Home » A look at the Pimoroni Pico Plus 2 board

A look at the Pimoroni Pico Plus 2 board

by 2b4a3pico71

This is a board for Pimoroni that features the RP2350

Pimoroni Pico Plus 2 W is powered and programmable via USB-C and comes with an upgraded 8MB RAM, 16MB of flash storage and easy-to-read pin labels.

It's super easy to connect up to things without soldering, with a Qwiic/STEMMA QT connector (for adding I2C sensors and breakouts), a SP/CE connector (for hooking up SPI/serial devices) and a debug connector (for if you like to program using a SWD debugger).

It also has a reset button and a BOOT button – this can also be used as a user switch.

It has some updates compared to the official Raspberry Pi offering

  • It has more storage (16 Mbyte versus 4 Mbyte)
  • It has more RAM (8 Mbyte vs 0.5 Mbyte),
  • It uses a USB-C versus micro USB
  • Integrated reset button.
  • Five extra GPIO pins are exposed which makes a total of 31 versus 26

Table of Contents

Features

  • Powered by RP2350B (Dual Arm Cortex M33 running at up to 150MHz with 520KB of SRAM)
  • 16MB of QSPI flash supporting XiP
  • 8MB of PSRAM
  • USB-C connector for power, programming, and data transfer
  • Qw/ST (Qwiic/STEMMA QT) connector for attaching breakouts
  • Intriguing SP/CE connector
  • 3-pin debug connector (JST-SH)
  • Reset and BOOT buttons (the BOOT button can also be used as a user button)
  • User LED indicator
  • On-board 3V3 regulator (max regulator current output 600mA)
  • Input voltage range 3V – 5.5V
  • Compatible with Raspberry Pi Pico add-ons
  • Measurements: approx 53mm x 21mm x 9mm (L x W x H, including connectors)

 

Here is the pinout

You can see a 3-pin debug connector on the top-right. Below is a 4-pin connector that carries I2C, 3.3V and GND. The I2C connections are already exposed on a couple of the castellated pads, they are GPIO 4 and GPIO 5.

The castellated pads are unusual in this boards design as there are components on both sides but it may be that this was a template for a board and the parts on the underside were added later, otherwise not sure why they are like that.

I never use these but be aware of this if you do use.

Resources

Notes

  • The user LED is wired to GP25, just like on an ordinary Pico. You can blink it in exactly the same way!
  • It is also useful for putting your Pico Plus 2 into bootloader mode, and you can also use the BOOT button as a user button. It's wired to GP45 and active low.
  • Note – the wireless is stated as experimental, read https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico-rp2350/releases/tag/v0.0.10

 

I have 2 of these and will be trying them out, especially the networking

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