Pong Cam - My ESP32S3 Thinks It's a WebCam! I turned an ESP32-S3 into a plug-and-play USB webcamâwith no camera attached. The ESP32 generates its own frames, encodes them as JPEGs, and streams them over UVC as MJPEG. I ramp it up from a static BBC test card, to animated GIF playback, and finally a fully playable Pong running at a solid 30 FPS. Under the hood: Espressifâs UVC device component (TinyUSB), Bulk mode for stability, AnimatedGIF for decoding, and esp_new_jpeg for fast JPEG encoding (~21â23 ms/frame). Itâs a fun proof that the S3 can be a real-time âdisplayâ straight into your PC. 01 February 2026
10 Cent Music Machine I built a tiny coinâcell music board around the $0.10 WCH CH32V003J4M6 (8âpin, 48MHz RISCâV, 16K flash/2K RAM). The PCB is just 16.3Ă11.7mm with a piezo buzzer and transistor, and in standby it sips 7â8”A. I did hit a snag: playback caused 130mA peaks that browned out a CR2032. A LiPo fixed it, but I really wanted coinâcell, so I upped the buzzerâs base resistor to 10k, dropping peaks to 56mA and average to ~7mAânow it runs happily (and loudly) from a coin cell. Pro tip: if standby bricks programming, wlink can erase via power-off mode. Iâm bitâbanging audio, published... 12 October 2025
ESP32-S3 USB UAC I turned my new ESP32âS3 board into a USB Audio device. After a ninja LED fix and confirming the IMU and charging, I streamed mic audio over Web Serial (with a slick AI-made âAudio Studioâ) and then via USB UAC. The mic sounds great, but the speaker is crackly over UACâeven though I2S WAV playback is perfectly clean. ESP-IDF worked; Arduino didnât. Bonus annoyance: macOS vs Windows is a toggle, not a combo. Still, this board passes QA. 26 September 2025