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

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…

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

User photos