I am puzzled by the comments on the Wiki;
https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/xiao_esp32s3_pin_multiplexing/
about using the SD card and having another SPI device on the bus.
The Wiki says;
“The solder pad interfaces provided on the Sense expansion board allow users to select the required functions. Among them, the function of the J3 solder pad is to enable the SPI or SD card functionality”
This implies that if your using the SD card, with J3 made so that there are 4K7 pullups active on SCK, MISO and MOSI you cannot use another SPI device on the bus, Why would this be the case, SPI is a bus and is specifically intended to support multiple devices each with their own CS pin ?
In addition, the Wiki says that if you want to use the SPI bus,for another SPI device presumably, you need to break J3. The impact of breaking J3 is to connect each of the SCK, MISO and MOSI pins to each other through a pair of 4K7 resistors, which is not an arrangement I have seen before on a working SPI bus.
i think because there is an sd card slot on the expansion board j3 is the chip enable for the sd card… so to spi another device you would need to chip enable on another pin im thinking… but i am not an expert
Hi, if you don’t subtract JP3, both SPI devices will appear to be using the same CS line and will conflict.
I dont understand that at all.
Pull ups on SPI chip enables on SPI devices are common, they ensure that a device on the SPI bus is not accidently enabled by a floating chip enable for that device. Suggesting the pull up is removed (subtract JP3) to prevent a conflict is something I cannot follow.
I have the SD card and another SPI device (LoRa) working quite happily and reliably together, J3 has been left in place, there is no conflict, which is what I would expect.
Granted you dont actually need pullups on SPI device chip enables, just set up the GPIO pin driving the chip enable and set it high.
But needing to have MOSI, MISO and SD_CS connected together with resistors, when there is more than one SPI device on the bus is a bit odd, certainly never seen an arrangement like that before.
Q1: When XIAO ESP32S3 Sense and Round Display are used together, do I have to cut the J3 pin? Which SD card slot can be used?
A: In principle, you need to cut the J3 pin when XIAO ESP32S3 Sense is used together with Round Display to use microSD card. The reason is that there are pull-up resistors in the design of the circuit of both expansion boards, so theoretically, if two pull-up resistors work at the same time, then the SD card slot will not work properly. An error message of SD card mount failure will appear. Since the pull-up resistor on the Round Display cannot be blocked, you need to cut J3 on the sense expansion board to make sure only one pull-up resistor is working when the two are used together. This also determines that when both are used together, there is and only the SD card slot on the Round Display is active.
However, we need to thank engineer Mjrovai for the new method of using the microSD card slot on the XIAO ESP32S3 Sense at the same time, which is also possible at software level. We can refer to his methods and procedures.
Now that makes sense, thanks.
The SD card slot on the round display also has pullups on the SPI pins, and two sets of pullups is not a good idea.
Perhaps the Wiki for the ESP32S3 sense board should be a bit more specific on the this issue …
So I was trying the example sdspi with the ESP32S3 sense board and it show error that says
Make sure SD card lines have pull-up resistors in place.
How do we deal with that ?
The product I am using Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32S3 Sense
I (273) main_task: Started on CPU0
I (283) main_task: Calling app_main()
I (283) example: Initializing SD card
I (283) example: Using SPI peripheral
I (283) example: Mounting filesystem
I (293) gpio: GPIO[8]| InputEn: 0| OutputEn: 1| OpenDrain: 0| Pullup: 0| Pulldown: 0| Intr:0
E (503) sdmmc_sd: sdmmc_init_sd_if_cond: send_if_cond (1) returned 0x108
E (503) vfs_fat_sdmmc: sdmmc_card_init failed (0x108).
I (503) gpio: GPIO[8]| InputEn: 1| OutputEn: 0| OpenDrain: 0| Pullup: 0| Pulldown: 0| Intr:0
E (503) example: Failed to initialize the card (ESP_ERR_INVALID_RESPONSE). Make sure SD card lines have pull-up resistors in place.
I (523) main_task: Returned from app_main()
Hi there,
and welcome here…
So , Check out the Drag & Drop Testing Thread, There is an example for the SD card . See if that helps.
The Sense has everything in there. Also have a peek at the Round display with a Sense on that too, Two SD cards…
The Gif Viewer is a good one to check loads and uses the SD card for the Winking Monkey Gif 
HTH
GL 
PJ 
If you use the code tags “</>” and paste it in there , we can look .
That was fast reply Thanks.
I am old school using vscode extension 
Any drag and drop for that ?
Hi there,
Sure thing, you need a few reply’s to get picture posting amd new thread status. so that is a boost to it.
There is also Round Display with the SD card read and write , those may help as well.
post up the code you are trying. What size is the SD card? is it formatted ?
HTH
GL PJ
Controller used: Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32S3 leverages dual-core ESP32S3 chip from amazon
SD card used: Lexar E-Series 32GB Micro SD Card from amazon. Formatted using diskutil on macbookpro with fats32
The code I am trying to run is example from esp-idf repo
https-://github-.com/espressif/esp-idf/tree/master/examples/storage/sd_card/sdspi
no changes to the code, trying to see if i can run example code first to see if my set up is working properly. So fat the helloworld and the wifi-station examples worked good.
Trying to see if i can write and read with SD card.
Note: annoying we cant post link 
look out for hyphes/minus/subtract-sign
Hi there,
Yea, takes a couple reply’s then you can.
SD Card is good. Ok, that should run ? If not you may need to explicitly define the pins used for the SD card , the CS especially. If it’s an older demo b4 5.0 IDF change , you more than likely will have to , USE the GPIO pin number in the code instead of a Logical ones like “D2” better GPIO3 is used in this case.
In the Wiki there is a Procedure to create a UF2 drag & Drop file for your ESP32S3 Xiao so I would look to that after you have a handle on it with the SD working, You not using the Camera ? I use it without one. Roll your own IO board
HTH
GL PJ
I want wifi, camera and sd card all working for a project.
wifi, works, testing sd card so that i can save images on them.
got stuck at sd cards for now