Maker Bobricius is at it once more with one other Raspberry Pi-powered doomsday creation—the Armachat Contact Picomputer. This practice PCB is powered by our favourite microcontroller, the Raspberry Pi Pico. It includes a keyboard for enter and permits customers to speak immediately utilizing LoRa wi-fi communication.
That is considered one of a number of “Doomsday Computer systems” that Bobricius has made involving some model of the Pi. Earlier editions embody assist for the Raspberry Pi Zero. This one is Pico-powered with a slew of thrilling options like an LED-backlit keyboard for textual content enter and glowing inexperienced LEDs.
In accordance with Bobricius, his PCB doesn’t use any extra chip for processing other than the Raspberry Pi Pico. He’s in a position to run your entire operation utilizing the Pico alone with the assistance of some software program he obtained from Adafruit. Along with his customized configuration, he’s in a position to deal with enter from 30 separate keys by way of 12 GPIO on the Pico utilizing a CircuitPython library referred to as Touchio.
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This undertaking consists of the customized PCB designed by Bobricius together with a Pico module. It additionally requires a 1.69-inch IPS LCD display with a decision of 280 x 240px for visible output. The keyboard has a QWERTY format and makes use of 30 particular person contact buttons. The whole unit measures in at 150mm x 90mm x 1.6mm.
The software program aspect, as we talked about earlier than, is pushed by CircuitPython. It’s designed to operate as a communication system utilizing the LoRa wi-fi protocol. It interprets keypresses by triggering CPIO pins to alter their state earlier than registering the enter on the LCD display. That is the way you’re in a position to get 30 enter choices utilizing such a restricted variety of GPIO on the Pico. You’ll be able to dive deeper into the code over at GitHub to get a better have a look at the way it goes collectively.
If you wish to recreate this Raspberry Pi undertaking, head over to the product web page at Tindie to order your board and get began. Be sure you observe Bobricius for extra cool tasks in addition to any future updates on this one.