Maker Pi RP2040 Review: The Best RP2040 Robotics Board - Under $10!

This video gives you a first look and review of the Maker Pi RP2040 board from Cytron Technologies. Cytron are targeting the Maker Pi RP2040 as a robotics main board. This board is a great alternative to the Raspberry Pi Pico for those projects where you need considerably more features! The Maker Pi RP2040 uses the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller and has 2MB of on-board flash storage and a host of other features. It also features two user programmable RGB Neopixel LED on the topside of the board as well as 13 blue LEDs to indicate GPIO Status! This is one of the most complete RP2040 boards we have seen around the $10 price point. It also has a LiPo and Li-ion charger!

For most projects, we don’t think that you can beat this board as long as you don’t mind the extra size of the Maker Pi RP2040. I personally think this board is a good form factor for the RP2040 chip with plenty of features. However, I wish it had WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity and more flash memory.

The RP2040 chip supports 4 12-bit ADC channels (4 are user inputs and one measures internal temperature), two UARTs, two SPI and I2C controllers. It also has 8 PIO state machines, USB 1.1 host and device support and 16 PWM channels. Programming any of these Waveshare RP2040 boards is exactly the same as programming the Pico. It can be programmed using the Raspberry Pi RP2040 SDK. Just press the boot select button whilst plugging the USB-C cable in and drag and drop the UF2 file onto the KB2040. It will then reboot and run your program! It can also be programmed in MicroPython and CircuitPython.

Let me know in the comments if you would like to see some projects featuring the Maker Pi RP2040!

The Maker Pi RP2040 is available from:
Pi Hut here: https://thepihut.com/products/maker-p...
Adafruit here: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5129

Take a look at some other RP2040 boards covered here:
   • RP2040 Microcontroller Overviews  

You can find more embedded systems tutorials and projects on our website https://learnembeddedsystems.co.uk

Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
00:40 Price
01:44 Features
04:48 Pinout + GPIO
05:20 Power
06:40 Thoughts & Conclusions

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