ESP32-S3
The ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 is the standard development board for the ESP32-S3: two rows of pins along the edges, two USB Type-C ports, BOOT and RESET buttons and an addressable LED. This one is the N16R8 build — 16 MB of flash and 8 MB of PSRAM. The chip is dual-core Xtensa LX7 at 240 MHz with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 LE.
The Makcu is built on the ESP32-S3 — two of these chips, one taking the mouse in and one emulating it to the gaming PC. This board is that controller on its own: a build of your own, firmware experiments, or any project that wants a fast microcontroller with USB and plenty of memory.
It works with ESP-IDF, the Arduino IDE, PlatformIO and browser flashers: plug the cable in and hold BOOT for download mode. No firmware is pre-installed — the board arrives blank.
Two pin headers are included but left loose, so the board can go into a breadboard, into a board of your own, or take wires soldered straight to the pads.
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The label is literal: N16 is sixteen megabytes of flash for the program, R8 is eight megabytes of PSRAM for data. The DevKitC-1 also sells in smaller builds — 8 MB of flash and no PSRAM at all — and the difference shows exactly where the interesting work starts: buffers, display frames, audio, long queues. N16R8 is the roomiest of the family.
The rest is standard S3: two Xtensa LX7 cores at 240 MHz, 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 LE.
One goes straight into the controller, so the board can present itself to a computer as a USB device — a mouse, a keyboard, a serial port. The other sits behind a USB-UART bridge for flashing and reading the log. Keeping both plugged in is normal, and that is what saves time while debugging: no swapping cables between "flash it" and "see what it says".
The board follows the usual DevKitC-1: the same two rows of pins, the same GPIO numbers on the silkscreen, the same BOOT and RESET buttons on the edge. Ready-made shields, enclosures and wiring diagrams from other projects fit, and Espressif’s own DevKitC-1 documentation reads across without translation.
The module is marked ESP32-S3-N16R8 and carries its own FCC ID — a compatible module rather than Espressif’s own ESP32-S3-WROOM-1. Same chip, same memory, same toolchain; what differs is who made the module and which certificates it holds.
A Makcu carries two ESP32-S3s: one takes the mouse in, the other hands it to the gaming PC as an ordinary USB device. So the board is bought for a build of your own, or to see how the thing works without taking a working one apart. It arrives blank — a Makcu does not fall out of it by itself: that needs a second board and firmware.
Two pin headers come in the box, unsoldered. Breadboarding? Solder the pins. Fitting the board into an enclosure? Solder wires straight to the pads or fit sockets instead. Factory-soldered pins would have taken the second option away.
The ESP32-S3 is a mainstream platform with open tooling, so the environment is your choice. BOOT enters download mode, RESET sits beside it. If the board is for something specific from our catalogue, write to support and we will say what to flash and in what order.
The board is tested before it goes out and the packed order is photographed — the picture arrives with the tracking number. It is usually bought alongside mouse-control modules and DMA cards: one order, one parcel, one delivery.