Maker and tinkerer Sam Hocevar has put a Raspberry Pi Pico beneath the microscope for just a little reverse-engineering — with a view to design his personal RP2040 board that swaps out the micro-USB port for a extra fashionable USB Sort-C.
“I actually needed a [USB] Sort-C connector on my [Raspberry Pi] Pico H,” Hocevar explains of the venture’s inspiration, “and I needed it much more after I discovered that the gadget was launched lower than 5 years in the past and it nonetheless had a micro-USB port on it. I perceive that one of many predominant attracts of the Pico is that it is $4, and I’m assured sufficient that the associated fee distinction between Micro and Sort-C would additionally result in a noticeable worth enhance.”
If the micro-USB port on the Raspberry Pi Pico is a supply of annoyance, project-piCo is price a glance. (📷: Sam Hocevar)
To scratch the USB Sort-C itch, Hocevar set about designing his personal Raspberry Pi Pico variant. “Raspberry Pi […] publishes numerous data on this board, together with the complete schematics and board format recordsdata,” the maker writes of the unique Raspberry Pi Pico. “Nonetheless, they’re made in Cadence Allegro, and that prices a crisp $1,500/month that I should not have.
“Initially, I simply made a PCB that jumped the micro-USB alerts to a Sort-C breakout board, however the tolerances have been actually tight, and it did not appear to be a lot of a completed product,” Hocevar continues. “My boss gave me the concept of simply remaking the entire board and including a Sort-C port to it, so that is what I did.”
Utilizing Raspberry Pi’s publicly-released schematic and PCB design recordsdata, plus a third-party invoice of supplies (BOM), Hocevar was capable of recreate the design in KiCad — utilizing mechanical format diagrams for the unique Raspberry Pi Pico to make sure the brand new variant ought to be a drop-in substitute for any venture.
Hocevar has launched the design recordsdata for the piCo board beneath an especially permissive license. (📷: Sam Hocevar)
“It is okay for my wants,” Hocevar says of the consequence, “however it’s removed from the precise Pico. The unique one makes use of copper pours very strategically and has nice routing, however the routing on mine is atrocious. The DRC [Design Rules Check] additionally offers this board 41 errors and 13 warnings, however I merely elected to disregard them. I’d fortunately settle for pull requests to enhance this design.”
The ensuing KiCad design recordsdata for what Hocevar calls “project-piCo” can be found on GitHub beneath the extraordinarily permissive WTF Public License 2; further data is accessible in Hocevar’s Reddit publish.