TinyPICO V3 - ESP32 Dev Board

by Unexpected Maker

A tiny, mighty ESP32 development board with USB-C and a choice of antenna options.

TinyPICO is the world’s smallest, fully-featured ESP32 development board, designed to unlock the power of the ESP32’s dual-core 240MHz 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, CircuitPython and C.

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. It's tuned for ultra low current use, dropping as low as 20uA when in deepsleep - scroll down for more info. It even comes with MicroPython pre-installed and ready to go!

Two antenna options!

TinyPICO ships in 2 versions. One with an onboard antenna and one with a u.FL connector, so you can connect an external antenna (not included).

Each board comes with unassembled pin headers and an unassembled JST PH battery connector.

Specifications

  • 32Bit Dual Core 240MHz
  • 2.4GHz Wifi - 802.11b/g/n
  • Bluetooth BLE 4.2
  • 4MB SPI Flash
  • 4MB Extra PSRAM
  • APA102 RGB LED
  • 700mA 3.3V LDO Regulator
  • USB + Serial/UART for programming
  • 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

What's new for V3?

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.

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.

What about the LED?

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.

Pinout

 

Open Source Hardware & Software

Unexpected Maker have made the TinyPICO hardware and software open source. You can find the design files and 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!

Resources

You can find more information about the hardware and how to get started on the TinyPICO site.