🌊 Slight dispatch delays possible as we catch up with sale orders, please bear with us 🐨
🌊 Slight dispatch delays possible as we catch up with sale orders, please bear with us 🐨

Pico Explorer Base

by Pimoroni

Transform your Raspberry Pi Pico into a electronic adventure playground packed with physical computing goodies including an LCD screen, motor drivers, a mini breadboard, and much more!

Pico Explorer lets you play with circuits, build science experiments, prototype tiny robots and inventions and, most importantly, Figure Out How It All Works.

We've incorporated tinkering essentials like a mini breadboard, motor drivers, ADC inputs, a built in speaker, general purpose inputs/outputs, switches, and two Breakout Garden slots* so you can add on a couple of our wide range of Pimoroni breakouts.

We've also managed to fit in a vibrant 240x240 IPS LCD screen with four tactile buttons so you can easily monitor and control what your project is doing. It's all wrapped up in a nice, sturdy baseboard with a pleasingly compact footprint which won't involve nearly as many trailing wires as if you were experimenting with a traditional breadboard setup. Boo wires, yay Pico Explorer!

Our comprehensive MicroPython and C++ libraries will let you control every aspect of the board like a digital maestro. It's great for beginners, advanced users, and people who awkwardly sit somewhere in the middle and cannot be placed into a simple demographic bucket - we know who you are.

We've really crammed all the functionality we could into this board - quite a few of us were lucky enough to have all-in-one electronic circuit kits when we were small and so we jumped at the chance to put together a bang up-to-date version.

Raspberry Pi Pico and breadboardable components like LEDs, jumper wires and extra buttons are not included (but you can find them all under the extras).

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

*Please note that Pico breakout compatibility is a work in progress - scroll down for a list of compatible breakouts!

Features

  • Pico Explorer Base
  • Piezo speaker
  • 1.54" IPS LCD screen (240 x 240)
  • Four user-controllable switches
  • Two H-Bridge motor drivers (with over current indicator LED)
  • Easy access GPIO and ADC pin Headers
  • Two Breakout Garden I2C sockets*
  • Mini breadboard
  • Rubber feet
  • Compatible with Raspberry Pi Pico/Pico W.
  • No soldering required (as long as your Pico has header pins attached).
  • Dimensions: approx 117mm x 63mm x 20mm (L x W x H, assembled)
  • C/C++ and MicroPython libraries
  • Schematic

Pinout

Pico Explorer Base pinout

Getting started

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

The easiest way to get started is by downloading and copying our custom MicroPython uf2 to your Pico, it includes all the libraries you'll need to use our add-ons. The beginner friendly tutorial linked below will show you how to get to grips with pirate-brand MicroPython.

Pico Breakout Compatibility

We're in the process of writing C++ / MicroPython drivers for as many of our breakouts as possible. 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!

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!

32 customer reviews

a year ago
A really neat and easy to use sensor package. Shouldnt take more than an hour to familiarise yourself with it as the library for it is pretty robust and easy to use. Added it to a project of mine (circuit python) and it works just as expected. I really like it!
by Sony about BME280 Breakout - Temperature, Pressure, Humidity Sensor via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
A great little sensor that is almost 'plug and play'. Just plug it into a board like the Pico Breakout Garden and download the example program to get it going. You really don't need to do much yourself. That said, more accessible, improved documentation, detailing the methods used to set up the device and access data would help deepen understanding of the device and how to develop and modify applications using it.
by Robert about BME280 Breakout - Temperature, Pressure, Humidity Sensor via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Useful sensor with a choice of connectors for soldering. Worked seamlessly with a Pico W. Found the literature and information on the Pimoroni website somewhat arcane and less than straightforward to access, but plenty of help available on YouTube
by Robert about BME280 Breakout - Temperature, Pressure, Humidity Sensor via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Bought the BME280 breakout as a replacement for the BME280 sensor on an Enviro+ board that had gone awry. After checking with the excellent Pimoroni forum for help, I soldered the board to the GPIO header on the Enviro+ with the supplied header pins. I made use of the address selection trace on the back BME280 breakout board. All now works and is up and running the Luftdaten python script with a small change to the code to allow for the address change to 0x77. Great service from Pimoroni, ordered on Tuesday and arrived on Thursday.
by Mike about BME280 Breakout - Temperature, Pressure, Humidity Sensor via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Instructions on how to use it and set up are good. Got it all working without hassle and used it as a project to team my kids to solder, which went well. Readings seem to be accurate and correspond with other local weather stations in the year.
by John about BME280 Breakout - Temperature, Pressure, Humidity Sensor via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
These sensors work as they should, I couldn't find how to access specific addresses using the pimoroni python library examples but a search led me to install the RPi.bme280 libràry (sudo pip install RPi.bme280) and I was able to read from two dme280 sensors connected in parallel using addresses 0x76 and 0x77.
by Anonymous about BME280 Breakout - Temperature, Pressure, Humidity Sensor via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Handy little sensor.. I am using this to provide a data feed to the magic mirror smart dashboard I have at home to keep an eye on indoor conditions. Fantastic. Try to keep the unit few cms away from the pi..it is quite sensitive to any heat.
by Badrinath about BME280 Breakout - Temperature, Pressure, Humidity Sensor via REVIEWS.io

User photos