Raspberry Pi Pico

117 Articles

ClockworkPi Unveils New PicoCalc Handheld

March 14, 2025 by 34 Comments

Do you like scientific calculators? Don’t bother answering that question, you’re reading Hackaday so we already know the answer. We also know you’re a fan of building things yourself and open source, which makes us fairly sure you’ll be just as interested in the recently announced ClockworkPi PicoCalc as we are.

On the surface, it looks like a chunky scientific calculator, though on further inspection you’ll note it comes equipped with a QWERTY keyboard. But open up the case and what you’ve really got is an elaborate carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Pico. The PicoCalc supports all variants of the microcontroller, but realistically we can’t think of any reason that you wouldn’t just use the latest version.

With the MCU connected, you’ll have access to the PicoCalc’s 320×320 4-inch IPS screen, backlit I2C-connected keyboard, SD card slot, 8 MB PSRAM, and dual PWM speakers. Power is provided by a pair of 18650 cells (which you’ll need to supply on your own), and the board has the necessary circuitry to charge them up over USB-C.

Everything is housed in an injection molded case, but the project page says all the necessary CAD files will be eventually be released under the GPL v3 so you can 3D print or CNC your own enclosure. For now though, the only thing of note that seems to be in the PicoCalc GitHub repository is a PCB schematic.

The software side of things is a little less clear. The page mentions a BASIC interpreter, MP3 playback, and support for various programming languages, but we get the impression that’s just a list of stuff you can run on the Pi Pico. There are a few images that clearly show the PicoCalc actually being used as a calculator however, so there may be an official firmware yet to be revealed.

The PicoCalc kit is on sale now, and will set you back $75 USD — which actually includes a first-generation Pi Pico, on the off chance that you don’t already have a few laying around. We’ve been impressed with the previous offerings from ClockworkPi, so assuming this new kit maintains that same build quality, it seems like a fair enough price.

A Pi Pico Makes A Spectrum Laptop

December 23, 2024 by 9 Comments

There are many retrocomputer emulation projects out there, and given the relative fragility of the original machines as they enter their fifth decade, emulation seems to be the most common way to play 8-bit games. It’s easy enough to load one on your modern computer, but there are plenty of hardware options, too. “The computer we’d have done anything for back in 1983” seems to be a phrase many of them bring to mind, but it’s so appropriate because they keep getting better. Take [Stormbytes1970]’s Pi Pico-powered Sinclair ZX Spectrum mini laptop (Spanish language, Google Translate link), for example. It’s a slightly chunky netbook that’s a ZX Spectrum, and it has a far better keyboard than the original.

On the PCB is the Pico, the power supply circuitry, an SD card, and a speaker. But it’s when the board is flipped over that the interesting stuff starts. In place of the squidgy rubber keyboard of yore, it has a proper keyboard,. We’re not entirely sure which switch it uses, but it appears to be a decent one, nevertheless. The enclosure is a slick 3D-printed sub-netbook for retro gaming on the go. Sadly, it won’t edit Hackaday, so we won’t be slipping one in the pack next time we go on the road, but we like it a lot.

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Fibonacci Clock Looks Like Beautiful Modern Art

December 19, 2024 by 11 Comments

Don’t ask us why, but hackers and makers just love building clocks. Especially in the latter case, many  like to specialize in builds that don’t even look like traditional timepieces, and are difficult to read unless you know the trick behind them. [NerdCave] has brought us a pleasing example of such a thing, in the form of this gorgeous Fibonacci clock.

The build was inspired by an earlier Fibonacci clock that later became a Kickstarter project. Where that build used an Atmega328P, though, [NerdCage] landed on using a Raspberry Pi Pico W instead. The build throws the microcontroller board on a custom PCB, and sticks in inside an attractive 3D-printed enclosure. Black filmanet was used for the body, while white filament was used for the face of each square to act as a diffuser. Addressable RGB LEDs are used to illuminate the five square segments of the clock.

Obviously, you’re wondering how to read the clock. All you need to know is this. The first five numbers in the Fibonacci sequence are 1, 1, 2, 3, and 5. Each square on the clock represents one of these numbers—the side lengths of each square match these numbers. Red and green are used to represent hours and minutes, respectively, while a blue square is representing both. Basically, to get the hour, add up the values of red and blue squares, and to get the minutes, do the same with green and blue squares, but then multiply by 5. In the header image, the clock is displaying 8:55 PM… we think.

