AI-C3 Pinout

Overview

The AI-C3 is a compact ESP32-C3-MINI-1 development board with an eye-catching purple PCB, onboard USB-C port, addressable RGB LED and clean pin labeling. It’s the same ESP32-C3-MINI-1 module used on the “Super Mini” style boards covered in the separate ESP32-C3-MINI-1 guide, just on a different carrier board with its own layout and a CH9102 USB-to-serial chip instead.

No 802.15.4 radio on this chip, so Thread and Zigbee aren’t possible here: that needs an ESP32-C6 or H2 instead.

Getting started

The CH9102 USB-to-serial chip needs a driver on some systems (mainly older Windows versions), if the board doesn’t show up as a serial port, install the CH9102 driver before anything else.

Hello World: blink an LED

The microcontroller equivalent of “Hello World”: GPIO10 toggles once a second, shown here in two different environments. Wire an LED (with a resistor) to GPIO10, a plain general-purpose pin with no other job on this board.

#include "freertos/FreeRTOS.h"
#include "freertos/task.h"
#include "driver/gpio.h"

#define LED_PIN GPIO_NUM_10

void app_main(void)
{
    gpio_reset_pin(LED_PIN);
    gpio_set_direction(LED_PIN, GPIO_MODE_OUTPUT);

    while (1) {
        gpio_set_level(LED_PIN, 1);
        vTaskDelay(pdMS_TO_TICKS(1000));
        gpio_set_level(LED_PIN, 0);
        vTaskDelay(pdMS_TO_TICKS(1000));
    }
}

#define LED_PIN 10

void setup() {
  pinMode(LED_PIN, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
  digitalWrite(LED_PIN, HIGH);
  delay(1000);
  digitalWrite(LED_PIN, LOW);
  delay(1000);
}

ESP-IDF: build and flash with idf.py build flash monitor. Arduino IDE: install ESP32 board support first, see “Getting started” above.

Specifications

Specifications for the AI-C3 board and its underlying ESP32-C3-MINI-1 module.

Pinout diagram

The AI-C3 uses the same ESP32-C3-MINI-1 module as the “Super Mini” style boards, so the underlying GPIO pinout is identical, only the board layout and silkscreen differ.

GPIO quick reference

None of the ESP32-C3’s GPIOs are input-only, every pin listed here supports both directions.

Flashing pins (UART0)

Used by the onboard CH9102 USB-to-serial chip to upload firmware.

Safety notes