PGA2040

by Pimoroni

A minimal RP2040 breakout board wrangled into a Pin Grid Array, with 8MB flash and a maximal dash of retraux style.

PGA2040 is a compact RP2040 breakout intended for the most svelte and embeddable of projects. It contains only the components necessary to run the RP2040 (that's the crystal, flash, regulator and essential support circuits) and it has no fripperies like LEDs, buttons and USB connectors - you'll need to attach your own USB connector to be able to program it.

The benefits of all this drastic pruning are a tiny, 21mm square footprint and lots of exposed RP2040 pins to play with! 30 of them can be used as general purpose I/O (that's four more I/O than on a Raspberry Pi Pico) and 4 are ADC-equipped. It also has the cutest little pin labels in the known 'verse, because space is tight on this board.

Header pins are sold separately - you can solder it to standard Pico pin headers (though bear in mind you'll need 48 pins if you want to populate it fully). If you want to fully commit to the aesthetic we also have custom PGA pin headers and sockets you can use to turn PGA2040 into a full faux-retro 486-era device that can be plugged into your projects.

Like our other RP2040 boards, PGA2040 is programmable with C++, MicroPython or CircuitPython - choose your fighter!

Features

  • Powered by RP2040
  • Dual ARM Cortex M0+ running at up to 133Mhz
  • 264kB of SRAM
  • 8MB of QSPI flash supporting XiP
  • Crystal oscillator
  • On-board 3V3 regulator (max regulator current output 300mA)
  • 48 pins, arranged with 2.54mm (0.1") spacing in a Pin Grid Array
  • 30 multi-function General Purpose IO (4 can be used for ADC)
  • 8 GND pins
  • Input voltage range 3V - 5.5V (on VB pin only)
  • Measurements: approx 21mm x 21mm x 3mm (L x W x H)
  • Schematic
  • Eagle CAD part

Getting Started

PGA2040 is firmware agnostic! You can program it with C/C++ or MicroPython in the same way as you would a Raspberry Pi Pico. You can find (lots) more information on how to do that (as well as download links for the firmware/SDK) on the RP2040 landing page.

You can also use CircuitPython on your PGA2040! CircuitPython is an easy to use, well-established ecosystem with lots of example code and drivers for interfacing with different kinds of hardware. Click here to download the CircuitPython firmware for PGA2040 and click here for a getting started guide.

To program PGA2040 via USB you will need to hook wires up to VB, GND, U+ and U-. Make sure that the 5v only goes to VB on PGA2040, if it ends up elsewhere it will result in a bad time. A USB breakout board is a convenient way of getting at the wires in your USB cable, check out the extras tab for some options!

To get into BOOTSEL mode so you can flash firmware to your PGA2040, connect the BS pin to ground whilst plugging the USB into your computer.

Pinout

PGA2040 pinout

About RP2040

Raspberry Pi's RP2040 microcontroller is a dual core ARM Cortex M0+ running at up to 133Mhz. It bundles in 264kB of SRAM, 30 multifunction GPIO pins (including a four channel 12-bit ADC), a heap of standard peripherals (I2C, SPI, UART, PWM, clocks, etc), and USB support.

One very exciting feature of RP2040 is the programmable IOs which allow you to execute custom programs that can manipulate GPIO pins and transfer data between peripherals - they can offload tasks that require high data transfer rates or precise timing that traditionally would have required a lot of heavy lifting from the CPU.