We’ve featured Fibonacci-themed clocks before, albeit ones with entirely different visual themes. Video after the break.

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The Most Inexpensive Apple Computer Possible

November 7, 2024 by 20 Comments

If Apple has a reputation for anything other than decent hardware and excellent industrial design, it’s for selling its products at extremely inflated prices. But there are some alternatives if you want the Apple experience on the cheap. Buying their hardware a few years out of date of course is one way to avoid the bulk of the depreciation, but at the extreme end is this working Mac clone that cost just $14.

This build relies on the fact that modern microcontrollers absolutely blow away the computing power available to the average consumer in the 1980s. To emulate the Macintosh 128K, this build uses nothing more powerful than a Raspberry Pi Pico. There’s a little bit more to it than that, though, since this build also replicates the feel of the screen of the era as well. Using a “hat” for the Pi Pico from [Ron’s Computer Videos] lets the Pico’s remaining system resources send the video signal from the emulated Mac out over VGA, meaning that monitors from the late 80s and on can be used with ease. There’s an option for micro SD card storage as well, allowing the retro Mac to have an incredible amount of storage compared to the original.

The emulation of the 80s-era Mac is available on a separate GitHub page for anyone wanting to take a look at that. A VGA monitor is not strictly required, but we do feel that displaying retro computer graphics on 4K OLEDs leaves a little something out of the experience of older machines like this, even if they are emulated. Although this Macintosh replica with a modern e-ink display does an excellent job of recreating the original monochrome displays of early Macs as well.

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A Japanese-input macro pad with a display and color-coded light-up keys.

Introducing The KanaChord Plus Keyboard カナコード・プラス・キーボード

October 5, 2024 by 2 Comments

We love to watch your projects grow as much as you do. Really, we’re like proud grandparents around here. So it’s great to see that [Mac Cody] is back with the KanaChord Plus Keyboard, which supports an astounding 6,165 Kanji as well as 6,240 of the most common Japanese words that contain Kanji. This is all in addition to supporting the Kana characters, which make up the rest of Japanese writing (more on that in a minute).

If you need to input Japanese, this is a dream come true. If you’re trying to learn Japanese in the first place, this could be exactly what you need to become fluent.

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Supercon 2023 – Going Into Deep Logic Waters With The Pico’s PIO And The Pi’s SMI

September 30, 2024 by 6 Comments

The Raspberry Pi has been around for over a decade now in various forms, and we’ve become plenty familiar with the Pi Pico in the last three years as well. Still, these devices have a great deal of potential if you know where to look. If you wade beyond the official datasheets, you might even find more than you expected.

Kumar is presently a software engineer with Google, having previously worked for Analog Devices earlier in his career. But more than that, Kumar has been doing a deep dive into maxing out the capabilities of the Raspberry Pi and the Pi Pico, and shared some great findings in an excellent talk at the 2023 Hackaday Supercon.

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A light-dependent resistor detects cacti in the Google Chrome Offline Dinosaur game.

Jump Cacti With An LDR And A Pico

September 6, 2024 by 6 Comments

By now, probably everyone is familiar with the “You’re Offline” dinosaur that stars in Google’s T. Rex game. You know — jump cacti, avoid pterodactyls. Repeat until you lose, or, we suppose, make the leaderboard. Well, what if you theoretically couldn’t lose? That’s kind of the idea behind [Bas BotBerg]’s cactus detection-and-avoidance scheme (translated from Dutch).

Like many of us, [Bas] firmly believes that repetitive tasks should be automated, and that includes the controls of the famous T. Rex. Since the cacti are always dark gray and appear along the same plane, it’s easy to register the difference between cacti and screen electronically. In order to accomplish this, [Bas] is using a light-dependent resistor and a pull-up resistor to create a resistance bridge, which is then connected to an analog input pin on a Raspberry Pi Pico.

But [Bas] didn’t do this just to cheat at Offline Dinosaur. Really! It’s for educational purposes, to get people comfortable with embedded processing, sensors, and interfaces between different devices. Check it out in brief action after the break.

Once they get familiar with these concepts, maybe introduce the ESP32 version of Offline Dinosaur.

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