Beetle RP2040 is a tiny Raspberry Pi RP2040 board with easily solderable pads

DFRobot Beetle RP2040 joins other miniature Raspberry Pi RP2040 developments boards such as Pimoroni Tiny 2040 & Adafruit QT Py RP2040, but with only eight GPIOs accessible through larger pads that are easier to solder.

The tiny 27 x 20 mm board comes with a USB Type-C port, BOOT and reset buttons, and twelves pads with a through hole each comprised of eight GPIOs, plus VCC, 3.3V, and GNS pads. The Beetle RP2040 is designed to be embedded into small devices or projects, and the company selected I/Os that can be configured as I2C, UART, SPI, GPIOs, analog input, etc…

Beetle RP2040 specifications:

• MCU – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ microcontroller@ up to 133Mhz with 264kB of SRAM
• Storage – 2MB QSPI flash
• USB – USB 1.1 Type-C port for power, data, and programming
• I/Os
  • 12x golden pads with through hole for 8x I/Os pins enabling up to 2x I2C, up to 2x UART, SPI, up to 2x analog inputs, as well as VCC (3.3 to 5V), 3.3V, and GND
  • Pad parameters – 2.54mm pitch, 4×3.5mm size
  • 3.3V I/O voltage
• Misc – BOOT and Reset buttons, user LED
• Power Supply – 3.3V~5V via USB-C port
• Dimensions – 27 x 20 x 4.91 mm

DFRobot says the board can be programmed with the usual Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ and MicroPython SDKs, Arduino C, as well as the Mind+ graphical programming interface based on Scratch 3.0. Typical applications include controllers for lights, home appliances and stage props, data loggers, and USB peripherals. The wiki has more details with a focus on Arduino programming, and interfacing the Beetle RP2040 with DFRobot sensor modules.

RFRobot sells the Beetle RP2040 mini development board for $6.90 plus shipping. This is not the first DFRbot Beetle board, and if the Raspberry Pi RP2040 is not your favorite microcontroller, the company sells other tiny Beetle boards, albeit in a different form factor, with ESP32, ESP32-C3, Microchip ATmega32U4, and Microchip ATmega328.

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