Guru
Joined: 05/10/2019
Location: United KingdomPosts: 8884
| Posted: 04:10pm 26 Apr 2026 |
This is really a bit of a quick & dirty build for those who like to build stuff and want to play with HDMI and USB without buying a pre-assembled board. It's cheap and cheerful, for the most part. The most expensive components are the Pico 2 and the Adafruit HDMI/DVI breakout board.
It's quite possible to build a basic version with only one surface mount device (the full size SD card socket), and even that's optional. The additional bits may involve SMD soldering.
A couple of experimental bits.
The power is toggled on and off using a little button and a mosfet (circuit found on Big Clive's channel).
Option: The USB signals are disconnected using a clicky relay (remember those?) powered by the supply from the updating USB socket.
The board can be built using either a full size SD card or a micro SD card and a WII socket.
Firmware update connection can be done in one of three ways:
1 - direct connection to the Pico USB.
2 - connection to a mini USB updating socket and the hub disconnected using jumpers
3 - connection to the mini USB socket but with automatic hub disconnection as mentioned above. This should be particularly useful if the board is in an enclosure.
I make no apology for using mini USB. It's by far the best small format USB connector for this job, being small, simple, rugged and relatively easy to hand solder. You don't need a breakout board for it.
The only audio is a piezo buzzer or magnetic speaker on GP22. I've discovered that I rarely use the audio output. If I want to listen to music then I use headphones on my PC. I can't use speakers anyway.
I threw in a GPIO connector for 8 uncommitted GPIO pins and a QWIC connector.
Of course, it's smaller than 100x100mm to keep the PCB price down and it fits the RM2015S case. Incidentally, if you can't source that one the RM2015M is sometimes more readily available but it is 50mm high. That may not be a problem. Same fixings inside.
I'll complete the design If I decide that I need one or if anyone else would like to build one. It's reached the stage where it needs component numbers, the schematic and BOM but it looks like it will probably work. :)