Pico Breakout Garden Pack

by Pimoroni

An easy, solderless, swappable way to use breakouts with your Raspberry Pi Pico - add up to three Pimoroni breakouts (2 x I2C and 1 x SPI) to the sturdy slots and get coding and creating!

Pico Breakout Garden Pack gloms onto the back of your Pico and lets you connect up to three of our extensive selection of Pimoroni breakouts. Whether it's environmental sensors so you can keep track of the temperature and humidity in your office, a whole host of little screens for important notifications and readouts, and, of course, LEDs. Scroll down for a list of breakouts that are currently compatible with our C++/MicroPython libraries!

The three sturdy black slots are edge connectors that connect the breakouts to the pins on your Pico. There's one slot for SPI breakouts (like our 0.96" LCD Breakout or 1.12" SPI OLED Breakout), and two slots for I2C breakouts. Because I2C is a bus, you can use multiple I2C devices at the same time, providing they don't have the same I2C address (we've made sure that all of our breakouts have different addresses, and we print them on the back of the breakouts so they're easy to find).

As well as being a handy way to add functionality to your Pico, Breakout Garden is also very useful for prototyping projects without the need for complicated wiring, soldering, or breadboards, and you can grow or change up your setup at any time.

If you need more than three breakouts, you might be interested in our Pico Breakout Garden Base. If you want to use other Pico Packs with Pico Breakout Garden Pack, check out Pico Omnibus and Pico Decker!

Please note that breakouts are sold separately! A Raspberry Pi Pico is not included - click here if you'd like to buy one.

Features

  • Three sturdy edge-connector slots for Pimoroni breakouts
  • 2x I2C slots (5 pins)
  • 1x SPI slot (7 pins)
  • Female headers for attaching to Raspberry Pi Pico
  • 0.1” pitch, 5 or 7 pin connectors
  • Reverse polarity protection (built into breakouts)
  • Fully assembled
  • Compatible with Raspberry Pi Pico (and other pin-compatible boards)
  • Schematic

About Pico Breakout Garden

Because of the way that I2C (the protocol that Breakout Garden uses) works, it doesn't matter which slot on the Breakout Garden that you plug your breakout into. Each I2C device has an address (you'll see it on the back of each breakout) that it uses to identify itself to other I2C devices, so it's effectively saying "Hey, it's me, Bob!"

We've built reverse polarity protection into our Pimoroni breakouts, meaning that there's no magic blue smoke if you accidentally plug one in the wrong way round. However, the correct way to plug them in is to make sure that the labels on the pins on your breakout and the labels on each Breakout Garden slot match up.

The markings on the base will show you which way round to plug in your Pico - just match up the USB port with the markings on the board.

Pico Breakout Compatibility

We're in the process of writing C++ / MicroPython drivers for as many of our breakouts as possible - here's a list of the breakouts that are currently supported. If you download the most recent version of our custom MicroPython uf2, it will have all these drivers included.

If your breakout's not yet on the list, you might find Pico-compatible drivers for it in CircuitPython!

Please note that Breakout Garden Pack does not have I2C pull-up resistors. All of our breakouts have their own pull-ups on board, but you may run into problems if you're using CircuitPython and third party breakouts that do not have their own pull-ups.

Getting Started

The most straightforward way of getting started with Pico Breakout Garden Pack is by installing our custom MicroPython build on your Pico - there's a tutorial on how to get set up here.

You can find C examples here and MicroPython examples here.

About Raspberry Pi Pico

Raspberry Pi Pico is a flexible, low cost microcontroller development board from the folks at Raspberry Pi, based on their very own chip - the RP2040. It's easily programmable over USB with C/C++ or MicroPython, and ideal for using in all sorts of physical computing projects, devices and inventions - we're so excited to see what you make with it!

We've called our Pico-sized add-ons packs, as they're designed to attach to the back of your Pico as if it were wearing a very stylish backpack (or a miniature jet pack, if you prefer). We've also got Pico bases (larger add-on boards with a space to mount your Pico on top) and some other boards that let you do interesting hackerly things like using multiple packs at once - click here to view them all!

