5V Compatibility for Every ESP Board & Improvements in ESP32-S3 WROOM

[CreativeInnovations]

Dear Espressif Team,

I appreciate the great work you’ve done with the ESP8266 and ESP32 series. However, I have a few suggestions that would significantly improve your boards and make them more accessible to a wider range of users:

5V Compatibility for All ESP Boards
Many developers come from an Arduino background, where 5V logic is standard. The 3.3V logic of ESP boards makes direct interfacing with 5V components difficult, often requiring logic level shifters.
Proposed Solution: Please consider adding 5V tolerance to GPIOs or a feature where digital pins can output either 3.3V or 5V based on software control. For example, a command like setVoltageLevel(PIN, 5V); could allow users to select the logic level dynamically.

ESP32-S3 Improvements: Classic Bluetooth
The ESP32-S3 is a great improvement, but it lacks Classic Bluetooth . Many projects require Classic Bluetooth for backward compatibility with older devices.
Proposed Solution: Please consider adding Classic Bluetooth support. This would make it more versatile for advanced applications.

These improvements would make ESP boards even more powerful and flexible for a broader range of projects. I hope you consider these requests.

Best regards,
Taha
Pakistan

[Sprite]

5V Compatibility for All ESP Boards
Many developers come from an Arduino background, where 5V logic is standard. The 3.3V logic of ESP boards makes direct interfacing with 5V components difficult, often requiring logic level shifters.
Proposed Solution: Please consider adding 5V tolerance to GPIOs or a feature where digital pins can output either 3.3V or 5V based on software control. For example, a command like setVoltageLevel(PIN, 5V); could allow users to select the logic level dynamically.

Actually, Arduino requires all and any addon-board to be compatible with both 5V and 3.3V, so I would challenge that conception. Furthermore, there's just not too many 5V parts out there anymore, so I doubt that the extra cost for level converters on a devboard is worth it to any board developer. Note that while technically out-of-spec, all ESP32s will mostly work fine when you input a 5V signal via a current-limiting resistor of e.g. 1K into its I/O. If you're making an one-off where reliability doesn't need to be 99.9999%, I'd say that would be a viable alternative.

ESP32-S3 Improvements: PSRAM & Classic Bluetooth
The ESP32-S3 is a great improvement, but it lacks Classic Bluetooth and default PSRAM support on the WROOM variant but the wrover variant have psram but it can't be found everywhere (not much popular). Many projects require Classic Bluetooth for backward compatibility with older devices, and having built-in PSRAM would benefit AI and camera-based applications.
Proposed Solution: Please consider adding Classic Bluetooth support and a default PSRAM option for the ESP32-S3 WROOM module. This would make it more versatile for advanced applications.

I think you're confusing ESP32 and ESP32-S3 modules. The original ESP32 indeed only had PSRAM in the WROVER module format. The ESP32-S3 does not have a WROVER module format, it has different 'flavours' of WROOM module, some with and some without built-in PSRAM.

Classic BT is indeed something we keep hearing about as something people would like to see in a more modern chip than the ESP32, and while I cannot make any guarantees about future products, I can absolutely say we acknowledge that demand.

[mikemoy]

For your point #1 I agree with ESP_Sprite.
When Arduino (who simply took Atmels IC's made a board, and then made a crappy IDE to make it easy for newbies) first came out most stuff those days were 5v. Nowadays, most things are 3.3v. You also have to look at it this way. If you were a company making micros, would you cater to the hobbyists that don't really put a dent in the annual sales, and for the most part don't yet know what they are doing. Or would you cater to the cutting edge of technology, and what professional designers want and use?

As for PSRAM, just get a board that has it already.