XIAO ESP32C6 Sketches

February 21, 2026

Arduino source code that accompanies First Look at the Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C6.

This repository has been updated to work with version 3.3.6 or newer of the ESP32 Arduino core. A release and tag were created to easily recover the original 2025-01-24 release using version 3.1.1 of the core as if that could be of interest.

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Development Environments
  • 2.1. Arduino
  • 2.2. pioarduino
• 3. List of Projects
  • 3.1. About 14_zigbee_on_off_switch and 15_zigbee_on_off_light
  • 3.2. About 16_matter-on-off-light and 17_matter-on-off-switch
  • 3.3. Further Details
• 4. Change Log
• 5. License

1. Introduction

The XIAO ESP32C6 was the eighth addition to the Seeed Studio XIAO series of diminutive development boards. As its name makes clear, it is based on a SoC from the Espressif ESP32-C6 Series of microcontrollers.

2. Development Environments

It should be possible to compile each project in the Arduino IDE or the pioarduino IDE with a minimum of fuss and without any need to install anything other than this repository. To accomplish this each Arduino sketch is contained in a PIO (PlatformIO or pioarduino) project.

Arduino sketches must have an .ino file name extension and must be contained in a directory with the same name as the Arduino sketch (excluding the extension). However, pin_names.ino is basically empty as it contains only comments and the actual code is in main.cpp. This is not a problem because the Arduino IDE will import all source files found in the same directory as the sketch.

PIO, on the other hand, expects the main.cpp source in a directory named src alongside the project configuration file always named platformio.ini. Fortunately, the source directory can have another name, such as pin_names, if the latter is specified in the configuration file.

2.1. Arduino

The latest version of the Arduino IDE can be obtained for Windows, Linux and macOS in the Downloads page from Arduino. Installing the latest Espressif ESP32 Arduino core is a two-step procedure.

1. Add https://espressif.github.io/arduino-esp32/package_esp32_index.json in the Additional Boards Manager URLS in the Preferences window in the IDE.

2. Using the Boards Manager (Tools / Board / Boards Manager), install platform esp32 by Espressif, version 3.3.6 or newer.

This is a one-time task.

Many of the sketches are dependent on a library stored in the local libraries folder contained in this repository. That directory will be searched only if the sketchbook location in the IDE Preferences settings is the directory containing the downloaded repository.

• Adjust the location to reflect the actual directory on the local machine.
• Keep track of the old sketchbook location before changing it.
• Reset the sketchbook location to its old value when done with sketches in this repository.

When compiling a project, select the XIAO_ESP32C6 board in the Tools menu of the IDE. The default values for the other options in the menu are acceptable except for the Zigbee sketches. See their respective README for details.

2.2. pioarduino

While PlatformIO is widely used, it is simpler to use the pioarduino fork when working with recent ESP32 microcontrollers.

Unlike the Arduino IDE, pioarduino IDE is not a stand-alone application. It is an extension that is installed in the code editor Visual Studio Code (VSCode), or VSCodium. The latter is a less well-known fork of the former that claims to have removed telemetry/tracking from VSCode. So far, it does not contain the AI additions to VSCode.

The pioarduino IDE extension is available in the extension marketplace of both code editors. Consequently, its installation is a simple three-step procedure.

This is a one-time task.

All configuration settings of a project are specified in a platformio.ini file contained in the root directory of the project. Since these are included in the repository, there is usually nothing to do. Here is an example configuration file.

[platformio]

src_dir = scan_wifi    ; Arduino requirement: sketch source: ../scan_wifi/scan_wifi.ino
lib_dir = ../libraries ; relative to the directory containing this configuration file

[env:seeed_xiao_esp32c6]
platform = https://github.com/pioarduino/platform-espressif32/releases/download/stable/platform-espressif32.zip
board = seeed_xiao_esp32c6
framework = arduino
monitor_speed = 460800
;upload_port = /dev/ttyACM0
;monitor_port = /dev/ttyACM0    

The pioarduino-espressif32 platform is used. Currently the version used is pioarduino/platform-espressif Release 55.03.36 Arduino Release v3.3.6 based on ESP-IDF v5.5.2.260116 released on January 21, 2026.

The IDE will automatically install the platform first time it is used. Because of that, the first compilation against a new platform takes considerably more time than subsequent compilations.

3. List of Projects

Many of these projects will work with the newer XIAO ESP32C5 (see xiao_esp32c5_sketches) and the older XIAO ESP32C3 (see xiao_esp32c3_sketches).

3.1. About 14_zigbee_on_off_switch and 15_zigbee_on_off_light

These sketches replace the deprecated 08_zigbee_switch and 09_zigbee_bulb sketches respectively.

Flash the Zigbee_On_Off_Switch firmware on one XIAO ESP32C6 or XIAO ESP32C5 and the Zigbee_On_Off_Light firmware on a second XIAO ESP32C6 or XIAO ESP32C5. The boot button on the first board will toggle the yellow LED on/off on the second board. However, the Zigbee_On_Off_Light end device can be used with a single XIAO because it will connect to a Zigbee2MQTT coordinator and its on-board LED can be controlled from the coordinator's web interface.

3.2. About 16_matter-on-off-light and 17_matter-on-off-switch

These are similar to the Zigbee projects but they require a Matter coordinator. Upload the switch firmware to a XIAO ESP32C6 and the light firmware to a second XIAO ESP32C6 and the user LED of the latter can be toggled on and off with the boot button of the former if both Matter devices are connected to a Matter coordinator and if a routine to handle the click event from the switch device to toggle the light device has been created. This was tested using the Amazon Alexa app and a 4th gen. Echo Dot. The two devices run on the same WiFi network as the Echo Dot, but their commissioning is done using Bluetooth LE to communicate with the Echo Dot.

3.3. Further Details

See First Look at the Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C6 for some details about these programs.

4. Change Log

5. License

Copyright 2024-2026 Michel Deslierres. No rights reserved.

While the copyright pertaining to included libraries must be respected, all the code by Michel Deslierres in this repository is in the public domain. In those jurisdictions where this may be a problem, the BSD Zero Clause License applies.