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

Plasma Stick 2040 W (Pico W Aboard)

by Pimoroni

This perky Pico W-powered controller for WS2812/Neopixel/SK6812 LEDs is perfect for coding up some wireless blinkenlight shenanigans.

Plasma Stick 2040 W is a simple RP2040-powered driver board designed to make playing with addressable LED strips easy peasy rainbow squeezy. We've taken a Raspberry Pi Pico W and added a set of screw terminals to make it easy to connect up your LEDs and boost circuitry so they get a nice clean 5V on the power and data lines. We've also added a reset button (because unplugging your USB cable all the time is tedious) and a Qw/ST (Qwiic/STEMMA QT) connector so you can connect it up to breakouts, all without soldering.

We've designed this board with doing cool LED things with wireless in mind, so it doesn't have all the fancy features that you can find on Plasma 2040 - if you'd prefer mod cons like current sensing, buttons, APA102/Dotstar compatibility and USB-C, take a look!

Prefer to pick up a kit that includes a Plasma Stick, LEDs and everything else you need to get going? Check out Wireless Plasma Kit!

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
  • Compatible with 5V WS2812/Neopixel/SK6812 LEDs
  • Screw terminals for attaching your LED strip.
  • Reset button
  • Qw/ST (Qwiic/STEMMA QT) connector
  • Fully-assembled (no soldering required)
  • C++/MicroPython libraries
  • Schematic

LED strip and connectors are sold separately, check out the extras tab for some options!

Software

You can program Pico/RP2040 boards in a bunch of different ways, but if you're a beginner we'd recommend using our batteries included MicroPython build for ease of getting started. We've pre-loaded Plasma Stick with pirate-brand MicroPython and some fun examples to help you get started.

Alternatively, you could install CircuitPython on your Pico W! CircuitPython is an easy to use, well-established ecosystem with lots of example code and drivers for interfacing with different kinds of hardware - and it's just got Pico W wireless support, woop!

If you're adapting examples from elsewhere and need to know the pins that Plasma Stick uses, it's GP15 for LED data, GP4 for I2C SDA and GP5 for I2C SCL.

Connecting Breakouts

The Qw/ST connector on Plasma Stick makes 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!

    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!

    25 customer reviews

    7 months ago
    It's a very nice little gaming console with a decent display and an aluminium case that looks and feels quite sturdy and durable. You can find some games for it on the internet - but the real fun could be writing those by yourself. When I tried I found a reason that makes me write this four-star-only rating. To access the debug pins of the built-in RP2040 you have to open and remove the case. It would have been much nicer if there was one removable panel with those pins behind...
    by Thomas about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    7 months ago
    Well built, feels very premium. There's a decent little community making games for it, and it can run things like an NES emulator without too much issue. I am not currently a skilled enough C++ developer to make anything worth playing for it, but I did manage some basics reasonably quickly.
    by Ed about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    9 months ago
    I'm really impressed by what this tiny thing is able to do! I was able to write a simple game in a matter of hours... You can even upload a NES emulator on it.
    by Benoît about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    2 years ago
    An awesome system based on RP2040. Build quality is very solid and the device has a very nice weight to it. Battery life is also very good. Comes with a nice platformer pre-installed. I haven't made anything with it yet but look forward to adapting my Pico Display games to this one.
    by Mircea about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    I am very happy and also surprised, I received all the material in eight days from the order, congratulations! Everything arrived in perfect condition and Pimoroni products are always of excellent quality. Thank you!
    by Giuseppe about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    Small, cute and very nice hardware. Especially aluminium body is great.
    by Anonymous about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    Great device but haven't got it working on my linux mint install yet.
    by Daniel about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    Very clicky buttons, bright screen and looks good in motion. The build feels very solid.
    by Matthew about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    Very comfortable in hand. Seem sturdy enough to lend it to my small children. I am in the process of porting one of my web game to it. Very easy to program for it, or, if that's not your thing, to load the few available games on it.
    by Julien about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    Amazing little gizmo. Really well made and feels solid. Need to learn about writing my own games and such for it but the hardware and possibilities are fantastic
    by Fiona about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    It’s a nice little handheld with a good sdk though I wish the debug pins were more accessible
    by Henry about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    Simply amazing! The quality of this product is off the charts! The rest is up me, getting my programming skills to a level where I can make a game worthy of the system.
    by Luke about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    The ordering experience was very quick. The delivery to the USA was fairly quick using Royal mail during this time of Covid.
    by Gelsomino about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    This is an incredibly well made system. I hope to be able to develop some nice games with it.
    by Michael about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    First impression of the RP2040-based tiny game console PicoSystem is really positive. Ridgid build quality, robust FPS and responsive buttons!
    by Johannes about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    Oh yeah going to get my game programming on. Default games on the Pimironi website are good too. 10/10 would recommend.
    by Rohan about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    System works well, instructions are good. I had issues with tool chain on windows for raspberry pico sdk. Once I switched to Debian in virtual box everything worked fine. I recommend using putty and ssh for programming to get copy paste functionality and winscp to copy files. The hardware is very well built and I highly recommend it.
    by Todd about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    Amazing little video game machine in your pocket where programming is as easy as editing a text file on a USB drive!
    by Chipp about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    It looks like a commercial games device, it looks really good. Solid build and I cannot wait to start building games and apps for it.
    by Stephen about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    The build quality is extremely good. Especially the aluminium case makes it feel great. The screen has a good quality but it’s pretty small which kind of makes the charm of the PicoSystem. The 32blit SDK is great for developing own games and it has an active community behind it. There are also other SDKs available which I haven’t had experience with yet. Overall the PicoSystem is great for getting into retro game development.
    by Anonymous about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    A very cool little device. I love the metallic body and front plate.
    by Anonymous about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    Great little device! It feels super solid and high-quality, and looks fantastic. The RP2040 is very nice so far, and importantly, both the PicoSDK and the PicoSystem SDK are very easy to use, especially the examples in the PicoSystem repo. If you've dabbled in retro console game dev, the PicoSystem is something like a GBA packed into the size of a GB Micro, and has similar limitations in RAM and ROM, just with a smaller screen (but roughly twice the pixels of the original GB at 240x240 vs 160x144), same button count as the original GB, a much faster CPU, and MUCH better documentation. Highly recommend it; it's a lot of fun.
    by Ulises about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    Very nice build quality, but the game library is quite lacking right now.
    by Anonymous about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    Fantastic pocket-ready build, both C++ and CircuitPython ready. 32blit SDK has been great to work with so far!
    by John about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io
    3 years ago
    The fit and finish in the PicoSystem is outstanding and the SDK tools provided to get started provided everything I needed to start tinkering.
    by Matthew about PicoSystem via REVIEWS.io

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