LILYGO's T

Nov 03, 2023

Embedded hardware specialist LILYGO has announced the launch of a new development board, designed for those who want to experiment with field-programmable gate arrays at a low cost: the M.2-format LILYGO T-FPGA ESP32-S3.

Designed, unusually, to follow the M.2 card form-factor, the LILYGO T-FPGA is designed for use with a companion carrier board to break out the features of its two primary processors: an Expressif ESP32-S3 microcontroller with two 32-bit Tensilica LX7 cores running at up to 240MHz, vector instructions for machine learning acceleration, 512kB of RAM, and 8MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM), and a Gowin Semi GW1NSR-LV4 FPGA with 4,608 four-input LUTs, 64Mb of PSRAM and another 64Mb of HyperRAM.

The features of the board, brought to our attention by CNX Software, are brought out to the B-key M.2 edge connector at the far end of the board, which then mates with a companion carrier board to convert them to more accessible PMOD and STEMMA QT/Qwiic connectors. As an added bonus, and a nod to LILYGO's positioning of the board as a low-cost low-power device for embedded projects, there's also an 18650 battery holder on the rear of the carrier board.

The development board itself includes two USB Type-C connectors, one of which connects to the ESP32-S3 microcontroller and the other to the FPGA. There's a compact chip antenna for the ESP32-S3's integrated 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy (BLE) radio, with the option to add an external antenna — not supplied — for increased range. Finally, there's a pair of user-programmable LEDs — one connected to the microcontroller, one to the FPGA — and a user-addressable button connected to the FPGA.

The T-FPGA is now available to buy from LILYGO's AliExpress store at $24.98, with the carrier an extra $9.98 — or a bundle with both is available at a discounted $29.98, including shipping.