-R0.1-CIRCUITSTATE-Electronics-1.pdf
Latest Revision: R0.1, 21-06-2025
Designed by: Vishnu Mohanan
License: CC-BY-SA 4.0

Pinouts are based on the latest documentation from Espressif. While we try our best to be accurate and up-to-date here, we can not guarantee correctness. Please also cross check the pin assignments with that from the official documentation. If you found any errors here, please let us know in the comments and will update our designs.

PNG

The ESP32-S3-DEV-KIT-NxR8 from Waveshare comes in two variants and 4 SKUs.

1. ESP32-S3-DEV-KIT-N8R8 – Uses ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 module with 8 MB Flash memory and 8 MB PSRAM.
2. ESP32-S3-DEV-KIT-N16R8 – Uses ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 module with 16 MB Flash memory and 8 MB PSRAM.
3. Both of the above with and without soldered pin headers.

Our pinout is applicable for all of these. Since these boards did not come with an official pin numbering, there is no consensus over where to start counting from. So to make it easier for you to identify the pins by simply counting, we have numbered each row of pins on either side from 1 to 22. But you should not rely on the pin numbering alone to identify the pins. Always use the GPIO number to identify the pins and their functions.

Following are the notes added to the pinout diagram.

• GPIOs 22~25 are not available from the chip.
• TX0 and RX0 can be accessed as Serial0 in Arduino.
• USB-CDC can be accessed as Serial in Arduino.
• Both Serial and Serial0 can be used for programming.
• All GPIO pins support PWM and interrupts.
• Built-in RGB LED is connected to GPIO38.
• Arduino pin references are as per ESP32-S3_DevKitC-1 definition.
• All touch input pins can be used as T1~T14 in Arduino.
• Most peripheral functions can be assigned to any GPIO pins, thanks to the IO MUX.

PDF

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Pinout Reference

Power & Control

There are two positive power supply input pins and one control pin on the DOIT ESP32 DevKit V1.

Pin Name	Function
5V	The input of the 3.3V positive voltage regulator. Supply voltage in the range of 4 to 12V.
3.3V	Output from the voltage regulator. You can also supply 3.3V to this pin if you have one. But do not supply both 5V and 3.3V together.
GND	Ground (Negative) supply pins.
RST	This is the reset pin. Connecting this pin to GND will reset the ESP32-S3. This pin is normally pulled-up. The RESET button on the board will pull it LOW when you press it.

GPIO

There are 45 GPIO pins available on the ESP32-S3 chip. For comparison, the legacy ESP32 only had 34 GPIO pins. The GPIO pins are named from 0 to 48. But doesn’t that make the count 49? No, because GPIOs 22, 23, 24, and 25 are not accessible. So you will not find these pins in the table below. Also, not all of these pins are broken from the module or the board. But it is good to have a reference to know what is what. Below is the default ESP32-S3 GPIO function matrix taken from the official documentation. Note that many of the peripheral functions can be mapped to any of the GPIO pins using the GPIO Mux block of the ESP32.

