OpenMV support status for Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense — any official or community path?

OpenMV Boards
1

I’m running a comparative study on TinyML image-classification platforms (Edge Impulse, SenseCraft AI, OpenMV) using the Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense (OV2640, 8MB PSRAM, 8MB Flash) for a university internship project.

I’ve verified that OpenMV IDE (latest version) does not list any ESP32/XIAO target in the “Board Type” connect dialog — only Arduino Giga, Nano RP2040 Connect, Nano33 BLE, Nicla Vision, Portenta, and the native OpenMV Cam line (AE3, H7, H7 Plus, M4, M7, RT1062, MP2, N6, Pure Thermal). I also confirmed the board itself is functioning correctly (flashed and ran generic MicroPython via esptool without issues), so the board is not connecting specifically because no OpenMV target exists for it, not due to a hardware or driver problem on my end.

Before documenting this as “unsupported” in my report, I wanted to check directly:

  • Is ESP32-S3 (specifically the XIAO Sense variant) on any roadmap for official OpenMV support?
  • Is there any community/unofficial firmware build that works with OpenMV IDE’s connect/flash flow on this chip (as opposed to standalone Arduino libraries that just reimplement some OpenMV-style functions)?

Any help would really help me. Thanks!

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Hi, we don’t have any support for the ESP32-S3 (ESP32 Cam).

While it’s definitely a system that we could support with our software, actually doing so takes significant time and investment of energy.

The next release of OpenMV IDE will support 3rd party repos where the community could create a fork that supports the ESP32.