As quickly because the Raspberry Pi Pico, and its RP2040 microcontroller chip, grew to become out there again in January 2021, folks have been integrating it into many various kind components, a few of which embody tiny IPS screens. The newly out there LilyGO T-PicoC3 takes this pattern to its inevitable conclusion by combining the RP2040 with one other microcontroller – the venerable ESP32 – and a display. It additionally, as identified by CNX Software program, makes use of some very intelligent USB expertise.
That is the C3 model of the ESP32, which encompasses a single-core 32bit RISC-V CPU as much as 160MHz, 400 kiB of SRAM and 384 kiB ROM, 22 programmable GPIOs, and importantly Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth 5LE, each of that are lacking from the RP2040. The Raspberry Pi chip options the same old dual-core Cortex-M0+ MCU with 264 KB of embedded SRAM, plus 4MB of flash storage. The tiny display is a 1.14-inch full-color IPS LCD Show (through an ST7789V SPI controller) with a decision of 240 x 135 pixels.
Whether or not the 2 chips talk with each other, is unclear, but when doable then it might supply one other means to get the RP2040 concerned with Web based mostly tasks.
What’s notably attention-grabbing is the USB-C port used for energy and to entry each the microcontrollers. The rotationally symmetrical connector seems to have totally different sides in any case, as inserting a cable a method spherical will entry the RP2040 (and illuminate a blue LED) whereas turning it over will entry the ESP32 (inexperienced LED). There appears to be a reliability downside right here, presumably resulting from variations in cable manufacture, as the corporate notes that “resulting from cable issues, it’s doable that the indicator mild is reverse to the precise linked chip, and even two LED lights on the identical time”. Ought to this occur, you’re suggested to strive a special cable, with CNX Software program speculating that it might all be right down to how the cable’s CC1 and CC2 pins are wired.
Whichever manner you plug it in, there’s supply code and documentation on GitHub, together with Arduino and MicroPython code, and the boards themselves are on the market on AliExpress for $13.58 on the time of writing, and in restricted numbers on Tindie.