#Pin	GPIO Name	F0	Type	F1	Type	F2	Type	F3	Type	F4	Type
5	GPIO0	GPIO0	I/O/T	GPIO0	I/O/T
6	GPIO1	GPIO1	I/O/T	GPIO1	I/O/T
7	GPIO2	GPIO2	I/O/T	GPIO2	I/O/T
8	GPIO3	GPIO3	I/O/T	GPIO3	I/O/T
9	GPIO4	GPIO4	I/O/T	GPIO4	I/O/T
10	GPIO5	GPIO5	I/O/T	GPIO5	I/O/T
11	GPIO6	GPIO6	I/O/T	GPI06	I/O/T
12	GPIO7	GPIO7	I/O/T	GPIO7	I/O/T
13	GPIO8	GPIO8	I/O/T	GPIO8	I/O/T			SUBSPICS1	O/T
14	GPIO9	GPIO9	I/O/T	GPIO9	I/O/T			SUBSPIHD	I1/O/T	FSPIHD	I1/O/T
15	GPIO10	GPIO10	I/O/T	GPIO10	I/O/T	FSPIIO4	I1/O/T	SUBSPICS0	O/T	FSPICS0	I1/O/T
16	GPIO11	GPIO11	I/O/T	GPIO11	I/O/T	FSPIIO5	I1/O/T	SUBSPID	I1/O/T	FSPID	I1/O/T
17	GPIO12	GPIO12	I/O/T	GPIO12	I/O/T	FSPIIO6	I1/O/T	SUBSPICLK	O/T	FSPICLK	I1/O/T
18	GPIO13	GPIO13	I/O/T	GPIO13	I/O/T	FSPIIO7	I1/O/T	SUBSPIQ	I1/O/T	FSPIQ	I1/O/T
19	GPIO14	GPIO14	I/O/T	GPIO14	I/O/T	FSPIDQS	O/T	SUBSPIWP	I1/O/T	FSPIWP	I1/O/T
21	GPIO15	GPIO15	I/O/T	GPIO15	I/O/T	U0RTS	O
22	GPIO16	GPIO16	I/O/T	GPIO16	I/O/T	U0CTS	I1
23	GPIO17	GPIO17	I/O/T	GPIO17	I/O/T	U1TXD	O
24	GPIO18	GPIO18	I/O/T	GPIO18	I/O/T	U1RXD	I1	CLK_OUT3	O
25	GPIO19	GPIO19	I/O/T	GPIO19	I/O/T	U1RTS	O	CLK_OUT2	O
26	GPIO20	GPIO20	I/O/T	GPIO20	I/O/T	U1CTS	I1	CLK_OUT1	O
27	GPIO21	GPIO21	I/O/T	GPIO21	I/O/T
28	GPIO26	SPICS1	O/T	GPIO26	I/O/T
30	GPIO27	SPIHD	I1/O/T	GPIO27	I/O/T
31	GPIO28	SPIWP	I1/O/T	GPIO28	I/O/T
32	GPIO29	SPICS0	O/T	GPIO29	I/O/T
33	GPIO30	SPICLK	O/T	GPIO30	I/O/T
34	GPIO31	SPIQ	I1/O/T	GPIO31	I/O/T
35	GPIO32	SPID	I1/O/T	GPIO32	I/O/T
38	GPIO33	GPIO33	I/O/T	GPIO33	I/O/T	FSPIHD	I1/O/T	SUBSPIHD	I1/O/T	SPIIO4	I1/O/T
39	GPIO34	GPIO34	I/O/T	GPIO34	I/O/T	FSPICS0	I1/O/T	SUBSPICS0	O/T	SPIIO5	I1/O/T
40	GPIO35	GPIO35	I/O/T	GPIO35	I/O/T	FSPID	I1/O/T	SUBSPID	I1/O/T	SPIIO6	I1/O/T
41	GPIO36	GPIO36	I/O/T	GPIO36	I/O/T	FSPICLK	I1/O/T	SUBSPICLK	O/T	SPIIO7	I1/O/T
42	GPIO37	GPIO37	I/O/T	GPIO37	I/O/T	FSPIQ	I1/O/T	SUBSPIQ	I1/O/T	SPIDQS	IO/O/T
43	GPIO38	GPIO38	I/O/T	GPIO38	I/O/T	FSPIWP	I1/O/T	SUBSPIWP	I1/O/T
44	GPIO39	MTCK	I1	GPIO39	I/O/T	CLK_OUT3	O	SUBSPICS1	O/T
45	GPIO40	MTDO	O/T	GPIO40	I/O/T	CLK_OUT2	O
47	GPIO41	MTDI	I1	GPIO41	I/O/T	CLK_OUT1	O
48	GPIO42	MTMS	I1	GPIO42	I/O/T
49	GPIO43	U0TXD	O	GPIO43	I/O/T	CLK_OUT1	O
50	GPIO44	U0RXD	I1	GPIO44	I/O/T	CLK_OUT2	O
51	GPIO45	GPIO45	I/O/T	GPIO45	I/O/T
52	GPIO46	GPIO46	I/O/T	GPIO46	I/O/T
37	GPIO47	SPI CLK_P_DIFF	O/T	GPIO47	I/O/T	SUBSPI CLK_P_DIFF	O/T
36	GPIO48	SPI CLK_N_DIFF	O/T	GPIO48	I/O/T	SUBSPI CLK_N_DIFF	O/T

Each IO MUX function (Fn, n = 0 ~ 4) is associated with a type. The description of type is as follows:

• I – input. O – output. T – high impedance.
• I1 – input; if the pin is assigned a function other than Fn, the input signal of Fn is always 1.
• I0 – input; if the pin is assigned a function other than Fn, the input signal of Fn is always 0.

Following is the consolidated pinout table of the ESP32-S3 taken from the official datasheet.

In the Arduino environment, you can invoke the GPIO pins just using their respective numbers from 0 to 48. Below is the list of pins you can use safely.

Strapping

Every ESP32-S3 chip has a bootloader inside the Read-Only-Memory (ROM) which is a program that monitors the state of the chip when you power it on. The bootloader can check for different inputs and put the chip into different operating modes. The pins monitored by the bootloader are called strapping pins. There are four strapping pins in the ESP32-S3. These strapping pins exhibit other behaviours during the booting process. So you should be careful not to interfere with the pins. Following is the list of strapping pins and their default states. It is recommended to not use these in normal situations.

