Waveshare launches three RP2350 USB-C development boards with castellated design, battery support, built-in Ethernet port

Waveshare RP2350 development boards

Waveshare has announced four new USB-C and USB-A development boards based on the Raspberry Pi RP2350 MCU: the Waveshare RP2350-Plus dev board, the Waveshare RP2350-Zero Mini dev board, the Waveshare RP2350-ETH Mini dev board, and the Waveshare RP2350-GEEK USB dev board. The RP2350-Plus is a low-cost, high-performance Pico-like development board with the RP2350 MCU, various I/O, battery support, USB Type-C, and compatibility with Raspberry Pi Pico modules.  The RP2350-Zero Mini is another compact dev board with castellated pins, 29 GPIOs, USB Type-C, PIO, and versatile peripheral support, ideal for IoT, robotics, and embedded systems. The RP2350-ETH Mini dev board has Ethernet support and various GPIO functionalities, making it ideal for IoT development. Like any other RP2350 board, the Waveshare RP2350 boards support C/C++ and MicroPython SDKs with drag-and-drop firmware flashing via USB mass storage. Waveshare RP2350-Plus development board The Waveshare RP2350-Plus is a low-cost development board that comes in a […]

Waveshare RP2350-GEEK USB development board doubles as a debugger for Raspberry Pi and other Arm boards

Waveshare RP2350 GEEK Development Board

Waveshare has recently launched the RP2350-GEEK USB development board which can also be used as a debugger for Raspberry Pi boards and other Arm-based targets. Built around the Raspberry Pi RP2350 MCU this development board/debugger features a 1.14-inch 65K color IPS LCD, a USB Type-A interface, a microSD card slot supporting SDIO and SPI communication, 16MB NOR-Flash, and multiple interfaces, including 3-pin SWD, USB to UART, and I2C ports. The board is compatible with standard CMSIS-DAP debugging tools like OpenOCD, which attaches to Raspberry Pi’s 3-pin debug connector for debugging. It also features open-source firmware for easy upgrades. Housed in a plastic case, the development board looks like a USB drive and is suitable for debugging, testing, and firmware development in IoT, embedded systems, and educational projects. Waveshare RP2350-GEEK Raspberry Pi debugger specifications Microcontroller – Raspberry Pi RP2350A MCU CPU – Dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 processor @ 150MHz Memory – 520KB internal RAM […]

$7 Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W board launched with 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless module

Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W access point

As expected, the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W – the wireless version of the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 – is now available with an extra 2.4GHz WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless module at an official price of $7. We’ll go through the specs and perform a mini review in this post trying out both WiFi and Bluetooth code samples. It’s not the first Raspberry Pi RP2350 with WiFi and Bluetooth we’ve seen, as Pimoroni introduced the Pico Plus 2 W board with an RP2350B MCU and Raspberry Pi RM2 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module, and iLabs launched the Challenger+ RP2350 WiFi6/BLE5 board relying on ESP32-C6 wireless module. However, the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W is the official board, is cheaper, and will certainly be the most popular/widely used. Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W specifications Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W specifications: SoC – Raspberry Pi RP2350 CPU Dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 @ […]

High-speed data acquisition with Raspberry Pi Pico 2’s HSTX interface and HDMI to USB 3.0 video capture dongle

Raspberry Pi Pico 2 high-speed data acquisition

We previously explained the HSTX high-speed serial transmit interface of the Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller was mostly useful for video outputs and display interfaces since it can only transmit, and not receive data. But Steve Markgraf found another use case for the HSTX interface – high-speed data acquisition – combining a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 board with the DVI Sock board for Pico and one of those cheap MS2130-based HDMI to USB 3.0 video capture dongles. He managed to stream out up to 75 MB/s of real-time data from an overclocked RP2350 to a host computer with a USB 3.0 port. The Adafruit Feather RP2350 HSTX board should also work, but also not been tested. Steve’s “hsdaoh-rp2350” data acquisition over HDMI firmware is based on the dvi_out_hstx_encoder example from Raspberry Pi using the HSTX interface for DVI output and code by Shuichi Takano implementing the HDMI data island encoding required […]

Giveaway Week 2024 winners announced!

