homeassistant_espscreen/docs/ELECROW.md

Elecrow CrowPanel 7.0" — 800 × 480

The Elecrow CrowPanel ESP32 HMI 7.0-inch (product code DIS08070H, hardware V2.0 and V3.0) has a board file of its own, next to the CYD's and the Guition's: an 800 × 480 IPS panel on the ESP32-S3's own RGB bus, GT911 capacitive touch, an ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N4R8 with 4 MB of flash and 8 MB of octal PSRAM, and a backlight on GPIO 2. It is the Guition's kind of screen, a big RGB panel with capacitive touch, in a wider, landscape form: every card, the camera images and album covers, the page swipe from the glass edge, the settings on the screen. Two things differ in kind, and both are below: the 4 MB of flash (the CYD's budget, not the Guition's 16 MB) and a panel that is not square, so it does not turn (no Rotation entity).

Hardware source: Elecrow's wiki and the ESPHome devices page for the CrowPanel 7.0", whose panel timings, pins and pitfalls this board file follows. The CrowPanel Advance 7.0" is a different board with other pins (ESPHome's CROWPANEL-ADVANCE-7 model); this file is for the plain CrowPanel 7.0".

Files

• packages/boards/elecrow-crowpanel7.yaml: the board file (hardware, the 800 × 480 sizes, the flash measures); the interface itself is packages/core.yaml, shared with both other boards (docs/PROFILES.md).
• packages/elecrow.yaml: what a screen builds from over GitHub; elecrow-crowpanel7.yaml in the root is the same for a build from a checkout; installers/elecrow.yaml the block for a hand-written ESPHome configuration.
• components/smart_display/elecrow_usb_phy.h: frees the USB pins for the touch I2C (below).
• components/smart_display/partitions.py: the partition table that makes the firmware fit (below).
• tools/verify_gt911.py: physical pixel check, as on the Guition; no resistive calibration.

Choose Elecrow CrowPanel · 7 inch under New screen in ESP Screens (app 0.2.93+). The Guition's own parts (the Rotation choice) stay off for it; everything the Guition can show, it shows.

Interface

Six tiles of 378 × 108 pixels per page in two columns, the Guition's rows and fonts across a wider page: the vertical sizes are the Guition's to the pixel, the tiles and the cards take the extra width. The top bar, the tile labels, the alert card (560 wide, its camera picture 532 × 220), the colour and climate titles and the page keys are sized for 800 px; the cards that are a share of the page (the setpoint card, the mode keys) simply widen. A camera opens full screen at 800 × 480; ESP Screens serves the picture in that box (camera_feed.BOXES['elecrow']).

At 133 pixels an inch the Guition's 42 px icons are a shade larger on this panel than on the 4-inch (170 ppi), which suits a screen that stands further away.

Touch

The GT911 is polled every 20 ms over I2C at 400 kHz, with no interrupt pin and no reset: the V3.0 has a PCA9557 I/O expander (I2C 0x18) on the GT911's reset and interrupt lines, and writing it during boot is what breaks the touch on that revision. It powers up with every pin as an input, a pull-up brings the GT911 out of reset before the firmware starts, and the driver finds it ready. A bus scan at boot upsets the GT911 too, so scan: false.

The GT911 takes I2C address 0x5D when GPIO 38 reads low at power-on and 0x14 when it reads high; on this board it is 0x5D on most units, and a unit that never reports a touch may be a 0x14. Give that screen an Override YAML in ESP Screens (Screen settings → Override YAML) with:

touchscreen:
  address: 0x14

GPIO 19 and 20, the touch I2C, are the ESP32-S3's USB D- and D+. The ROM leaves the USB PHY on those pads and ESP-IDF's I2C driver cannot take them back: the bus reads as I2C software timeout and the touch never answers (esphome/esphome#15356, ESPHome 2026.3+). elecrow_usb_phy.h runs before any component, as a static constructor, and lets the pads go; it is behind the build flag ESP_SCREENS_FREE_USB_PADS, which only this board file sets, because ESPHome includes every header of the component in every build and the Guition, an ESP32-S3 too, keeps its USB. The board's USB-C port is a CH340 on UART0, so flashing and the log are unaffected; the GPIO19 is used by the USB-Serial-JTAG interface warnings at build time are expected.

Rotation

A landscape panel with a layout 800 px wide: it does not turn. ROTATION_SUPPORTED is false, the settings page shows no rotation row, and the app offers none for this board.

Flash

The ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N4R8 has 4 MB of flash (the N4; 16 MB in the YAML boot-loops with no log). The firmware is the Guition's, with camera images; with the Guition's fonts it is 2,028 KB, and ESPHome's own partition table for 4 MB, two update slots of 1,792 KB with 448 KB kept for NVS, does not hold it. Three measures make it fit with room for updates, all in the board file, measured with ESPHome 2026.9.0 (the add-on's):

Measure	Saves	Where
Two update slots of 1,984 KB and 64 KB of NVS instead of 448 KB (the preferences take a few KB; ESP-IDF's own two-slot example keeps 16 KB)	192 KB more room a slot	smart_display: partitions: 4mb_wide_slots, components/smart_display/partitions.py
The four icon fonts (the 314 tile icons at 42, 26 and 18 px, the 31 big icons at 64 px) at 2 bits a pixel instead of 4; the text fonts keep their 4	156 KB	font: in the board file (!extend on the core's fonts)
The TLS client only; nothing serves TLS	7 KB	sdkconfig_options in the board file

That is 1,865,456 bytes, 91.8 % of a slot: within the CYD's rules (docs/RELEASING.md step 2), in the tight band, and tools/check.sh --firmware applies the same budget to this board. Without camera images it is about 1,754 KB, 86 %: drop the online_image, http_request and preview_camera sections, the alert's picture frame and the camera_image_seed image, and empty the camera hooks (BOOT_CAMERA_HOOKS, BOARD_PAINT_FILL, CLOSE_CARDS_HOOK, MAY_OPEN_EXTRA, TICK_HOOK, AWAY_EXTRA, ALERT_SHOW_HOOK) as the CYD's board file has them. The icons at 4 bits a pixel are the Guition's 156 KB back; they fit only without the camera images, and then at 94 %.

The partition table is part of the firmware and never changes once a screen is flashed: an update over Wi-Fi writes into the other slot of the table the screen has, and only a USB install (ESP Screens' New screen, or ESPHome Web with the factory image) lays the flash out anew. A screen flashed with this table keeps it through every update.

Panel

ESPHome's mipi_rgb driver with the RPI model: the panel takes the pixels straight from the ESP32-S3's LCD peripheral and needs no initialisation, so the timings are the whole configuration: 15 MHz pixel clock, inverted (pclk_inverted: true, without it the picture tears), horizontal porches 40/48/13 and vertical 1/31/13, the 16 data pins of Elecrow's schematic. The frame buffer is in PSRAM; LVGL draws in a buffer of 15 % of the screen, the same number of pixels as the Guition's 25 % of 480 × 480.

Checks

• python3 tools/check_packages.py, esphome config elecrow-crowpanel7.yaml, tools/check.sh --firmware.
• The touch test page and tools/verify_gt911.py for the corners; the ghost-touch filter at (0, 0) of the Guition's GT911 applies here too.
• diagnostics/capture_ui.py saves the LVGL render at 400 × 240 (half the panel) as a PNG; ui_self_test renders every card without touching a device.
• A build is not a flash, and a render is not a touch: the owner checks the picture and taps the corners.