Arduino ProtoShield Proves Perfect for Massaging a Raspberry Pi Pico Into an Uno-Style Board

from hackster.io

Pseudonymous maker "iketsj" has turned a Raspberry Pi Pico into a CircuitPython-compatible dev board echoing the classic Arduino Uno pinout — using a ProtoShield as the design's circuit board.

"The parts that i am going to use are a ProtoShield for Arduino boards as the base of the whole project, as it conveniently follows the Arduino 1.0 pin out. 7805 voltage regulator with accompanying components to regulate external voltage input down to 5 volts. Some diodes to order 5 volts and for reverse polarity protection. I don't have a pin-compatible power jack so I'm just going to use a terminal block. Also a reset button."

All put together, the ProtoShield becomes the home for a Raspberry Pi Pico - the first board to hit the market featuring the dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller. It's this which actually runs CircuitPython, the education-centric fork of the MicroPython project, and which handles the microcontroller duties — though, iketsj warns, "some GPIOs [General-Purpose Input/Output pins] are not connected to anything — oh, well!"

"Of course, it's not for critical stuff," iketsj admits. "I just want to do an RP2040 in a, you could say, classic Arduino form factor. 'Why not just design a custom PCB rather than just doing it that way?' True. Maybe next time."

A video of the board's assembly and test is now available on iketsj's YouTube channel.

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