Giveaway Week 2024 Prizes

We’re now ready to announce the winners of CNX Software’s Giveaway Week 2024. We offered some of the review samples we tested (and some we did not test) in the last year, and for the fourth year running, RAKwireless also gave away two IoT development kits shipped directly to winners. This year’s prizes also included a RISC-V motherboard, a 3D depth camera, a few Arm development boards, two touchscreen displays, and an Alder Lake-N mini PC/router. All those products can be seen in the photo, minus some accessories. You’ll find more than seven devices because we organized the third Giveaway Week on CNX Software Thailand simultaneously with four prizes. We had seven winners on CNX Software: Jupiter RISC-V mini-ITX motherboard – François-Denis, Canada Orbbec Femto mega 3D depth and 4K RGB camera  – Reifu, Japan RAKwireless Blues.ONE LoRaWAN, LTE-M, and NB-IoT devkit – OldCrow, Portugal Mixtile Core 3588E development kit […]

MicroPython v1.24 release adds support for RP2350 and ESP32-C6 microcontrollers, various RISC-V improvements

Micropython v1.24 with ESP32-C6 and RP2350 support

MicroPython has become one of the most popular ways of programming microcontrollers, and the just-released MicroPython v1.24 adds support for the widely-used Raspberry Pi RP2350 and Espresif ESP32-C6 microcontrollers and a range of other changes. Those include improved RISC-V support with native code generation, an updated Zephyr v3.7.0 RTOS with threading support, unified TinyUSB bindings across ports, a portable UART IRQ API, and enhanced mpremote recursive copy. Damien George goes into more detail about the RISC-V improvements: … include an RV32IMC native code emitter, native NLR and GC register scanning implementations for 32- and 64-bit RISC-V, support for placing RV32IMC native code in .mpy files and also freezing it, and RISC-V semihosting support. Testing for RISC-V is done with the qemu and unix ports, and the support is utilised in the esp32 and rp2 ports. The Raspberry Pi RP2350 comes with both Arm Cortex-M33 and RISC-V cores, and the good […]

1.28-inch round color display features Raspberry Pi RP2350, motion sensor, GPIO headers, metal case

RP2350 Rounded LCD

Waveshare has recently launched the RP2350-LCD-1.28, a Raspberry Pi RP2350-based 1.28-inch round color display module with 240×240 pixel resolution and a 65K-color IPS panel. This board also features a rechargeable Lithium battery manager, a 6-axis IMU with a 3-axis gyroscope and accelerometer, multiple GPIO pins, and a USB Type-C connector for programming and power. Additionally, it supports USB 1.1 host/device support, temperature sensor, and 24 PWM channels, all configured for flexible I/O options. These features make this device useful for IoT, wearable tech, and embedded applications. The company also provides an optional CNC metal casing that provides durability and heat dissipation for portable or rugged applications. We have previously covered similar development boards with a round display such as the RP2040-powered 0.99″ rounded display, the ESP32-S3 LCD Driver Board, the SB-Components has launched Dual Roundy, and others, but it’s the first to feature the RP2350 microcontroller. RP2350-LCD-1.28 specification: Microcontroller – Raspberry Pi […]

Datanoise PicoADK v2 music synthesizer is a Raspberry Pi RP2350 board for audio experimentation

PicoADK v2 Synthesizer Development Platform

After the success of PicoADK v1, Datanoise has recently announced the launch of its PicoADK v2 music synthesizer built around the Raspberry Pi RP2350 MCU. The board supports projects like custom synthesizers, audio effects, and noise generation, and the 8 MB QSPI PSRAM of the RP2350 makes it ideal for memory-intensive applications such as long delays. Additionally, it features a SWD debug port, microSD card support, a MIDI-in circuit with an optocoupler, USB Type-C, user and power LEDs, and more. Previously, we have written about various similar synthesizer boards, like the Arduino-based MIDI controller, and we have seen products like the TinyLlama x86 retro computer, which uses the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W as a MIDI synthesizer. PicoADK v2 music synthesizer specification Microcontroller – Raspberry Pi RP2350A MCU CPU – Dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 processor @ 150MHz Memory – 520KB internal RAM Storage – 8KB OTP Package – QFN-60; 7×7 mm Memory – Optional 8MB QSPI […]

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