Choose your board
Every supported board runs the same engine and the same show.json — so
choosing a board isn’t about features you’ll lose, it’s about matching the
hardware to your build: how many LEDs, whether you need a screen or sound, and
how small the whole thing has to be. Find your build below.
“Just LEDs, as small as possible”
Section titled ““Just LEDs, as small as possible””Get the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Zero.
It’s a thumbnail-sized board with USB-C, WiFi, an onboard pixel on GPIO21, and fourteen more pads for your strip and a button. It drives up to 256 pixels and still gets the full web dashboard and both update modes. The trade-offs are a small 4 MB data drive and no screen — which is exactly nothing, if your build is a strip hidden in a wand, hilt, or badge.
“LEDs and sound in a prop”
Section titled ““LEDs and sound in a prop””Get the Waveshare ESP32-S3-LCD-1.47 — or the ESP32-S3-CAM if you don’t want a screen.
The LCD-1.47 is the “everything board”: LEDs, a 1.47″ screen, documented amp wiring on GPIO1/2/3, and your sounds on a removable microSD card — so a big sound library never fights for on-chip space. It powers the Pulse Rifle reference prop (screen ammo counter, trigger button, muzzle-flash pixel, polyphonic gunfire).
The S3-CAM is the headless take: same 16 MB flash and 8 MB PSRAM, sounds on its on-chip USB drive, and a small budget of 11 free pads — enough for a strip, a couple of buttons, and an amp. (Its camera isn’t supported by the engine yet.)
“A built-in screen: gauges, counters, readouts”
Section titled ““A built-in screen: gauges, counters, readouts””Get the LilyGo T-Display-S3.
A bright 1.9″ 170×320 IPS screen, two onboard buttons, audio-ready pins, and 15 free header pins for strips and sensors. It’s the board behind the Predator Gauntlet reference prop — thermal-scanner screens, sound, a countdown, and an LED strip on one board — and it’s the board where the drag-a-UF2 loader update flow is fully verified.
Want the screen tiny? The LilyGo T-QT Pro packs a 0.85″ 128×128 screen into a pocket-size board — but note it has no audio and supports standalone updates only.
“Lots of LEDs, or a breadboard to develop on”
Section titled ““Lots of LEDs, or a breadboard to develop on””Get the Espressif ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1.
It has the largest LED budget of any hardware target — 2048 pixels — and by far the most free pins, with nothing reserved by a screen or SD slot. That’s the board for a proton pack, a coat lined with strips, or a bench where you want room to experiment (the reference proton pack drives a 67-LED chain from GPIO45). It’s a standalone-updates board, and flash/PSRAM depend on which module variant your kit ships with.
“I want a touch screen”
Section titled ““I want a touch screen””Get the M5Stack Core2.
It’s an all-in-one unit — 2″ capacitive touch screen, battery, speaker, and a finished case — so it works as a handheld controller rather than a bare board. Know the current limits before you buy: its onboard speaker isn’t enabled in the engine yet, files are managed through the web UI (no USB drive), and hardware verification on a physical unit is still pending.
No hardware yet?
Section titled “No hardware yet?”Start with the desktop preview or the browser target.
Both run the real engine — the desktop build on Windows, Linux, macOS, or a
Raspberry Pi with a browser-based visualizer, and the WASM build entirely in a
web page with nothing to install. Either lets you write and preview a complete
show, then move the same show.json to hardware later. Since a show declares
which board it targets, you can even validate against your future board’s pin
table before it arrives.
Quick sanity checks before you buy
Section titled “Quick sanity checks before you buy”- Count your pixels. Most S3 boards budget 256 LEDs; the DevKitC-1 goes to 2048. If your build is strip-heavy, that decides it.
- Sound needs an amp. “Audio” on these boards means wiring a small I2S amplifier board to a speaker — it’s three data pins plus power, and the T-Display-S3 and LCD-1.47 document exactly which pins.
- Think about updates. Boards that support loader mode (S3-Zero, LCD-1.47, T-Display-S3, S3-CAM) can take firmware by drag-and-drop onto a USB drive with built-in crash recovery; every board supports standalone WiFi updates. Editing your show never requires a firmware update on any board.
- Where do files live? Most boards expose an on-chip USB drive; the LCD-1.47 uses a removable microSD card instead; the Core2 is web-UI only.
Still comparing? The board lineup has every board side by side in one table.