Adafruit Feather RP2350 board with HSTX port enables video output and display interfaces

“Adafruit Feather RP2350 with HSTX port” is a Raspberry Pi RP2350 MCU development board that features an onboard 22-pin high-speed serial transmit interface (HSTX) port. The board also features a built-in 200mA+ LiPo charger, an RGB LED, a STEMMA QT connector, and a USB Type-C port for power and programming. The board is compatible with FeatherWings and supports development with various programming languages. These features make this board suitable for a wide range of applications, from embedded projects and IoT devices to educational purposes and prototyping.

Previously we have covered a variety of RP2350-powered development boards, including the MOTION 2350 Pro, designed for robotics and motor control; the Solder Party’s RP2350 Stamp, ideal for space-constrained applications; and the WIZnet Raspberry Pi RP2350 boards designed for IoT and internet-connected applications. Feel free to check those out if you want to take a look at some of the unique development boards.

Adafruit Feather RP2350 with HSTX specification

• Microcontroller – Raspberry Pi RP2350A MCU
  • CPU – Dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 processor @ 150MHz
  • Memory
    • 520KB internal RAM
    • Optional spot for SOIC PSRAM chip with chip select line on GPIO 8
  • 8KB OTP Storage
  • Package – QFN-60; 7×7 mm
• Storage – 8MB flash
• HSTX – 22-pin HSTX port for high-speed data transmission via 0.5mm FPC flex connector
• USB – 1x USB Type-C port
• I/Os
  • Adafruit Feather compatible headers
    • Up to 29x GPIOs (21 on Feather header, 8 on HSTX connector)
    • 2x I2C, 2x SPI, 2x UART
    • 4x 12-bit ADC
    • 24x PWM
  • STEMMA QT/Qwiic I2C connector
  • 3-pin JST SH connector for SWD debugging
• Misc
  • BOOT and RESET buttons
  • User LED (Pin 7 red LED)
  • Charging status LED
  • Neopixel RGB LED
• Power Supply
  • 5V via USB Type-C port
  • 2-pin LiPo battery connector plus LiPo charger circuit with 200mA+ charging current
  • 3.3V regulator with 500mA peak current output
• Dimensions – 50.8 x 22.8 x 7 mm (Adafruit Feather form factor)
• Weight – 5 grams

Like other Adafruit Feather boards, this board also ships with a preinstalled USB UF2 bootloader. ” What that means is when you want to program new firmware, you can hold down the BOOTSEL button while plugging it into USB (or pulling down the RUN/Reset pin to ground) and it will appear as a USB disk drive” you can drag and drop your firmware onto it like a USB drive for programming. More information about the board and other documentation can be found on the company’s guide page.

The company recommends CircuitPython to get started with this board as it has support for Adafruit drivers, displays, and sensors, along with tutorials and example code. other than that the company mentions that it has official support for C/C++, unofficial Arduino support, an official MicroPython, and CircuitPython support. One thing to note is that when using CircuitPython or MicroPython, the 8MB onboard QSPI flash is shared between the program it’s running and any file storage. This leaves approximately 7 MB for your code, files, images, fonts, and other assets. If you are using C/C++  to program the board you get the whole flash memory.

Adafruit does not provide any specific documentation to use the HSTX interface of the board, but some example code can be found on the CircuitPython GitHub repository, specifically within the CircuitPython ports directory for the Raspberry Pi RP2350.

The older RP2040 chip used PIO to create video signals, but the new RP2350 has dedicated hardware called HSTX that’s designed specifically for making video signals. You can still use PIO for video on the RP2350 if you want, but using HSTX will generally be better, faster, and easier because it’s built for the job.

The Adafruit Feather RP2350 development board with HSTX Port is priced at  $12.50 and can be purchased from the Adafruit store, but at the time of writing, there is a cap of two units per customer.

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