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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Stamps
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lew247 Guru  Joined: 23/12/2015 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1702 |
Pico on a stamp  |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7937 |
The way our postage rates are going it'll soon be cheaper to stick one of those on a "large letter". :( Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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Cyber Senior Member  Joined: 13/01/2019 Location: UkrainePosts: 161 |
That would be a smart stamp. :) |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
RP2040 - one of the few chips that seems readily available in either modules or as discrete chips if you want to roll-your-own board. Just about every other MCU chip is out of stock, with the average now 18 months of lead-time(yes, 1.5 YEARS - not a typo), which is NOT a good thing.  My latest prototype board already uses a PicoMite at it's heart, as I know I can GET the bloody things easily enough - for now. If they weren't so tricky to hand-solder(being a QFN), I would design them into products instead of the PIC32 MM2 chips I currently use, simply cos you can get the chips. However, this "Stamp" might just be a candidate for some changes at PCB level, but unfortunately, even this stamp-sized module is too big for some projects I use SSOP chips in. I wonder why those 2040 chips are so plentiful. Is it simply that they were perhaps one of the last batches of chips to be mass-produced before all the chip factories were affected? Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 10315 |
JLC have them in stock and support them in their PCB assembly. They also now do PCB assembly with through hole parts at a small additional cost. I've been thinking of doing a fully assembled PicoMiteVGA design but now spring is springing in the UK there is less time for the computer |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
Might have to look more seriously at that then, in light of the global situation with chips at the moment. A quick check of Element-14 here in NZ, and they show more then 200,000 chips available(if you buy full reels), and close to 8,000 lots of 10pcs of chips! NZ$14.8 for TEN chips, or $1.48 each - VERY hard to beat that super-sweet price point. LINK... AMAZING that that little chip can do so much, and yet cost so little..... Now that JLC stock them, MIGHT have to look at this more seriously as I have projects I want to do for my business, but I can't get the bloody PIC32 chips!  We're in Autumn here, about to head into horrible and cold Winter starting from June(although by mid-May, it's usually down to freezing most nights), so I might have to spend some of my winder hibernation time, playing with some new prototype ideas. Anyway.... What am I still doing up. 1:55AM here, and I should be sleeping.  Oh - BTW - That stamp module sells for US$11, which is not too bad, but still almost twice the price of the Pico module. But around five or six bucks, is a VERY hard price to beat, lets be honest.  Night, night forum. Edited 2022-03-28 22:55 by Grogster Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
No kidding. I had a multi-MX170 system well on the way, using Tibbit modules (BigMik posted a 3D model of the main board)and then I saw the chips start to disappear. Decided to switch gears completely to the Propeller P2 and a string of PicoMites. No apparent supply-chain issues  Craig |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
I went with the Pimoroni:   Craig |
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hitsware2 Guru Joined: 03/08/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 719 |
> AMAZING that that little chip can do so much, and yet cost so little..... > No apparent supply-chain issues > I wonder why those 2040 chips are so plentiful. Mrs. Pi did not raise a fool. Raspberry is gaining perhaps an almost Gatesian position.... Edited 2022-03-29 01:43 by hitsware2 my site |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7937 |
Probably no supply chain issues because there's only one (relatively) small customer (Raspberry Pi) for it and there'll be a large minimum order quantity. (The tooling/masks will be expensive for a custom chip, but after that the production cost per chip will be tiny. May as well buy a lot.) If the RP2040 was used in Ford car systems or something then it would have the same supply issues, I suppose. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
@ Tinine: Cute little module! US$10. Small, at only 21mm square - that can fit into just about everything. Have you loaded PicoMite onto one of these things?In order to keep costs to an absolute minimum, I think I will be designing my own 2040 module that I can use in most of my projects moving forward, but this kind of layout is probably the way I would go, but with 1mm or 1.27mm pin-pitch to make the module even smaller. Something to play with in CAD anyway. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| al18 Senior Member Joined: 06/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 228 |
The Adafruit QTPY RP2040 is about the size of a quarter, has 8 MB of Flash, sells for $9.95 and was released a year ago. Adafruit has them in stock |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
Yes, that is getting there! Could not find it's dimensions though.... Only ready the first couple of pages of the site - TLDR - no time right now, will come back and see if I can find that later. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| al18 Senior Member Joined: 06/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 228 |
The QTPY RP2040 measures 0.70 x 0.82 inches |
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led-bloon Senior Member Joined: 21/12/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 207 |
There's also these: WS RP2040-Zero (AU$7.99). Just ordered one of them. and Seeed XIAO RP2040 v1.0 2MB Flash (AU$10). Compiled PicoMiteVGA for this and runs ok with an sdcard as well (2 pins spare) led Miss you George |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Yeah, in this thread I like not having the micro USB (too flimsy) There is extra I/O compared to the RPi Pico but I'm not sure if MMBasic ignores this. Will plug-in and test, this morning Craig |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
@ led_bloon: Now we're talking! Very small, and the price is essentially the same as the standard Pico module. Looking at this module very seriously. USB-C connector is a bonus. Standard 2MB flash chip, so PicoMite firmware should load into this and be 100% compatible.Made by Waveshare - go figure. Should have looked there first. (cos they make a lot of awesome boards, including the original CMM2 module used in the first gen CMM2 units.) WS Link... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4044 |
They're on aliexpress, too. With our without pins. (USB-C connector, but not speeds.) John Edited 2022-03-31 17:55 by JohnS |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 5091 |
I like those small boards, but (in my opinion) the ideal MMBasic RP2040 board would at least support an SD card. Many applications I see for it would like to store data, or use "include" files, or support files, in the basic program (*). The current MMBasic RP2040 flash storage (7 program slots) is not really suited for that. So you need to add an SD card. Volhout (*) According Peter it is not feasible to use the flash storage that is currently used by the 7 slots for a file system (like the CMM1, that has a drive A using internal flash, and the SD card is drive B). I remember it was becuasse the flash would wear out too fast. Too bad, for CMM1 the SD card is optional, you don't really need it. The A drive is small (few 100k) but can be used for individual files. PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 10315 |
The main reason is actually that I'm not prepared to code it. To use the flash in this way you would need a filesystem for the flash with built in wear levelling such as LittleFS (as per ArmmiteL4). Then every single file handling mechanism in the code has to be generalised to handle both (incompatible) filesystems. This is a huge bit of work for marginal benefit to most users. As always if anyone wants to code it then the source is available. |
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