🎉  Happy 13th Birthday Raspberry Pi!   🎂   1,000+ deals in store!   🥳
🎉  Happy 13th Birthday Raspberry Pi!   🎂   1,000+ deals in store!   🥳

Inventor 2040 W (Pico W Aboard)

by Pimoroni

An all-in-one board for making battery powered contraptions that can move, (optionally) make noise, and talk to the internet!

Inventor 2040 is a multi-talented board that does (almost) everything you might want a robot, prop or other mechanical thing to do. Drive a couple of fancy motors with encoders attached? Yep! Add up to six servos? Sure? Attach a little speaker so you can make noise? No problem! It's also got a battery connector so you can power your inventions from AA/AAA or LiPo batteries and carry your miniature automaton/animated top hat/treasure chest that growls at your enemies around with you untethered.

You also get a ton of options for hooking up sensors and other gubbins - there's two Qw/ST connectors (and an unpopulated Breakout Garden slot) for attaching breakouts, three ADC pins for analog sensors, photoresistors and such, and three spare digital GPIO you could use for LEDs, buttons or digital sensors. Speaking of LEDs, we've also somehow managed to fit in 12 addressable LEDs (AKA Neopixels) - one for each servo and GPIO/ADC channel (or just use the whole lot for making rainbows, that's fine too).

Best of all though, is the brains of the outfit - the onboard Raspberry Pi Pico W, which will give your creations 2.4GHz wireless connectivity. Use it to trigger your mechanical friends to do their thing remotely, or perhaps you can make a robotic bird that tweets, and also Tweets?

Features

  • Raspberry Pi Pico W Aboard
    • Dual Arm Cortex M0+ running at up to 133Mhz with 264kB of SRAM
    • 2MB of QSPI flash supporting XiP
    • Powered and programmable by USB micro-B
    • 2.4GHz wireless
  • 2 JST-SH connectors (6 pin) for attaching motors
    • Dual H-Bridge motor driver (DRV8833)
    • Per motor current limiting (425mA)
    • Per motor direction indicator LEDs
  • 2 pin (Picoblade-compatible) connector for attaching speaker
  • JST-PH (2 pin) connector for attaching battery (input voltage 2.5V - 5.5V*)
  • 6 sets of header pins for connecting 3 pin hobby servos
  • 6 sets of header pins for GPIO (3 of which are ADC capable)
  • 12 x addressable RGB LEDs/Neopixels
  • User button
  • Reset button (built in Captain Resetti!)
  • 2 x Qw/ST connectors for attaching breakouts
  • Unpopulated headers for adding a Breakout Garden slot
  • Fully assembled
  • No soldering required (unless you want to add the Breakout Garden slot).
  • C/C++ and MicroPython libraries
  • Schematic

Motors, servos, batteries and speakers are sold separately.

Software

Our C/C++/MicroPython libraries provide an easy way to interface with the functions on this board. You'll get best performance using C++, but if you're a beginner we'd recommend using our batteries included MicroPython build for ease of getting started.

Connecting Breakouts

The Qw/ST connectors make it super easy to connect up Qwiic or STEMMA QT breakouts. If your breakout has a QW/ST connector on board, you can plug it straight in with a JST-SH to JST-SH cable.

Breakout Garden breakouts that don't have a Qw/ST connector can be connected using a JST-SH to JST-SH cable plus a Qw/ST to Breakout Garden adaptor. Want to use >2 breakouts at the same time? Try this adaptor!

Printables

Notes

  • Measurements: 52mm x 66mm x 12mm (L x W x H). The mounting holes are M2.5 and 2.7mm in from each edge.
  • The direction indicators for each motor can be disabled by cutting the "motor LED" traces on the rear.
  • * The battery voltage range is dependent on what functions you're using! Minimum voltages from our testing:
    • Motor driver stops working below about 2.9V
    • Audio stops working below about 2.2V
    • Pico stops working below about 1.9V
    Max battery voltage is 5.5V, though we have powered from 5.6V, meaning rechargeable NiMH 4xAA packs can be used.
  • You can have a battery and USB connected at the same time safely. The board will use whichever power source has the higher voltage (usually USB).

About Pico W Aboard

Our new Pico W Aboard products come with a built in Raspberry Pi Pico W. This means you get all the advantages of a RP2040 microcontroller - a speedy fast dual-core ARM processor, a dynamic, growing ecosystem and a choice of different programming methods to experiment with. Most excitingly though, Pico W has wireless connectivity, so your Pico/RP2040 devices can communicate with each other, and the internet! 🌍

View all Pico W Aboard!

11 customer reviews

7 months ago
A very useful little board, only tested the servo set up so far but with the MicroPython examples from Pimoroni it was easy to get things moving and running.
by Ben about Inventor 2040 W (Pico W Aboard) via REVIEWS.io
8 months ago
Whilst useable, needs a bit of brain think to work out connections and programming. Also need to buy appropriate plugs for inputs and outputs.
by Alan about Inventor 2040 W (Pico W Aboard) via REVIEWS.io
8 months ago
As usual Pimoroni delivered the items in good time and this is a great little board that let me prototype a catch and release trap design for a friend of mine. Documentation for the inventor board isn't as good as I hoped but I managed to cobble together a working laser trip wire and a servo. No soft toys were harmed in the making of the video and the rabbit was released shortly after filming 😉
by Mr M about Inventor 2040 W (Pico W Aboard) via REVIEWS.io
a year ago
a lovely board for all sorts of robotics progects, it is my goto board when I am not 100% sure of where the project will lead me. Using one of these as a brain transplant on my 6 servo humanoid robot was a huge improvement (previously a PiZerow with a servo phat)
by alister about Inventor 2040 W (Pico W Aboard) via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Awesome bit of kit, up and running with no issues. Little web page with buttons to wiggle some servos, just need to think of a practical use now and make the UI prettier
by Chris about Inventor 2040 W (Pico W Aboard) via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Looks like a really good project base. I have used the Pico with Python before, but I’d really like to get ‘C’ up and running with this board (hopefully there are libraries to help).
by Nigel about Inventor 2040 W (Pico W Aboard) via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
We have been using the Pi Pico board since it became available in the Spring of 2021. So far, we have sampled the Pico Explorer, the Inventor 2040 W, and the Pico Omnibus - all products of Pimoroni. They all have their applications, however the Inventor 2040 W comes closest to our requirement for a small, modestly priced microcontroller board tailored for robotics applications. The convenience of connection to Micro Metal Motors and tachometer assemblies via JST leads is a big step forward. So far, we have not explored the wireless capabilities of the 2040 W, but I am sure when the students get their hands on these boards then we shall see great things!
by Timothy about Inventor 2040 W (Pico W Aboard) via REVIEWS.io