Pimoroni Presto - Beta Edition

by Pimoroni

Your new RP2350-powered, connected desktop companion! Features a 4" square touchscreen, elegant black aluminium stand and RGB backlighting.

Presto is a swish, fully programmable display designed to keep precious digital information close to your fingertips. Make it do anything you want...

📅 Calendar updates? Check.

⛅ Weather reports? Sure!

🐈 Photos of favourite humans or animals? Of course.

🎨 Generative digital art? It would be rude not to.

It features a tasty, full colour 4" square touchscreen IPS display, with all the power of Raspberry Pi's new RP2350 chip behind it. Also behind it is some sweet 7 zone RGB backlighting, a piezo speaker for alert boops, an SD card slot for adding storage and a battery connector, so you can power Presto without having it tethered to USB. It also has a built-in RM2 wireless module for 2.4GHz wireless connectivity.

What is the Beta Edition?

Pimoroni Presto is a new product and the software is still a work in progress. It's also possible that we might end up making some tweaks to the board and the stand. We know a bunch of intrepid folks are keen to get their hands on it early though, so we're releasing the first batch as a beta, at a special introductory price. 

Documentation will be minimal and examples/firmware will be prone to change whilst Presto is in beta. If you're new to our Pico/RP2040/RP2350 products you will probably have a more comfortable experience if you wait for the retail edition in the New Year!

We'd love to know what you make with it - feedback and code contributions are warmly welcomed!

What's in the Starter Kit?

You can buy a Pimoroni Presto on its own (it comes fully assembled, with the screen pre-installed in the stand) or as part of a Starter Kit, which contains a cute little controller and some fun sensors to play with, as well as some extra bits we thought you'd find useful. The Starter Kit contains:

  • Pimoroni Presto
  • Qw/ST Pad (a tiny I2C game controller)
  • Multi-Sensor Stick (an all-in-one super sensor suite for environmental, light and movement sensing)
  • 2x Qw/ST cables to connect everything up
  • 32GB microSD card
  • A USB cable

Features

  • Powered by RP2350B (Dual Arm Cortex M33 running at up to 150MHz with 520KB of SRAM)
  • 16MB of QSPI flash supporting XiP
  • 8MB of PSRAM
  • Raspberry Pi RM2 module (CYW43439), supporting IEEE 802.11 b/g/n wireless LAN, and Bluetooth
  • 4" square (480 x 480 pixel) IPS LCD screen with capacitive touch overlay
  • Rainbow backlighting, courtesy of 7x mini SK6812 (Neopixel-compatible) RGB LEDs
  • USB-C connector for programming and power
  • Piezo speaker
  • Reset and boot buttons (the boot button can also be used as a user button)
  • MicroSD card slot
  • Qw/ST (Qwiic/STEMMA QT) connector
  • 2-pin JST-PH connector for adding a battery (3V - 5.5V)
  • Pre-installed in a black anodised aluminium stand with rubber feet
  • Comes fully-assembled (no soldering required)
  • Programmable with C/C++ or MicroPython
  • Schematic

Getting Started

Presto comes pre-loaded with MicroPython and some examples, but you can find the most recent version of the firmware and more examples below:

There's also a boilerplate project for if you'd prefer to program your Presto with C++.

Connecting Breakouts

Presto has a Qw/ST (AKA Qwiic/STEMMA QT) connector, so you can connect up Qw/ST breakouts easily using a JST-SH to JST-SH cable.

Notes

  • Measurements: 110mm x 92mm x 80mm (H x W x D, approx)
  • Note that Presto has no battery charging hardware onboard -  this is so you can use either alkaline or LiPo batteries safely. You'll need to charge up your LiPo battery with a separate battery charger (we like LiPo Amigo).
  • The battery connector can be used to power Presto with batteries that provide between 3V and 5.5V. At the lower end of that voltage range, you'll start to see dimming of the backlight and less vibrant colours. We'd suggest using a chunky LiPo, or a 3x AA alkaline battery pack - check out the extras for some options.

About RP2350

The RP2350 chip is the Double Quarter Pounder & Fries to the RP2040's Double Cheeseburger and can have one or more RISC-V burgers instead of either of the M33 ARMs, to stretch the metaphor.

In addition to the modern M33 ARM cores, there are sides of: more PIO capability, a variety of low power states for sipping electrons, a whole security system and some sprinklings of specialist digital video circuits to offload DVI/HDMI output.

You can expect a tasty boost in performance - our "real world" MicroPython tests are running up to 2x faster compared to RP2040, and floating point number crunching in C/C++ is up to 20x faster. The extra on-chip RAM will make a big difference when performing memory intensive operations (such as working with higher resolution displays) and even more can be added thanks to external PSRAM support.

RP2350 comes in two flavours - A (standard) and B (all the pins). The B chip has a stonking 48 usable GPIO pins, including 8 ADCs and 24 PWMs, and features on some of our new products. 

Click here to view all things RP2350!

