SB Components’ StackyPi is a development board based on Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU that happens to follow the Raspberry Pi Zero form factor.
The board is equipped with 8MB SPI flash for the firmware, a MicroSD card socket, a micro SB port, two buttons, and a 40-pin GPIO header that makes it compatible with some Raspberry Pi uHAT and HAT expansion boards.
StackyPi specifications:
- MCU – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ microcontroller @ up to 133 MHz with 264KB SRAM
- Storage – 8MB (64Mbit) SPI flash, MicroSD card socket
- USB – 1x Micro USB port
- Expansion – 40-pin GPIO header with GPIO, I2C, UART, SPI, etc… mostly compatible with Raspberry Pi header (3.3V I/Os)
- Misc – Reset and Boot buttons
- Power Supply- 5V via Micro USB port
- Dimensions – 65 x 30 mm (Raspberry Pi Zero form factor)
The main advantage of such as board is that it can support some of the expansion boards made for the more powerful Raspberry Pi Arm Linux SBC. Somehow the developer decided not to share the pinout of the 40-pin header, and despite showing a prominent “Open Source” logo on Kickstarter, a link to software and hardware resources has not been provided. In all fairness, the code is usually published on Github, but possibly only after the crowdfunding campaign is complete.
Since the Raspberry Pi header only exposes GPIOs, other low-speed I/Os (I2C, UART, SPI), and power signals, it’s possible all pins are exposed, and the main limit is the processing power on RP2040 as well as software support since obviously running the usual Linux tools will not be available.
SB Components has just launched the StackyPi board on Kickstarter with a small 500 GBP goal. Rewards start at about $14 for StackyPi board only, but there’s also a bundle of 5 going for $48. Shipping adds 5 GBP to the UK, and about $20 to the rest of the world. Deliveries are scheduled to start in March 2022 soon after the crowdfunding campaign ends.
Via Hackster.io
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Isn’t RP2040 limited to 30 I/O pins with a few of them already taken by SPI storage?
RP2040 has 6 pins dedicated to SPI flash, plus 30 GPIOs. If I remember correctly, the Raspberry Pi header has 28 GPIO pins with the rest being ground, 3.3V, and 5V.