Specifications

The brain of the CL-32 is an espressif ESP32-S3. Here is how it stacks up

• ESP32-S3 SoC embedded, Xtensa® dual-core 32-bit LX7 microprocessor (with single precision FPU), up to 240 MHz
• 384 KBROM
• 512 KB SRAM
• 16 KB SRAM in RTC
• Up to 16 MB PSRAM
• Wi-Fi – 802.11b/g/n
• Bluetooth LE: Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth mesh

Width – 132mm
Depth – 74mm
Height – 11.5mm (12.5mm including buttons)
Weight – 110g

The main body of the case is 3d printed in PA12 Nylon using a HP MJF (Multi Jet Fusion) system
The buttons are 3d printed in TPU using a SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) system

The eventual goal is to have the case Injection molded to save costs..

The screen is a 2.9 inch e-ink display. It is a higher resolution variant and offers 384×168 pixels (144 PPI). The refresh rates are quite good too!!

• Full refresh – 3 seconds
• Fast refresh – 1.5 seconds
• Partial refresh – 0.2 seconds

The system is powered by a BL-5C Battery (commonly known as ‘the Nokia battery’) but also has intelligent power path management. This means that you can use it on USB power too!!

With 72 keys, there is plenty of space to allow the vast majority of symbols to be typed without needing multiple keys to be pressed at once. The keyboard is managed by a dedicated chip, allowing all of those buttons to only need a simple i2c connection ensuring that the maximum connectivity is available for other uses

The following connectivity is available on CL-32

• USB-C for uploading code, and to allow usage as a host device too
• Micro SD Card slot to allow plenty of storage space for your code
• WiFi / Bluetooth available on the ESP32 chip
• 2 x stemma/Qwiic connections (on different i/o pins) to allow interconnectivity with other systems
• M.2 socket (E Key) allowing a large amount of connectivity
  – i2c – sharing the same connection as the keyboard and the RTC
  – USB – this is the same connection as the main USB-C port, allowing the add on card to have a USB host socket
  – UART – this will let you upload code to the ESP via serial instead of USB
  – 13 i/o pins – can be used for direct input/output on the ESP32. This allows vast expansion of functionallity
  – 3 possibly unusable i/o pins – they are shared by the PSRAM on the ESP32 module, so they are generally not usable. but you never know….