Be Wary of Flash-less ESP32-C3 Super Mini Boards

Everyone loves tiny microcontroller boards, and the ESP32-C3 Super Mini boards are no exception. Unfortunately if you just casually stroll over to your nearest online purveyor of such goods to purchase a bunch of them, you’re likely to be disappointed. The reason for this is, as explained in a video by [Hacker University] that these boards are equipped with any of the variants of the ESP32-C3. The worst offender here is probably the version with the ESP32-C3 without further markings, as this one has no built-in Flash for program storage. Beyond that basic MCU version we can see the other versions clearly listed in the Espressif ESP32-C3 datasheet . Of these, the FN4 is already listed as EOL, the FH4AZ as NRND, leaving only the FH4 and FH4X with the latter as ‘recommended’ as the newest chip revision. Here the F stands for built-in Flash with the next character for its temperature rating, e.g. H for ‘High’. Next is the amount of Flash in MB, so always 4 MB for all but the Flash-less variant. Identifying this information from some online listing is anything but easy unless the seller is especially forthcoming. The chip markings show this information on the third row, as can be seen in the top image, but relying solely on a listing’s photos is rather sketchy. If you do end up with a Flash-less variant, you can still wire up an external Flash chip yourself, but obviously this is probably not the intended use case. As always, caveat emptor.

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