ESP32 Rainbow is a recreation of the original Sinclair ZX Spectrum with a built-in speaker, LCD, and full-color touch keyboard. It’s been designed as a loving tribute to the classic Sinclair personal computer but with a modern twist, featuring USB Type-C power and microSD storage.

Whether you grew up loving the ZX Spectrum or always wanted to try one, ESP32 Rainbow gives you a convenient way to tinker and write programs for a legendary British home computer.

The Return of a Legend

At the heart of this project is a powerful ESP32-S3 module. You can either use ESP32 Rainbow with the stock firmware and run your ZX Spectrum games and BASIC, or you can program it yourself over the built-in USB Type-C socket and take advantage of the touch keyboard, display, speaker, and microSD.

There are also two standard QWIIC connectors and an "expansion port" for attaching peripherals. This makes it not only a fantastic ZX Spectrum emulator but also an excellent platform for building your own ESP32 projects.

The touch keyboard is highly responsive and each key can be read individually, so the entire keyboard works just like on the original ZX Spectrum—without the fiddly membrane buttons.

Features & Specifications

• ESP32-S3 dual-core processor
• 320 x 280 16-bit color TFT display
• 40 key full-color ZX Spectrum-style touch keyboard
• 2 W 8 ohm speaker
• Headphone socket
• microSD slot for storage
• Battery connector (Picoblade compatible) and charging circuit
• 2 x QWIIC connectors
• Expansion port that breaks out the display, SD card, speaker, and 4 GPIO pins
• Reset and BOOT buttons

Open Source

ESP32 Rainbow is open hardware available under the GNU General Public License. KiCad project files for the hardware (schematic and PCB), as well as a BoM and PCB layout, can be found in this GitHub repo. The ZX Spectrum emulator firmware can be found in this GitHub repo.

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