TinyPICO V3

by Unexpected Maker

TinyPICO is the world’s smallest, fully-featured ESP32 development board, designed to unlock the power of the ESP32’s dual-core 240MHz processor and internet connectivity, in a package smaller than your thumb!

Don’t be fooled by its size, TinyPICO is a super versatile proto-typing and development board for MicroPython and C, and is now available in both Micro-B and USB-C flavours!

All TinyPICO boards come in an antistatic bag and ship with:

  • Colour pinout card
  • Unassembled male headers
  • Unassembled JST PH battery connector.

IMPORTANT: THERE IS NOW A V3 VERSION OF THE TINYPICO USB-C!

It is identical to the V2 board, but uses a CH9102F Serial2UART chip instead of the CP2104. You can easily identify if you have a V3 board because all V3 boards have a BLUE power LED instead of the usual RED power LED. The packaging will also have a label on it indicating it’s a CH9102F version.

If you are using Windows or macOS, you will need to install the driver to be able to access the TinyPICO via USB.

The Specs

  • ESP32 PICO D4
  • Micropython
  • Espressif IDF
  • Arduino IDE
  • 32Bit Dual Core 240Mhz
  • 2.4GHz Wifi - 802.11b/g/n
  • Bluetooth BLE 4.2
  • 4MB SPI FLash
  • 4MB Extra PSRAM
  • APA102 RGB LED
  • USB + Serial/UART for programming
  • 700mA 3.3V LDO Regulator
  • LIPO Battery Management
  • Optimised power path for low power battery usage
  • JST pads on the bottom supports PH & MicroBlade
  • 14x GPIO broken out
  • Breadboard friendly
  • Oh, it's tiny! Just 18mm x 35mm

Unexpected Maker have filled every nook on this board, packing a massive 700mA 3.3V regulator, on-board battery management, an RGB LED, 4MB of extra PSRAM and 14 GPIO!

TinyPICO is tuned for ultra low current use, dropping as low as 20uA when in deepsleep.

It really is small!

TinyPICO is the worlds smallest, fully featured ESP32 development board

Micro-B model is 18x32mm USB-C model is 18x35mm

It’s also very breadboard friendly, offering lots of room on either side

Optimised power paths & deep sleep current

TinyPICO has been designed with two isolated power paths: a 5 V path and a 3.3 V path. Any components that are not needed for operation via battery or via the 3.3 V power pin are isolated within the 5 V power path, and are totally shut down when no USB cable is plugged in.

In-fact, even the power & charge LEDs are shutdown when no 5 V power source is present.

Deep sleep has been optimised for all development platforms, and although it has been seen to go as low as 10 uA, the official current rating in deep sleep is 20 uA.

Note: TinyPICO includes an on-board APA102 RGB LED that has a quiescent current of 1 mA.

Thankfully there is a solution for deep sleep. GPIO13 controls the power to the APA102 using a P-Channel MOSFET via a high-side switch that can (along with smoother IO settings) shut down the power to the APA102 for you. It’s essential to do this before going into deep sleep to ensure the lowest current draw possible.

Unexpected Maker have created some helper functions for you in their TinyPICO MicroPython & Arduino helper libraries to make this easy. Please check the code in the platform you use to understand how to shut down the APA102 correctly as just pulling GPIO13 high is not enough.

Open Source

Unexpected Maker have made TinyPICO hardware and software open source. You can find the design files and our code in the TinyPICO GitHub repository.

Please read the open source licenses and branding rules to understand your obligations before you decide to use any of the files in your own projects. Thanks!

You can find out more about the TinyPICO development journey and history from here…