Waveshare RP2040-GEEK is a development board that looks like a USB flash drive but is based on a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller with a 1.14-inch 65K color LCD and some expansion ports all housed in a white plastic case.
The device comes with a 4MB flash to store the firmware, a microSD card slot for data storage, a BOOT button to enter bootloader mode, two 3-pin connectors for UART and SWD debug, and a 4-pin I2C port.
Waveshare RP2040-GEEK specifications:
- MCU – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller clocked up to 133 MHz with 264 kB SRAM
- Storage – 4MB flash (W25Q32JVSSIQ) and microSD card slot
- Display – 1.14-inch 240×135 pixel 65K color IPS LCD display
- USB – 1x USB Type-A female port for power and programming
- Debugging – 3-pin SWD port for connecting a target board; the standard CMSIS-DAP interface can be used to debug most Arm-based microcontrollers; Works with OpenOCD and other tools supporting CMSIS-DAP.
- Expansion – 4-pin I2C/ADC port, 3-pin UART port
- Misc – BOOT button
- Power Supply – 5V via USB-A port
- Dimensions – Around 61 x 25 x 9 mm (plastic case)
- Weight – About 15 grams
Like the Raspberry Pi Pico, the RP2040-GEEK USB development board supports the official MicroPython and C SDKs, as well as Arduino programming with documentation available on Waveshare Wiki. Example programs include displaying an image on the LCD display, running PicoProbe firmware like in the official Raspberry Pi Debug Probe, and mounting a microSD card formatted with FAT and reading its content through the no-OS-FatFS-SD-SDIO-SPI-RPi-Pico project.
Waveshare is selling the RP2040-GEEK USB development board for $16.19 including shipping on Aliexpress, $15.99 on Amazon, or $9.99 plus shipping on its own website. It should ship with four cables as shown below, so you don’t need to source or make your own.
Thanks to ReNa for the tip.
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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What are the use cases?
Micropython/Circuitpython/Arduino development board in an USB stick.
Also, as it has native USB, it can act as all sorts of USB devices, USB keyboard, USB serial, USB Midi, etc.
Can also act as a Rubber Ducky / Bad USB hacker tool.
You can use it as a SWD flasher/debugger for other boards.
As it has a MicroSD slot, it could also act as a standalone flasher (without PC).
Further possibilities:
U2F security key, password safe, PC keepalive via keyboard or mouse, drive addressable LEDs (WS2812), IR send/receive PC stick, Logic analyzer, etc.