Waveshare ESP32-S3 7inch Capacitive Touch LCD Development Board, ESP32 with Display, 800×480, 5-Point Touch, Up to 240MHz Frequency, Supports WiFi & Bluetooth, with Onboard Antenna

I bought this to build a replacement electronic unit for my broken elliptical machine. Really nice device that uses the LVGL graphics library. For Mac you have to load a device driver for the serial link for programming etc. which comes from a non-English language website that will give your IT people a heart attack but seems to work OK. Not much I/O left over after the needs of the LCD means no brightness control (unless you add wires to the PCB) and you have to share the I2c with the touch panel which uses the old I2c driver and no mutex. Overall fantastic for my application.

Can be flashed with ESPHome and use LVGL drawing commands. Screen looks good and mounting was easy with a 3D printed bezel. However, documentation was severely lacking so took some time to get up running.

I recently got my hands on the Waveshare ESP32-S3 7inch Capacitive Touch LCD Development Board, and it has been an impressive addition to my development toolkit. Here are my thoughts:Pros:High-Performance Processor: The board is equipped with the Xtensa® 32-bit LX7 dual-core processor, running up to 240MHz. This provides ample power for a wide range of applications1.Excellent Display: The 7-inch capacitive touch screen with an 800×480 resolution and 65K colors is vibrant and responsive. The 5-point touch capability is great for interactive projects1.Versatile Connectivity: With support for 2.4GHz Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n) and Bluetooth 5 (LE), the board offers robust wireless communication options. The onboard antenna ensures good signal strength1.Ample Memory: The board includes 512KB of SRAM, 384KB of ROM, and onboard 8MB PSRAM and 8MB Flash, which is more than sufficient for most development needs1.Multiple Interfaces: It supports various peripheral interfaces, including CAN, RS485, I2C, and a TF card slot. This makes it highly adaptable for different projects1.User-Friendly: The board is compatible with popular development environments like Arduino and ESP-IDF, making it accessible for both beginners and experienced developers.Cons:Assembly Required: Some assembly is needed to connect the display and other components. While not overly complex, it might be a bit challenging for complete beginners.Price: The board is a bit on the pricier side compared to other development boards. However, the features and performance justify the cost.Overall:The Waveshare ESP32-S3 7inch Capacitive Touch LCD Development Board is a powerful and versatile tool for developers. Its high-performance processor, excellent display, and extensive connectivity options make it suitable for a wide range of applications, from IoT projects to interactive displays. Despite the higher price and assembly requirements, it offers great value for those looking to create sophisticated and responsive projects.

. Do not order this if you have no idea of coding or uploading software. It doesn't come with any kind of software on it. Except for a annoying demo. Of something that you will never be able to get. There is no instructions whatsoever on the uploads. And any available uploads or software. Will not compile an IDE. And that's even with AI assistance...

Product is really good, perfectly designed and price is in acceptable range but the documentation is the worse i have ever seenEdit: I changed my mind, the ch422g chip is cheap fake one and documentation is weak, it took my few days to make it working so i returned the product, thank you.

I've been a professional C/C++ developer for a long time. I'm several days into this project, and just barely managed to get lv_example_get_started_1() from LVGL working.I just finished up another project that uses an ESP32-S3 with a 4" resistive touch screen. I naively thought it would be easier to get this product to work since Waveshare provides preconfigured libraries (or so I thought), and because I wouldn't have to breadboard anything. NOPE.When I bought package, I thought Waveshare provided libraries that were preconfigured for the hardware. I guess that's too much to ask.Waveshare maintains a Wiki page for this board, and they even provide a zip file with LVGL, ESP32_Display_Panel, and ESP_IO_Expander. Unfortunately, there's still a bunch of stuff that needs to be modified in those headers to make them work with the hardware, and that's in addition to the ESP-IDF menuconfig settings that are needed.Look up iamfaraz/Waveshare_ST7262_LVGL on Github. That project has header files with the correct settings. I'd still be fumbling around without it.You'll also need to use ESP-IDF 5.3. Using 5.4 results in header file conflicts.Using Waveshare's libraries, you'll be stuck on LVGL 8.3, and as well as old versions of the other libraries. I haven't tried to use any newer versions, so I have no idea how fun I'm in for when I finally do.There are some required menuconfig settings listed on the Wiki. The only problem is that menuconfig didn't expose all of them for me, and I'm not sure why. For example, the 80M was the fastest SPIRAM speed it offered, even after enabling experimental features.Also, PlatformIO doesn't have support for this board yet. After fumbling around a bit, I ended up just using the ESP-IDF SDK with Espressif's VSCode plugin. The setup is a pain, but it works surprisingly well. A very nice surprise was having the Espressif plugin automatically drop me into GDB on processor exceptions. (You'll need to enable the GDB stub in menuconfig for that to work.) Getting GDB working with my last project took considerable effort.I think I'm going to be happy with this product in the long run, but Waveshare could have made the initial configuration much, MUCH easier. That just feels like a huge waste of my time.

Not for a Novice if you wanna do anything then display the demo... Lvgl is very capable

Price seems reasonable but how is one to use this with zero documentation? Stay away until there is manufacturer support.