A nifty little project came across the Make Discord the other day:
Romu is a tiny dev board by Bitmerse that’s powered by a Raspberry Pi PR2354A and runs MicroPython. And tiny it is. At just 15.5 × 12 mm, the board is barely bigger than the chip itself and fits almost entirely in a USB-A slot (there’s still some PCB left for you to grab to pull out).
With such a small size, there’s not much space for extras like switches or exposed GPIO pins. So what’s the case for using it instead of a simulator, aside from the authenticity points? Well, they did manage to squeeze in a capacitive touch button and side-mount RGB LED, which the team points out unlocks “a wide range of practical daily applications.”
“For example, Romu can easily act as a Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) hardware token, just load compatible software (like Pico FIDO) and use it to securely authorize your two-factor authentication (2FA) logins. Alternatively, you can program it as a custom USB macro key to instantly mute your microphone during video calls, act as a one-touch password injector, function as a mouse jiggler to keep your PC awake, or use the RGB LED as a glowing status indicator for unread emails and system notifications.”
We’ve covered Bitmerse before; they made WiSer and bUniProbe. If nothing else, Romu is an impressive exercise in circuit design, and a just-in-case dev board that might be the smallest thing on your keychain. Or since it’s smaller than a bread bag clip, maybe connect it to something harder to lose.
Romu is launching soon on Crowdsupply.
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