The microcontrollers of the ESP32 family are known by many tinkerers for their simplicity, wide range of applications and low price. New variants are sporadically launched on the market together with extensions. Seeed Studio is no exception and has released a new product range with the XIAO series.

The XIAO ESP32S3 are just 21x17.8mm in size, have Wifi, BLE and Matter frequency support and are extremely energy efficient.

• ESP32S3 32-bit, dual-core, 240MHz Xtensa processor
• 8M PSRAM & 8MB Flash
• 2.4GHz Wifi, BLE 5.0 dual wireless communication, support 100m+ remote communication
• Lithium battery charge management capability
• 1x UART, 1x IIC, 1x IIS, 1x SPI,11x GPIO(PWM), 9x ADC, 1x User LED, 1x Charge LED
• Modem-sleep Model: ~ 25 mA, Light-sleep Model: ~ 2mA, Deep Sleep Model: ~ 14 μA

Overview

Interface/GPIO

There are also models specifically for object detection with a camera, the Sense series.

Sense Camera

The camera module can be plugged onto the ESP32S3 via the built-in interface. With ESPHome, the ESP32S3 and camera can be integrated directly into Homeassistant and used as a camera for all kinds of purposes.

Example Use cases:

• Human Detection -> Toggle Lights in a room where at least one human is detected
• Pet Detection -> Send notification: “Cat is in the kitchen”
• …

If you like to setup your own homeassistant with cameras and sensors and need help, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Case for Camera

I have also developed a simple housing to mount the camera in the designated place. The housing is made for 3d printing and has a hole for the USB-C port and a cut-out for the heat sink. As the esp32 has to process the camera stream via Wifi and transmit it to homeassistant, the module gets noticeable hot.

Source: Seeed Studio