Everybody’s favorite new-ish processor is showing up to the party again in another brand new costume. The Tiny 2040 is brought to us by our friends at Pimoroni, makers of way too many awesome and must-have microcontroller bits and pieces. This time they’ve put the RP2040 on a shrunken-down board the size of a postage stamp, and even threw in a few surprises.
Looking to stuff your RP2040-based project into tight constraints now that you have it all worked out? Port it over to the Tiny 2040 and stuff away. The small size means it will fit almost anywhere and still packs the same processor and a lot of the same functions. You may be shocked to find you actually gain an ADC over what other boards offer, for the full 4 available from the RP2040. You also keep the debug port and get an RGB LED to use, thanks to some of the pins you will find missing. Pimoroni also have another trick up their sleeve, allowing the boot button to double as a user input. Connectivity has even taken a step forward with the now ubiquitous USB-C taking center stage.
Now let’s talk about what you give up, since the decreased size means sacrifices somewhere! For starters you are giving up over half the pins of the Pico, now having only 12 GPIO pins. You also lose one SPI Interface, and the board itself, while having a castellated pin setup, has components on both sides — so taking advantage of that for reflow purposes is a no-go.
You can program away in C++, MicroPython, or CircuitPython. No need to be short here, as you have a full 8 Megs of storage to use, a nice boost from the usual. This tiny board really brings the micro to microcontroller, but still manages to punch above its pay grade. That’s a good thing as it will set you back a few extra bucks over some of the comparable options.