Your Pico will need to have male headers soldered to it (with the pins pointing downwards) to attach to our add-on boards.

22 customer reviews

2 years ago
Very nice little case, it is smaller and more solid than you think it will be. Very nicely made and with excellent thermal properties, my Pi4 is running 70-80 CPU and hovering around 54c. The ports at the back are very practical and it turns the Pi into a much more usable desktop machine, especially if you have cable management OCD :)
by Gareth about Argon ONE V2 Case for Raspberry Pi 4 via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Fit and finish is subpar but it gets the job done. All ports are moved to the back for better cable routing. I'll be getting the M.2 add on for it later.
by Anonymous about Argon ONE V2 Case for Raspberry Pi 4 via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Works perfectly, keeps the PI cool. I wish the form factor was more 'standard' and the colour black instead instead of dark grey, but it's a minor thing
by Massimiliano about Argon ONE V2 Case for Raspberry Pi 4 via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Does exactly what it claims to do. As usual Pimoroni provided superfast delivery and exquisite packaging which survived a journey of more than 3,000 km. Bravo!
by Euan about Argon ONE V2 Case for Raspberry Pi 4 via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Super happy with the case and love how it encloses the Raspberry Pi making it extremely portable. As it's metal it does a good job of conducting heat away from the device and of course, if things get too hot the fan can be relied on.
by Fergus about Argon ONE V2 Case for Raspberry Pi 4 via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
I received the cases I bought very quickly despite having to be shipped to the US. The cases look great and everything fits together perfectly. The internal board that, among other things, converts the micro-HDMI ports to regular HDMI ports is extremely useful. The reason I bought this case is that it has a fan and internal pylons with silicon pads to cool the chips. The Pi4 gets hot. But also, it still makes the GPIO pins accessible with a magnetic cover that is secure yet easy to manually remove.
by Sean about Argon ONE V2 Case for Raspberry Pi 4 via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Good quality metal case with all necessary hardware and links to software. Tested and cooling works very well with very little noise form the case fan.
by Michael about Argon ONE V2 Case for Raspberry Pi 4 via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Ultimately one of the best pi4 case on the market, build and looks are great but to appreciate the quality of the Argon ONE V2 Case you need to build it and hold it. AWESOME.
by Colin about Argon ONE V2 Case for Raspberry Pi 4 via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
An amazing case! Stylish, functional and fairly easy to set up. I wish the instructions were clearer about how to set up the thermal paste, but otherwise perfect. Great for dispersing heat, converting from miniHDMI to full HDMI and providing a power button.
by Aviv about Argon ONE V2 Case for Raspberry Pi 4 via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
A great Pi4 case. It's easy to put together and looks smart. It provides easy access to USB, power, HDMI and GPIO pins. Most impressively it has reduced the average temperature of the CPU from being around 75c, when used with the official Pi4 case, to below 55c at all times and removed any previous heat based CPU throttling I experienced while the built in fan is rarely called into action.
by martin about Argon ONE V2 Case for Raspberry Pi 4 via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Highest quality and weighty aluminium case. Cools an overclocked Pi 4 with ease. Thermal pads attach to the CPU and the RAM and the case acts as a heatsink. The power button and the cooling fan are configured by running scripts. All of the ports are on the back of the case which allows for a tidy setup. The case converts the 2 micro-HDMI ports on the Pi 4 to 2 full sized HDMI ports, allows easy access to the micro-SD card, includes an iR receiver and has a removable magnetic panel to give easy access to the GPIO pins. Thoroughly recommended.
by David about Argon ONE V2 Case for Raspberry Pi 4 via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Solid substancial case for Raspberry Pi 4. It allows all the cables to be neatly routed from the back, and the GPIO pins hidden neatly under magnetic hatch gives a very tidy and classy feel.
by Anonymous about Argon ONE V2 Case for Raspberry Pi 4 via REVIEWS.io

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