Strapping Pin	Default Configuration	Bit Value
GPIO0	Weak pull-up	1
GPIO3	Floating	–
GPIO45	Weak pull-down	0
GPIO46	Weak pull-down	0

Chip Boot Mode Control

GPIO0 and GPIO46 together control the boot mode of the ESP32-S3. This tell the microcontroller where to load the firmware from.

Boot Mode	GPIO0	GPIO46
SPI Boot	1	Any
Joint Download Boot	0	0

SPI Boot is the default mode since GPIO0 pin is pulled-up by default. This means, the firmware will be loaded from the SPI Flash memory by default. Joint Download Boot mode supports the following download methods:

• USB Download Boot:
  – USB-Serial-JTAG Download Boot
  – USB-OTG Download Boot
• UART Download Boot

VDD_SPI Voltage Control

The GPIO45 controls the VDD_SPI voltage for the SPI Flash interface. This allows you to use flash chips with different operating voltages. The state of EFUSE_VDD_SPI_FORCE and EFUSE_VDD_SPI_TIEH efuses also determines the voltage configuration. Please check the section 3.2 VDD_SPI Voltage Control in the ESP32-S3 datasheet for more information.

VDD_SPI Power Source	Voltage	EFUSE_VDD_SPI_FORCE	GPI045	EFUSE_VDD_SPI_TIEH
VDD3P3_RTC via RSPI	3.3 V	0	0	Ignored
Flash Voltage Regulator	1.8 V		1
Flash Voltage Regulator	1.8 V	1	Ignored	0
VDD3P3_RTC via RSPI	3.3 V			1

ROM Messages Printing Control

During boot process the messages by the ROM code can be printed to:

• (Default) UART0 and USB Serial/JTAG controller
• USB Serial/JTAG controller
• UART0

The ROM messages printing to UART or USB Serial/JTAG controller can be respectively disabled by configuring
registers and eFuse. In the default configuration, GPIO46 is pulled-down and the boot messages are enabled. To disable the messages, simply pull the pin HIGH. For more information, please see the ESP32-S3 Technical Reference Manual > Chapter Chip Boot Control.

JTAG Signal Source Control

GPIO3 controls the source of JTAG signals during the early boot process. This GPIO is used together with
EFUSE_DIS_PAD_JTAG, EFUSE_DIS_USB_JTAG, and EFUSE_STRAP_JTAG_SEL. Since the default state of the pin is floating, you can configure this manually to select the JTAG source. For more information, please see the ESP32-S3 Technical Reference Manual > Chapter Chip Boot Control.

JTAG Signal Source	EFUSE_DIS_PAD_JTAG	EFUSE_DIS_USB_JTAG	EFUSE_STRAP_JTAG_SEL	GPI03
USB Serial/ JTAG Controller	0	0	0	Ignored
	0	0	1	1
	1	0	Ignored	Ignored
JTAG Pins	0	0	1	0
	0	1	Ignored	Ignored
JTAG is disabled	1	1	Ignored	Ignored

Pull-Up & Pull-Down

All GPIO pins support internal pull-up and pull-down configurations, as well as a high-impedance state. This makes the pin tristate compatible.

LED

The onboard WS2812B RGB LED is connected to GPIO38. Since this is serial RGB LED, you will need to use a compatible library to drive it. You can use the Adafruit Neopixel library for this.

USB

ESP32-S3 has a single USB transceiver that conforms to the USB 2.0 standard. It can support both Host and Device modes and therefore also supports USB-On-The-Go (USB-OTG). The maximum data rate is 12 Mbps. The USB pins of the ESP32-S3 are connected to the CH334F 4-port hub IC in the ESP32-S3-DEV-KIT-NxR8. When you connect the board to the computer, an interface with the name USB JTAG/serial debug unit will show up. This is the native USB interface.

GPIO	USB
GPIO20	D+
GPIO19	D-

UART

ESP32 has three UARTs inside (asynchronous only) with hardware and software flow control. The UARTs are named UART0, UART1, and UART2. In the ESP32-S3-DEV-KIT-NxR8, the UART0 is connected to the CH343P USB-UART chip, which in turn is connected to the CH334F 4-port USB hub IC. Therefore both the native USB interface as well as the UART0 port will be available through a single USB-C receptacle. Both the UART0 and the USB-CDC can be used for debugging and programming.

In the Arduino framework, you can access the UART0 as Serial0 and the native USB as Serial. Remapping of the UART pins can be done by passing the new pins to the begin() function. UART1 is mapped to Serial1 while UART2 to Serial2 but without any explicit pin assignments. All UART functions can be assigned to any GPIO pin. The default ones are listed below.

