The Raspberry Pi Pico is the hot new star of the microcontroller scene, with its fancy IO hardware and serious name recognition. Based on the RP2040 “Raspberry Silicon” chip, it’s introducing fans of the single-board computer line to a lower level of embedded development. The Pico isn’t big, as its name suggests, but miniaturization is a never ending quest for improvement – so [That Dragon Guy] decided to see if the devboard could be smallified further at a minimum of cost.
While other smaller RP2040 boards are reaching the marketplace, they all cost a lot more than the $4 of the Pico. Thus, [That Dragon Guy] got creative. Having realised that the bottom section of the board was only full of passive traces and pads, he simply hacked it off with a scroll saw and sander. This gives a 30% reduction in footprint, at the cost of some mounting holes, GPIO pins and the debug interface.
In testing, the rest of the board continued to function perfectly well, so we’re calling this a win. It builds on amusing experiments [That Dragon Guy] had done before with the Raspberry Pi B+ which gave us a good chuckle. The Raspberry Pi has always been a minimalist darling, with the Pi Zero of 2015 being a bit of a gamechanger, and much beloved by this writer. Video after the break.
This @Raspberry_Pi Pico hack is…a literal hack. There are smaller RP2040 form factors but nobody can touch the original’s $4 price. So… pic.twitter.com/FQTqr9uZyv
— That Dragon Guy (@PaintYourDragon) March 29, 2021
Just 1 grainy pic. Had to mock up an A+ case before they shipped. Cut a B+, glued on fake USB port, made case. Forgot about it for a year, grabbed board for a MAME project. Games ran great w/GPIO input, but lost HOURS figuring why keyboard wouldn’t work! 😂 pic.twitter.com/iWJMOErIYe
— That Dragon Guy (@PaintYourDragon) April 3, 2020
Ordered a couple 24th Jan shipping date still TBA ergh
Did you order them from got-good-deals-4.you/honest/no/scams.html ?
I don’t know where @Matt ordered his from but I ordered mine on 2/22 from SparkFun and am still waiting.
Ordered mine from canakit. they were suppose to ship second week of February, but… they still don’t have them from UK yet.
Digikey :( waiting too
I ordered from the PI shop and they came right away.
https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-pico/
PBtech in NZ big legit retailer
Definitely one for the “there, I fixed it” website. Needs more duct tape.
he didn’t even trimmed the side… by going fully castellated he’d have shaved5.08mm more…
You spelled castrated wrong.
B^)
why rpi 4 use big blobs with closed firmware and hardware?
There are smaller versions available… no need to destroy a perfectly working board… I’d like one with more IOs, not less.
But those smaller versions are more expensive.
For the price, not a big deal to cut up a board for a specific use. These boards are like potato chips….
Just not as easy to buy.
The whole point of this is that this hack does NOT destroy the board. If you like a smaller form factor but still have a breadboard compatible pitch, there is only so much you can do I guess…
You can try PlatformIO for Pico
https://github.com/Wiz-IO/wizio-pico
Reminds me of the time I make a 1x PCI-E GPU out of a 16x one with a rotary cutter. Fun times.
Not a hack!
uh…wait
One of the best bits for a long while. A great full proof tip. I’ve been enjoying the much reduced format for basic projects on the RP2040 Raspberry Pi Pico board. Many thanks.