Pico Indicator adds LEDs to GPIO and power signals of the Raspberry Pi Pico and compatible boards

8086 Consultancy has designed a simple board called the Pico Indicator to add LEDs to the GPIO and power pins of the Raspberry Pi Pico and other boards with the same pinout.

In the past, we’ve seen some educational boards like the Cytron Maker Uno RP2040 include LEDs for each GPIO that make it more visual for students, but can also help debug projects without having to connect a multimeter or oscilloscope. Most MCU boards only include a few LEDs, and that includes the Raspberry Pi Pico family, which only features one user LED. The Pico Indicator fixed that by adding 29 LEDs for use with the Pico, Pico W, Pico 2, Pico 2 W, and compatible boards to show which pins are logic level high.

Pico Indicator highlights:

• Compatible with any board following the 2x 20-pin headers layout of the Raspberry Pi Pico
• 29x LED indicators
  • GPIO – 26x amber LEDs for GP0 to GP28 (excluding GP23, GP24, GP25 since they aren’t exposed on the Raspberry Pi Pico).
  • Power signals – 3x red LEDs for power (VBUS, VSYS, 3V3)
  • Each LED is aligned with the pin, and the GPIO number or power name is printed alongside it
• Misc – A current limiting resistor and a solder jumper are available for each pin, so that an LED can be disabled if it interferes with a signal, for instance, when reading an ADC. input
• Dimensions – Slightly shorter and wider than a Raspberry Pi Pico (about 46 x 24 mm)

Three variants of the Pico Indicator are available: stacking header (female header on top, male header on the bottom), regular header (female), or no header at all.

The model with no header is sold for $4.14 on Tindie,  the regular header variant for $5.19, and the one with a stacking header for $5.65. It’s more expensive than a Raspberry Pi Pico, as it doesn’t benefit from the high production volume of the RP2040 board. Note that 8086 Consultancy is based in the United Kingdom, and they won’t ship to the EU and Northern Ireland due to GPSR regulations. I tried to find a similar design on AliExpress, but all I could find were RGB Matrix displays for the Pico boards serving another purpose.

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