19 customer reviews

25 days ago
Great product. If, like me, you like develop useless program in python, but hardware and soldering isn't your topic, then this Presto is made for you. Fit nicely on your room, much more than any screen with visible PCB. WAF is on top for this product :)
by Anonymous about Pimoroni Presto - Beta Edition via REVIEWS.io
a month ago
Great versatile device and even in beta it doesn't take much effort to get it working for projects. The design is really polished too.
by Anonymous about Pimoroni Presto - Beta Edition via REVIEWS.io
a month ago
I used Presto to create a clock. This clock features a calendar function, slideshow functionality, and the ability to display pre-set messages. Development was highly efficient as I implemented it using MicroPython, allowing me to complete the project in a very short time. Calibrating the clock via WiFi is straightforward, making it easy to maintain accurate time. The RGB565 colour display offers excellent colour reproduction, and the backlight is bright enough to make it well-suited for displaying photos. Additionally, SanDisk microSD cards (I used a 64GB version) work perfectly without any issues. The piezoelectric speaker is ideal for playing the hourly chime, and I have also implemented ambient LED effects on the back to accompany the chime. The aluminium enclosure is solidly built and looks premium, making the finished application feel almost like a production-level product. Furthermore, the touch panel’s sensitivity is excellent, providing a smooth and responsive user experience.
by Tadashi about Pimoroni Presto - Beta Edition via REVIEWS.io
a month ago
I used Presto to create a clock. This clock features a calendar function, slideshow functionality, and the ability to display pre-set messages. Development was highly efficient as I implemented it using MicroPython, allowing me to complete the project in a very short time. Calibrating the clock via WiFi is straightforward, making it easy to maintain accurate time. The RGB565 colour display offers excellent colour reproduction, and the backlight is bright enough to make it well-suited for displaying photos. Additionally, SanDisk microSD cards (I used a 64GB version) work perfectly without any issues. The piezoe speaker on th back is ideal for playing the hourly chime, and I have also implemented ambient LED effects on the back to accompany the chime. The aluminium enclosure is solidly built and looks premium, making the finished application feel almost like a production-level product. Furthermore, the touch panel’s sensitivity is excellent, providing a smooth and responsive user experience.
by Tadashi about Pimoroni Presto - Beta Edition via REVIEWS.io
2 months ago
The Presto is a cute device. It has a feature set that makes it very broadly useful - touchscreen, nice colour screen, tiny speaker, WiFi and bluetooth. Couple that with a straightforward MicroPython library, and you can start running fast - e.g. you could very quickly make a little dashboard that pokes addresses over the local network to change lights, read data, or bring in anything from the internet. The Qwiic port expands the usefulness. I don't have a killer use for the backward -facing LEDs yet, but they're a fun idea. The USB port isn't ideally placed, but a right-angle cable can help keep that tidy. The only unexpected limitation I've found is that two-point touch can misbehave when both are close to the same horizontal line, but otherwise this is nicely rounded! Very happy with mine.
by James about Pimoroni Presto - Beta Edition via REVIEWS.io
2 months ago
A very fine product, in many ways 'just the ticket'. As any design, there are needed extensions. The use of I2C as the external interface and WiFi as the communications medium are, by themselves easy to work with and the Pico2350 is an excellent chip, but some access to the 2350GPIO would have been a nice thought. One answer is the IIC to Serial converter which works fine for Arduino but I have not been able to make it work on the presto under micropython. I like the touch colour screen (480x480) and Pimoroni give a good example software set, but I still yearn for some GPIO access. Great product, proud to own one!
by Trevor about Pimoroni Presto - Beta Edition via REVIEWS.io
2 months ago
Really well made unit, has everything you need. The touch screen is accurate, the backlight is bright if you need it. Having low and high res screen modes gives you the flexibilty of two layer drawing, or more real estate.
by Tom about Pimoroni Presto - Beta Edition via REVIEWS.io
2 months ago
Lots of fun with this. Dusted of my python, worked out the quirks of MicroPython and now have a Octopus Energy Agile price graph along with hooking in to Home Assistant to display (and control) the central heating. Like other who have mentioned the USB C port would have been better coming out of the rear instead of the side, but it's just a minor issue.
by Ryan about Pimoroni Presto - Beta Edition via REVIEWS.io
2 months ago
The Pimoroni Presto is a brilliant bit of kit, and has far exceeded my expectations. It’s my first time playing with MicroPython, and even with a Beta Edition and the lack of docs associated with that, it’s been a breeze to use. It’s exceptionally slim and well designed - very Apple-esque. Even the Mrs is impressed, and she is never impressed by my Pi bits 🤣
by Henry about Pimoroni Presto - Beta Edition via REVIEWS.io
2 months ago
Seems very good product, I ve start to use it just a little. Maybe some remarks. Is it possible to have more example, like how use HiD (can be cool to create "stream deck"), or examples to create "launcher", compatibility with Circuitpython, maybe one day 😊. Else very beautiful product 👌
by Arnaud about Pimoroni Presto - Beta Edition via REVIEWS.io

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