This month, BananaPi unveiled a compact development board equipped with a 1.9” LCD display. The BPI-Centi-S3 is built around the ESP32-S3 microcontroller enabled with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 connectivity.

The BPI-Centi-S3 integrates the Espressif ESP32-S3 microcontroller as other new BananaPi products released recently (i.e., BPI-PicoW-S3, BPI-Leaf-S3):

ESP32-S3 – Xtensa 32-bit LX7 dual core (up to 240MHz); 384KB ROM, 320KB SRAM; 2MB On-chip SRAM; 8MB Onboard Flash ROM; 2.4GHz Wi-Fi/BLE 5.0

ESP32-S3 block diagram
(click image to enlarge)

The video below mentions that the LCD driver chip featured is a ST7789V3 that uses an 8-bit parallel interface to communicate with the ESP32 microcontroller.

The BPI-Centi-S3 doesn’t have feature male pin headers, instead it provides three JST connectors with access to 9x GPIOs, 1x SPI, 1x I2C 1x UART, 2x 3.3V pins and 3x GND pins. 

         
BPI-Centi-S3 top view (left) and bottom view (right)
(click images to enlarge)

There isn’t a product page available yet, but there is a Wiki page describing how to program the new board with MicroPython and Arduino. The GitHub repository for this board can be found here, but it seems incomplete.

BPI-Centi-S3 peripherals
(click image to enlarge)

Specifications listed for the BPI-Centi-S3:

• Display:
  • 1.9” ST7789 TFT LCD (170 x 320 resolution)
• Connectivity:
  • 2.4GHz WiFi IEEE 802.11 b/g/n (up to 150 Mbps)
  • BLE 5, Bluetooth mesh
• I/O Interfaces:
  • Up to 9x GPIOs (via JST connectors)
  • 1x Buzzer
  • 1x Neopixel LED
  • 1x Rotary encoder
  • 1x 8-bit 8080 parallel port
• USB:
  • 1x USB Type-C port
• Other Features:
  • 1x RST button, 1x Boot button
• Power:
  • 3.3V to 5.5V (via USB Type-C port)
  • 3.7V LiPo battery connector
• Operating Temperature:
  • -20℃ to 60℃
• Mechanical:
  • 63.19mm x 26.08mm
  • 2x M3 screw holes

Further information

BananaPi hasn’t revealed information about pricing or availability as of publication date.