Arduino Instance	UART	RX Pin	TX Pin	CTS	RTS
Serial0	UART0	44 (RX0)	43 (TX0)	16	15
Serial1	UART1	18 (RX1)	17 (TX1)	20	19
Serial2	UART2	–	–	NA	NA

SPI

There are four SPI peripheral blocks inside the ESP32-S3. SPI0 and SPI1 have special functions including communicating with the flash memory and therefore we don’t use them. SPI2 (GP-SPI2) and SPI3 (GP-SPI3) are general-purpose SPI interfaces called FSPI and HSPI respectively. Similar to the UART, SPI functions can be mapped to any GPIO pin. Below we have the default pins and their respective Arduino instances. Only one SPI is defined in the Arduino framework, but you can easily add the second one.

Arduino Instance	SPI	COPI	CIPO	SCK	CS
SPI2	FSPI	–	–	–	–
SPI3	HSPI	11	13	12	10

For some reason, the Arduino environment and the ESP32 HAL driver assign HSPI’s default pins to VSPI.

ADC

Analog to Digital Converters (ADC) are used to convert analog voltages to discrete digital values. There are two 12-bit SAR ADCs available in the ESP32-S3 with 20 input channels. Following is the list of ADC channels and their Arduino instances.

Arduino Pin	ADC Channel	GPIO	Usable?
A0	ADC1_0	1	YES
A1	ADC1_1	2	YES
A2	ADC1_2	3	YES
A3	ADC1_3	4	YES
A4	ADC1_4	5	YES
A5	ADC1_5	6	YES
A6	ADC1_6	7	YES
A7	ADC1_7	8	YES
A8	ADC1_8	9	YES
A9	ADC1_9	10	YES
A10	ADC2_0	11	YES
A11	ADC2_1	12	YES
A12	ADC2_2	13	YES
A13	ADC2_3	14	YES
A14	ADC2_4	15	YES
A15	ADC2_5	16	YES
A16	ADC2_6	17	YES
A17	ADC2_7	18	YES
A18	ADC2_8	19	NO (USB D-)
A19	ADC2_9	20	NO (USB D+)

Touch Sensor

There are 14 capacitive touch channels in the ESP3-S3.

Arduino Pin	Touch Channel	GPIO	Usable?
T1	TOUCH1	1	YES
T2	TOUCH2	2	YES
T3	TOUCH3	3	YES
T4	TOUCH4	4	YES
T5	TOUCH5	5	YES
T6	TOUCH6	6	YES
T7	TOUCH7	7	YES
T8	TOUCH8	8	YES
T9	TOUCH9	9	YES
T10	TOUCH10	10	YES
T11	TOUCH11	11	YES
T12	TOUCH12	12	YES
T13	TOUCH13	13	YES
T14	TOUCH14	14	YES

I2C

There are two I2C peripherals inside the ESP32-S3. I2C is also called as Two Wire Interface (TWI). Similar to UART and SPI, I2C pins can also be mapped to any GPIO pin. There are two I2C interfaces defined for Arduino; Wire (I2C0) and Wire1 (I2C1) but only Wire has the pins defined. You need to manually set the pins for Wire1.

Arduino Instance	I2C	SDA	SCL
Wire	I2C0	8	9
Wire1	I2C1	–	–

PWM

ESP32 supports up to 8 independent PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) channels with 14-bit precision. PWM outputs can be mapped to any GPIO pin that supports output mode.

I2S

Inter-Integrated Sound (I2S) is a digital audio interface supported by the ESP32. I2S pin functions can also be mapped to any GPIO pins.

CAN/TWAI

Controller Area Network (CAN) or Two Wire Automotive Interface (TWAI) is a two-wire communication interface that mainly finds application in the automotive industry. CAN functions can be mapped to any GPIO pins. We have a complete tutorial for using CAN interface with ESP32.

JTAG

JTAG (Joint Test Action Group) is a standard interface used for programming and debugging microcontrollers. ESP32 supports JTAG programming and debugging. JTAG has four main signals and an optional reset line. You can use supported debuggers like the ESP-Prog to debug your ESP chips.

Pin Name	GPIO	Function
MTDI	41	Test Data In
MTCK	39	Test Clock
MTMS	42	Test Mode Select
MTDO	40	Test Data Out

If you want to learn more about ESP32 debugging through the JTAG interface using the ESP-Prog, we have a complete tutorial for you.

External Interrupts

ESP32-S3 supports external interrupts on all GPIO pins. The interrupt types can be level-triggered, edge-triggered, or state change.

Links

1. ESP32-S3 – Product Page
2. ESP32-S3 Technical Reference Manual [PDF]
3. ESP32-S3 Datasheet [PDF]
4. ESP32-S3 – ESP-IDF Programming Guide
5. ESP32-S3 Bootloader and Strapping Pins
6. Introduction to the ESP-Prog Board
7. Waveshare ESP32-S3-DEV-KIT-N8R8 – Wiki
8. Waveshare ESP32-S3-DEV-KIT-N8R8 – Product Page

Short Link

• Short URL to this page – https://circuitstate.com/wsesp32s3dkpinref