Since the recent launch of Pimoroni Pico LiPo that came with the Raspberry Pi’s in-house silicon tape out RP2040, the hobbyist electronics company based in the UK has continued to work with the tiny powerful MCU to release PGA2040 – a breakout board.
“The PGA2040 is a fairly minimal breakout for the RP2040 with standard 2.54mm (0.1″) headers in a Pin Grid Array. It’s intended for the most svelte and embeddable of projects, so you’ll have to add your own USB to program it, but that also makes it great for your own creations. The crystal and all essential support circuits are included, as well as the cutest little pin labels in the known ‘verse because space is tight on this board,” said Paul Beech, Pimoroni co-founder.
About Pimoroni PGA2040 – the breakout board
PGA2040, a small RP2040 breakout board is designed for the smallest and most embeddable designs. It only contains the components required to run the RP2040. These components include crystal, flash, regulator, and key support circuits. Moreover, the PGA2040 has no extras such as LEDs, buttons, or USB ports. In order to program the board, the user has to attach their USB connector to it. This external USB makes prototyping way too easy.
The PGA2040 comes with 48 GPIO pins arranged in a Pin Grid Array. More than half (precisely 30) of these pins’ utilization is that of general-purpose I/O (four more than on a Raspberry Pi Pico), and four of them have an ADC. Additionally, it features an 8MB QSPI flash storage supporting XiP. It comes along with a crystal oscillator – clock. However, the board requires a crystal oscillator to get everything up and running. This small-sized breakout board only measures approximately 21x21x3mm.
The PGA2040 module attributes to the dual-core ARM Cortex M0+ running at up to 133MHz clock frequency and comes with an SRAM of 264kB. Furthermore, the module’s on-board 3V3 regulator allows a maximum output power of 300mA. The breakout board has an input voltage of the range 3V-5.5V with 8 GND pins. Similar to the other RP2040 boards, the PGA2040 is compatible with C++, MicroPython or CircuitPython.
How to get started with the Pimoroni PGA2040?
To program the PGA2040 through USB, connect wires to the pins VB, GND, U+, and U-. Try to ensure that the 5V only travels to VB on the PGA2040. If it travels anywhere else, the user might have to face a terrible time. Connect the BS pin to the ground when plugging the USB into the PC to enter BOOTSEL mode and upload firmware to the PGA2040 module. For more information, visit the product page.
You can now shop this tiny RP2040 powered Pimoroni PGA2040 for just £6.90 on the official Pimoroni product page.
Jennifer James is a graduate student in Computer Science Engineering who is passionate about front-end development. She is a content-writer inquisitive about technology. A rising enthusiast in search for optimum knowledge through learning and experiences of the everyday fast-growing Digital Industry through organizational exposure.
